presented to the LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO by FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY MR. JOHN C. ROSE donor w AM BONAPARTE AT TWENTY-TWO YEARS OF AGE. After a portrait by Greuze. This portrait was exhibited at the " Exposition des portraits du Siecle," at the ficole des Beaux Arts, in 1893. (" No. in Bonaparte, Lieutenant d'Artillerie par Greuze, Jean Baptiste. Collection de M. le Marquis de Las Cases.'') As this is reputed to be the earliest portrait of Napoleon in existence, Mr. Hubbard wrote to the Marquis de Las Cases asking- its history. In September, 1894, he received a letter, from which the fol- lowing is quoted: "Madame du Colombier had the portrait of Lieutenant Bonaparte painted in 1791 by Greuze, who was going through Valence, and who was then fifty-eight years old. The portrait afterwards passed to Madame de Bressieux, her daughter, and it was only upon the death of Madame de Bressieux, in 1847, that my uncle was able to secure the picture, which he left to me." A SHORT LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE BY IDA M. TARBELL WITH 250 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE HON. GARDINER G. HUBBARD'S COLLECTION OF NAPOLEON ENGRAVINGS, SUPPLEMENTED BY PICTURES FROM THE COLLECTIONS OF PRINCE VICTOR NAPOLEON, PRINCE ROLAND BONAPARTE, BARON LARREY AND OTHERS NEW YORK THE S. S. McCLURE CO. 141-155 E. 25TH STREET 1896 COPYRIGHT, 1894, BY S S. McCLURE, LIMITED COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY S. S. McCLURE, LIMITED COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY THE S. S. McCLURE CO. PREFACE. THE chief source of illustration for this volume, as in the case of the Napoleon papers in MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, is the great collection of engravings of Mr. Gardiner G. Hubbard, which has been generously placed at the service of the publishers. In order to make the illustration still more comprehensive, a representative of MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE and an authorized agent of Mr. Hubbard visited Paris, to seek there what- ever it might be desirable to have in the way of additional pictures which were not within the scope of Mr. Hubbard's splendid collection. They secured the assistance of M. Armand Dayot, Inspecteur des Beaux-Arts, who possessed rare qualifications for the task. His official position he owed to his familiarity with the great art collec- tions, both public and private, of France, and his official duties made him especially familiar with the great paintings relating to French history. Besides, he was a specialist in Napoleonic iconography. On account of his qualifications and special knowledge, he had been selected by the great house of Hachette et Cie. to edit their book on NapoUon racontt par I Image, which was the first attempt to bring together in one volume the most important pictures relating to the military, political, and private life of Napoleon. M. Dayot had just completed this task, and was fresh from his studies of Napoleonic pictures, when his aid was secured by the publishers of MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, in supplementing the Hubbard collection. The work was prosecuted with the one aim of omitting no important picture* When great paintings indispensable to a complete pictorial life of Napoleon were found, which had never been either etched or engraved, photographs were obtained,, many of these photographs being made especially for our use. A generous selection of pictures was made from the works of Raffet and Charlet. M. Dayot was able also to add a number of pictures not less than a score of" unique value, through his personal relations with the owners of the great private Napoleonic collections. Thus were obtained hitherto unpublished pictures, of the highest value, from the collections of Monseigneur Due d'Aumale ; of H. I. H., Prince Victor Napoleon ; of Prince Roland ; of Baron Larrey, the son of the chief surgeon of the army of Napoleon ; of the Duke of Bassano, son of the minister and confidant of the emperor ; of Monsieur Edmond Taigny, the friend and biographer of Isabey ; of Monsieur Albert Christophle, Governor-General of the Credit- Fonder of France ; of Monsieur Paul le Roux, who has perhaps the richest of the Napoleonic collections ; and of Monsieur le Marquis de Girardin, son-in-law of the Due de Gae'te, the faithful Minister of Finance of Napoleon I. It will be easily understood that no doubt can be. raised as to the authenticity of documents borrowed from such sources. The following letter explains fully the plan on which Mr. ITubbard's collection is arranged, and shows as well its admirable completeness. It gives, too, a classification of the pictures into periods, which will be useful to the reader. WASHINGTON, October, 1894. S. S. McCLURE, Esq. Dear Sir : It is about fourteen years since I became interested in engravings, and I have since that time made a considerable collection, including many portraits, generally painted and engraved during the life of the personage. I have from two hundred to three hundred prints relating to Napoleon, his family, and his generals. The earliest of these is a portrait of Napoleon painted in 1791, when he was twenty-two years old ; the next in date was engraved in 1796. There are many in each subsequent year, and four prints of drawings made immediately after his death. There are few men whose characters at different periods of life are so distinctly marked as Napoleon's, as will appear by an examination of these prints. There are four of these periods : First Period, 1796- vi PREFACE. 1797. Napoleon the General ; Second Period, 1801-1804, Napoleon the Statesman and Lawgiver ; Third Period, 1804-1812, Napoleon the Emperor ; Fourth Period, the Decline and Fall of Napoleon, including Waterloo and St. Helena. Most of these prints are contemporaneous with the periods described. The portraits include copies of the portraits painted by the greatest painters and engraved by the best engravers of that age. There are four engravings of the paintings by Meissonier " 1807," " Napoleon," " Napo- leon Reconnoitring," and " 1814." FIRST PERIOD, 1796-1797, Napoleon the General. In these the Italian spelling of the name, " Buona- parte," is generally adopted. At this period there were many French and other artists in Italy, and it would seem as if all were desirous of painting the young general. A French writer in a late number of the " Ga^ zette des Beaux-Arts " is uncertain whether Gros, Appiani, or Cossia was the first to obtain a sitting from General Bonaparte. It does not matter to your readers, as portraits by each of these artists are included in this collection. There must have been other portraits or busts of Bonaparte executed before 1796, besides the one by Greuze given in this collection. These may be found, but there are no others in my collection. Of the por- traits of Napoleon belonging to this period eight were engraved before 1798, one in 1800. All have the long hair falling below the ears and over the forehead and shoulders ; while all portraits subsequent to Na- poleon's expedition to Egypt have short hair. The length of the hair affords an indication of the date of the portrait. SECOND PERIOD, 1801-1804, Napoleon the Statesman and Lawgiver. During this period many Eng- lish artists visited Paris, and painted or engraved portraits of Napoleon. In these the Italian spelling " Buonaparte " is adopted, while in the French engravings of this period he is called " Bonaparte " or " Gen- eral Bonaparte." Especially noteworthy among them' is " The Review at the Tuileries," regarded by Mas- son as the best likeness of Napoleon " when thirty years old and in his best estate." The portrait painted by Gerard in 1803, and engraved by Richomme, is by others considered the best of this period. There is. already a marked change from the long and thin face in earlier portraits to the round and full face of this period. In some of these prints the Code Napoleon is introduced as an accessory. THIRD PERIOD, 1804-1812, Napoleon the Emperor. He is now styled "Napoleon," "Napoleon le Grand," or " L'Empereur." His chief painters in this period are Lefevre, Gerard, Isabey, Lupton, and David (with Raphael-Morghen, Longhi, Desnoyers, engravers) artists of greater merit than those of the earlier periods. The full-length portrait by David has been copied oftener and is better known than any other. It has been said that we cannot in the portraits of this period, executed by Gerard, Isabey, and David, find a true likeness of Napoleon. His ministers thought " it was necessary that the sovereign should have a serene expression, with a beauty almost more than human, like the deified Caesars or the gods of whom they were the image." " Advise the painters," Napoleon wrote to Duroc, September 15, 1807, " to make the countenance more gracious (pluttit gracieuses)." Again, " Advise the painters to seek less a perfect resemblance than to give the beau ideal in preserving certain features and in making the likeness more agreeable (p/ti(6t agrtfable)." FOURTH PERIOD, 1812-1815, Decline and Fall of Napoleon. We have probably in the front and side face made by Girodet, and published in England, a true likeness of Napoleon. It was drawn by Girodet in the Chapel of the Tuileries, March 8, 1812, while Napoleon was attending mass. It is believed to be a more truthful likeness than that by David, made the same year ; the change in his appearance to greater fulness than in the portraits of 1801-1804 is here more plainly marked. He has now become corpulent, and his face is round and full. Two portraits taken in 1815 show it even more clearly. One of these was taken immediately before the battle of Waterloo, and the other, by J. Eastlake, immediately after. Mr. East- lake, then an art student, was staying at Plymouth when the " Bellerophon " put in. He watched Napoleon for several days, taking sketches from which he afterwards made a full-length portrait. The collection concludes with three notable prints : the first of the mask made by Dr. Antommarchi the day of his death, and engraved by Calamatta in 1834 ; another of a drawing " made immediately after death by Captain Ibbetson, R. N.; " and the third of a drawing by Captain Crockatt, made fourteen hours after the death of Napoleon, and published in London July 18, 1821. These show in a remarkable manner the head of this wonderful man. The larger part of these prints was purchased through Messrs. \Vunderlich & Co., and Messrs. Keppel of New York, some at auctions in Berlin, London, Amsterdam, and Stuttgart ; very few in Paris. GARDINER G. HUBBARD. The historical and critical notes which accompany the illustrations in this volume have been furnished by Mr. Hubbard as a rule, though those signed A. D. come from the pen of M. Armand Dayot. TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER. PAGE I. YOUTH AND EARLY SURROUNDINGS. SCHOOL DAYS AT BRIENNE. i II. IN PARIS. LIEUTENANT OF ARTILLERY. LITERARY WORK.. THE REV- OLUTION ............ 7 i III. ROBESPIERRE. OUT OF WORK. FIRST SUCCESS 16 IV. COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE. DEVOTION TO JOSEPHINE . . . .21 V. ITALIAN CAMPAIGN. RULES OF WAR ....... 26 VI. RETURN TO PARIS. EGYPTIAN CAMPAIGN. THE i8TH BRUMAIRE . 44 VII. STATESMAN AND LAWGIVER. THE FINANCES. THE INDUSTRIES. THE PUBLIC WORKS 52 VIII. RETURN OF THE EMIGRES. THE CONCORDAT. LEGION OF HONOR. CODE NAPOLEON. 64 IX. OPPOSITION TO THE CENTRALIZATION OF THE GOVERNMENT. PROS- PERITY OF FRANCE 75 X. PREPARATIONS FOR WAR WITH ENGLAND. FLOTILLA AT BOULOGNE. SALE OF LOUISIANA .81 XI. EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. KING OF ITALY . , . .88 XII. CAMPAIGNS OF 1805, 1806. 1807. PEACE OF TILSIT .... 104 XIII. EXTENSION OF NAPOLEON'S EMPIRE. FAMILY AFFAIRS . . . 126 XIV. BERLIN DECREE. PENINSULAR WAR. THE BONAPARTES ON THE SPANISH THRONE 138 XV. DISASTERS IN SPAIN. ERFURT MEETING. NAPOLEON AT MADRID . 149 XVI. TALLEYRAND'S TREACHERY. CAMPAIGN OF 1809 ..... 156 XVII. DIVORCE OF JOSEPHINE. MARRIAGE WITH MARIE LOUISE. BIRTH OF THE KING OF ROME . . 164 vi TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER. PAGE. XVIII. TROUBLE WITH THE POPE. THE CONSCRIPTION.---THE TILSIT AGREE- MENT BROKEN . ' / w XIX. RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. BURNING OF Moscow. A NEW ARMY 18? XX. CAMPAIGN OF 1813. CAMPAIGN OF 1814. ABDICATION . . I92 XXI. ELBA. THE HUNDRED DAYS. THE SECOND ABDICATION . 202 XXII. SURRENDER TO ENGLISH. ST. HELENA. DEATH . 212 XXIII. THE SECOND FUNERAL .' . . 226 TABLE OF THE BONAPARTE FAMILY . . 244 CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE . 246 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. CHAPTER I. NAPOLEON'S YOUTH AND EARLY SURROUNDINGS. HIS SCHOOL DAYS AT BRIENNE. I not con- vinced that his family is as old and as good as my own," said the Emperor of Austria when he mar- ried Marie Louise to Napoleon Bonaparte, " I would not give him my daughter." The remark is sufficient recognition of the nobil- ity of the father of N apo 1 eon, Charles Marie d e Bonaparte, a gentleman of Ajaccio, Cor- sica, whose family, of Tuscan ori- gin, had set- tled there in the sixteenth century, and who, in 1765, had married a young girl of the island, Laetitia Ramolino. Monsieur de Bonaparte gave his wife a noble name, but little else. He was an in- dolent, pleasure-loving,chimerical man, who had inherited a lawsuit, and whose time was absorbed in the hopeless task of recovering an estate of which the Church had taken possession. Madame Bonaparte brought her husband no great name, but she did BONAPAK1K AT UKItNMi. The original of this statue is in the gallery of Versailles. It dates from 1851, and is by Louis Rochet, one of the pupils of David d'Angers. bring him health, beauty, and remarkable qualities. Tall and imposing, Mademoi- selle Laetitia Ramolino had a superb car- riage, which she never lost, and a face which attracted attention particularly by the accentuation and perfection of its feat- ures. She was reserved, but of ceaseless energy and will, and though but fifteen when married, she conducted her family affairs with such good sepse and firmness that she was able to bring up decently the eight children spared her from the thirteen she bore. The habits of order and econ- omy formed in her years of struggle be- came so firmly rooted in her character that later, when she became mater regum, the " Madame Mere " of an imperial court, she could not put them aside, but saved from the generous income at her disposal, " for those of my children who are not yet settled," she said. Throughout her life she showed the truth of her son's char- acterization : "A man's head on a woman's body." The first years after their marriage were stormy ones for the Bonapartes. The Cor- sicans, led by the patriot Pascal Paoli, were in revolt against the French, at that time masters of the island. Among Paoli's fol- lowers was Charles Bonaparte. He shared the fortunes of his chief to the end of the struggle of 1769, and when, finally, Paoli was hopelessly defeated, took to the moun- tains. In all the dangers and miseries of this war and flight, Charles Bonaparte was accompanied by his wife, who, vigorous of body and brave of heart, suffered priva- tions, dangers, and fatigues without com- plaint. When the Cors'cans submitted, the Bonapartes went back to Ajaccio. Six weeks later Madame Bonaparte gave birth to her fourth child, Napoleon. " I was born," said Napoleon, " when my country was perishing. Thirty thousand Frenchmen were vomited upon our soil. CHAKLES BONAPAKTE, FATHER OF NAPOLEON. BORN 1746 ; DIED 1785. Cries of the wounded, sighs of the op- pressed, and tears of despair surrounded my cradle at my birth." Young Bonaparte learned to hate with the fierceness peculiar to Corsican blood the idea of oppression, to revere Paoli, and, with a boy's contempt of necessity, even to despise his father's submission. It was not strange. His mother had little time for her children's training. His father gave them no attention ; and Napoleon, "obstinate and curious," domineering over his brothers and companions, fearing no one, ran wild on the beach with the sailors or over the mountains with the herdsmen, listening to their tales of the Corsican rebel- lion and of fights on sea and land, imbib- ing their contempt for submission, their love for liberty. At nine years of age he was a shy, proud, wilful child, unkempt and untrained, little, pale, and nervous, almost without instruc- tion, and yet already enamored of a sol- dier's life and conscious of a certain supe- riority over his comrades. Then it was that he was suddenly transplanted from his free life to an environment foreign in its language, artificial in its etiquette, and severe in its regulations. It was as a dependant, a species of char- ity pupil, that he went into this new atmos- phere. Charles Bonaparte had become, in '&. " L^BTITIA RAMOLINO, NAPOLEON'S MOTHER. BORN 1750, DIED 1836. the nine years since he had abandoned the cause of Paoli, a thorough parasite. Like all the poor nobility of the country to which he had attached himself, and even like many of the rich in that day, he begged favors of every description from the govern- ment in return for his support. To aid in securing them, he humbled himself before the French Governor-General of Corsica, the Count de Marboeuf, and made frequent trips, which he could ill afford, back and forth to Versailles. The free education of his children, a good office with its salary and honors, the maintenance of his claims against the Jesuits, were among the favors which he sought. By dint of solicitation he had secured a place among the free pupils of the college at Autun for his son Joseph, the oldest of the family, and one for Napoleon at the military school at Brienne. To enter the school at Brienne, it was necessary to be able to read and write French, and to pass a preliminary examina- tion in that language. This young Napo- leon could not do ; indeed, he could scarcely have done as much in his native Italian. A preparatory school was neces- els. i m t) nuc t'o tic>WHOilu> tr> LxOilo -pfaco , Jo - ' FACSIMILE OF OKDEK OF ADMISSION TO THE ROYAL MILITARY SCHOOL AT PARIS. Reproduced by kind permission of Prince Victor Napoleon. Hitherto unpublished. sary, then, for a time. The place settled on was Autun, where Joseph was to enter college, and there in January, 1779, Charles Bonaparte arrived with the two boys. Napoleon was nine and a half years old when he entered the school at Autun. He remained three months, and in that time made sufficient progress to fulfil the require- ments at Brienne. The principal record of the boy's conduct at Autun comes from Abbe Chardon, who was at the head of the primary department. He says of his pupil : " Napoleon brought to Autun a sombre, thoughtful character. He was interested in no one, and found his amusements by himself. He rarely had a com- panion in his walks. He was quick to learn, and quick of apprehension in all ways. When I gave THE INFLUENCES AT BRIENNE. him a lesson, he fixed his eyes upon me with parted lips ; but if I recapitulated anything I had said, his interest was gone, as he plainly showed by his man- ner. When reproved for this, he would answer coldly, I might almost say with an imperious air, ' I know it already, sir.' " AT SCHOOL AT BRIENNE. When he went to Brienne, Napoleon left his brother Joseph behind at Autun. The boy had not now one familiar feature in his life. The school at Brienne was made up of about one hundred and twenty pupils, half of whom were supported by the government. They were sons of nobles, who, generally, had little but their great names, and whose rule for getting on in the world was the rule of the old regime secure a powerful patron, and, by flattery and servile attentions, continue in his train. Young Bonaparte heard little but boasting, and saw little but vanity. His first lessons in French society were the doubtful ones of the parasite and courtier. The motto which he saw everywhere practised was, " The end justifies the means." His teachers were not strong enough men to counteract this influence. The military schools of France were at this time in the hands of religious orders, and the Minim Brothers, who had charge of Brienne, were principally celebrated for their ignorance. They cer- PORTRAIT OF BONAPARTE, DONE IN CRAYON, BY ONE OF HIS SCHOOLFELLOWS. This sketch, which used to figure in the Musee des Souverains, became afterwards the property of Monsieur de Beaudicourt, who lately presented it to the Louvre. It possesses an exceptional interest. Executed at Brienne by one of the schoolfellows of the future Caesar, it may be considered as the first portrait of Bonaparte taken from life. Under it are these words written in pencil : " Mio caro amico Buonaparte. Pontormini del 1785 Tournone." THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. talnly could not change the arrogant and false notions of their aristocratic young pupils. It was a dangerous experiment to place in such surroundings a boy like the young Napoleon, proud, ambitious, jealous ; lack- ing any healthful moral training ; possess- ing an Italian indifference to truth and the rights of others ; already conscious that he had his own way to make in the world, and inspired by a determination to do it. From the first the atmosphere at Brienne was hateful to the boy. His comrades were French, and it was the French who had subdued Corsica. They taunted him with it sometimes, and he told them that had there been but four to one, Corsica would never have been conquered, but that the French came ten to one. When they said : " But your father submitted," he said bitterly : " I shall never forgive him for it." As for Paoli, he told them, proudly, " He is a good man. I wish I could be like him." He had trouble with the new language. They jeered at him because of it. His name was strange ; la paille au nez was the nickname they made from Napoleon. He was poor ; they were rich. The con- temptuous treatment he received because of his poverty was such that he begged to be taken home. "My father [he wrote], if you or my protectors cannot give me the means of sustaining myself more honorably in the house where I am, please let me return home as soon as possible. I am tired of pov- erty and of the jeers of insolent scholars who are superior to me only in their fortune, for there is not one among them who feels one hundredth part of the noble sentiment which animates me. Must your son, sir, continually be the butt of these boobies, who, vain of the luxuries which they enjoy, insult me by their laughter at the privations which I am forced to endure? No, father, no! If fortune refuses to smile upon me, take me from Brienne, and make me, if you will, a mechanic. From these words you may judge of my despair. This letter, sir, please believe, is not dictated by a vain desire to enjoy extravagant amusements. I have no such wish. I feel simply that it is necessary to show my compan- ions that I can procure them as well as they, if I wish to do so. " Your respectful and affectionate son, " BONAPARTE." Charles Bonaparte, always in pursuit of pleasure and his inheritance, could not help his son. Napoleon made other attempts to escape, even offering himself, it is said, to the British Admiralty as a sailor, and once, at least, begging Monsieur de Mar- boeuf, the Governor-General of Corsica, who had aided Charles Bonaparte in secur- ing places for both boys, to withdraw his protection. The incident which led to this was characteristic of the school. The su- percilious young nobles taunted him with his father's position ; it was nothing but that of a poor tipstaff, they said. Young Bonaparte, stung by what he thought an insult, attacked his tormentors, and, being caught in the act, was shut up. He imme- diately wrote to the Count de Marboeuf a letter of remarkable qualities in so young a boy and in such circumstances. After explaining the incident he said : " Now, Monsieur le Comte, if I am guilty, if my liberty has been taken from me justly, have the good- ness to add to the kindnesses which you have shown me one thing more take me from Brienne and with- draw your protection ; it would be robbery on my part to keep it any longer from one who deserves it more than I do. I shall never, sir, be worthier of it than I am now. I shall never cure myself of an impetuosity which is all the more dangerous because I believe its motive is sacred. Whatever idea of self-interest in- fluences me, I shall never have control enough to see my father, an honorable man, dragged in the mud. I shall always, Monsieur le Comte, feel too deeply in these circumstances to limit myself to complaining to my superior. I shall always feel that a good son ought not to allow another to avenge such an outrage. As for the benefits which you have rained upon me, they will never be forgotten. I shall say I had gained an honorable protection, but Heaven denied me the vir- tues which were necessary in order to profit by it. " In the end Napoleon saw that there was no way for him but to remain at Brienne, galled by poverty and formalism. It would be unreasonable to suppose that there was no relief to this sombre life. The boy won recognition more than once from his companions by his bravery and skill in defending his rights. He was not only valorous; he was generous, and "preferred going to prison himself to denouncing his comrades who had done wrong." Young Napoleon found, soon, that if there were things for which he was ridiculed, there were others for which he was applauded. He made friends, particularly among his teachers ; and to one of his comrades, Bour- rienne, he remained attached for years. " You never laugh at me ; you like me," he said to his friend. Those who found him morose and surly, did not realize that be- neath the reserved, sullen exterior of the little Corsican boy there was a proud and passionate heart aching for love and recog- nition; that it was sensitiveness rather than arrogance which drove him away from his mates. At the end of five and one-half years Napoleon was promoted to the military school at Paris. The choice of pupils for this school was made by an inspector, at this time one Chevalier de Kralio, an amia- AT THE MILITARY SCHOOL OF PARIS. ble old man, who was fond of playing with the boys as well as examining them. He was particularly pleased with Napoleon, and named him for promotion in spite of his being strong in nothing but mathemat- ics, and not yet being of the age required by the regulations. The teachers protested, but De Ke"ralio insisted. " I know what 1 am doing," he said. " If I put the rules aside in this case, it is not to do his family a favor I do not know them. It is because of the child himself. I have seen a spark here which cannot be too carefully cultivated." De Keralio died before the nominations were made, but his wishes in regard to young Bonaparte were carried out. The recommendation which sent him up is curi- ous. The notes read : , " Monsieur de Bonaparte ; height four feet, ten inches and ten lines ; he has passed his fourth exam- ination ; good constitution, excellent health ; submis- sive character, frank and grateful ; regular in conduct ; has distinguished himself by his application to mathe- matics ; is passably well up in history and geogra- phy ; is behindhand in his Latin. Will make an excellent sailor. Deserves to be sent to the school in Paris." PENCIL SKETCHES BY DAVID, REPRESENTING BONAPARTE AT BK1ENNE, BONAPARTE GENERAL OF THE ARMY OF ITALY, BONAPARTE AS EMPEROR. CHAPTER II. NAPOLEON IN PARIS. LIEUTENANT OF ARTILLERY. LITERARY WORK. NAPOLEON AND THE REVOLUTION. IT was in October, 1784, that Napoleon was placed in the Ecole Militaire at Paris, the same school which still faces the Champ de Mars. He was fifteen years old at the time, a thin-faced, awkward, countrified boy, who stared open-mouthed at the Paris street sights and seemed singu- larly out of place to those who saw him in the capital for the first time. Napoleon found his new associates even more distasteful than those _at Brienne had been. The pupils of the Ecole Militaire were sons of soldiers and provincial gentle- men, educated gratuitously, and rich young men who paid for their privileges. The practices of the school were luxurious. There was a large staff of servants, costly stables, several courses at meals. Those who were rich spent freely ; most of those who were poor ran in debt. Napoleon could not pay his share in the lunches and gifts which his mates offered now and then to teachers and fellows. He saw his sister Eliza, who was at Madame de Maintenon's school at St. Cyr, weep one day for the same reason. He would not borrow. "My mother has already too many expenses, and I have no business to increase them by ex- travagances which are simply imposed upon me by the stupid folly of my comrades." But he did complain loudly to his friends. The Permons, a Corsican family living on the Quai Conti, who made Napoleon thor- oughly at home with them, even holding a room at his disposal, frequently discussed these complaints. Was it vanity and envy, fjuf(i< Of ,/U ff.i }. uxov) (lii.pjv. /Ln/itl "bt x .'MtdmiuJf f ( ' - J ~ ' '. fcMul iVxiA. crtlc '.ctlTc- t' FACSIMILE OF COMMISSION AS SECOND LIEUTENANT OF ARTILLEKY. Reproduced by kind permission of Prince Victor Napoleon. Hitherto unpublished. or a wounded pride and just indignation ? The latter, said Monsieur Permon. This feeling was so profound with Napoleon, that, with his natural instinct for regulating whatever was displeasing to him, he pre- pared a memorial to the government, full of good, practical sense, on the useless luxury of the pupils. A year in Paris finished Napoleon's mili- tary education, and in October, 1785, when sixteen years old, he received his appoint- ment as second lieutenant of the artillery in a regiment stationed at Valence. Out of the fifty-eight pupils entitled that year to the promotion of second lieutenant, but six went to the artillery ; of these six, Napoleon was one. His examiner said of him : LIEUTENANT OF ARTILLERY. " Reserved and studious, he prefers study to any amusement, and enjoys reading the best authors ; applies himself earnestly to the abstract sciences ; cares little for anything else. He is silent and loves solitude. He is capricious, haughty, and excessively egotistical ; talks little, but is quick and energetic in his replies, prompt and severe in his repartees ; has great pride and ambitions, aspiring to anything. The young man is worthy of patronage." LIEUTENANT OF ARTILLERY. He left Paris at once, on money bor- rowed from a cloth mer- chant whom his father had patronized, not sorry, probably, that his school- days were over, though it is certain that all of those who had been friendly to him in this period he never forgot in the future. Sev- eral of his old teachers at Brienne received pen- sions; one was made rector of the School of Fine Arts established at Compiegne, another libra- rian at Malmaison, where the porter was the former porter of Brienne. _ The professors of the Ecole Militaire were equally well taken care of, as well as many of his schoolmates. During the Consulate, learning that Madame de Montesson, wife of the Duke of Orleans, was still living, he sent for her to come to the Tuileries, and asked what he could do for her. " But, General," protested Madame de Montesson, " I have no claim upon you." "You do not know, then," replied the First Consul, " that I received my first crown from you. You went to Brienne with the Duke of Orleans to distribute the prizes, and in placing a laurel wreath on my head, you said : ' May it bring you happi- ness.' They say I am a fatalist, Madame, so it is quite plain that I could not forget what you no longer remember ;" and the First Consul caused the sixty thou- sand francs of yearly income left Madame de Montesson by the Duke of Orleans, but con- fiscated in the Revolution, to be returned. Later, at her request, he raised one of her relatives to the rank of senator. In 1805, when emperor, Napoleon gave a life pension of six thousand francs to the son of his for- mer protector, the Count de Marboeuf, and with it went his assurance of interest and good will in all the circumstances of the young man's life. Generous, forbearing, even tender remembrance of all who had been associated with him in his early years. NAPOLEON AT THE TL'II.ERIES, AUGUST 1O, 1792. After a lithograph by Charlet. Lieutenant Bonaparte on the terrace of the Tuileries, watching the crowd of rioters who were hastening to the massacre of the Swiss Guards. was one of Napoleoi istics. His new position brilliant. He had 's marked character- Valence was not annual income of 10 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. two hundred and twenty-four dollars, and there was much hard work. It was inde- pendence, however, and life opened gayly to the young officer. He made many ac- quaintances, and for the first time saw something of society and women. Ma- dame Colombier, whose salon was the leading one of the town, received him, introduced him to powerful friends, and, indeed, prophesied a great future for him. The sixteen-year-old officer, in spite of his shabby clothes and big boots, became a favorite. He talked brilliantly and free- ly, began to find that he could please, and, for the first time, made love a little to Mademoiselle Colombier a frolickingboy- and-girl love, the object of whose stolen rendezvous was to eat cherries together. Mademoiselle Mion-Desplaces, a pretty -Corsican girl in Valence, also received some attention from him. Encouraged by his good beginning, and ambitious for future success, he even began to take dancing lessons. Had there been no one but himself to think of, everything would have gone easily, but the care of his family was upon him. His father had died a few months before, February, 1785, and left his affairs in a sad tangle. Joseph, now nearly eighteen years of age, who had gone to Autun in 1779 with Napoleon, had remained there until 1785. The intention was to make him. a priest ; suddenly he declared that he would not be anything but a soldier. It was to undo all that had been done for him ; but his father made an effort to get him into a military school. Before the arrangements were com- plete Charles Bonaparte died, and Joseph was obliged to return to Corsica, where he was powerless to do anything for his mother and for the four young children at home : Louis, aged nine ; Pauline, seven ; Caroline, five ; Jerome, three. Lucien, now nearly eleven years old, was at Brienne, refusing to become a soldier, as his family desired, and giving his time to literature ; but he was not a free pupil, and the six hundred francs a year needful for him was a heavy tax. Eliza alone was pro- vided for. She had entered St. Cyr in 1 784 as one of the two hundred and fifty pupils supported there by his Majesty, and to be a demoiselle de St. Cyr was to be fed, taught, and clothed from seven to twenty, and, on leaving, to receive a dowry of three thou- sand francs, a trousseau, and one hundred and fifty francs for travelling expenses home. Napoleon regarded his family's situation more seriously than did his brothers. In- deed, when at Brienne he had shown an interest, a sense of responsibility, and a good judgment about the future of his brothers and sisters, quite amazing in so young a boy. When he was fifteen years old, he wrote a letter to his uncle, which, for its keen analysis, would do credit to the father of a family. The subject was his brother Joseph's desire to abandon the Church and go into the king's service. Napoleon is summing up the pros and cons : " First. As father says, he has not the courage to face the perils of an action ; his health is feeble, and will not allow him to support the fatigues of a cam- paign ; and my brother looks on the military pro- fession only from a garrison point of view. He would make a good garrison officer. He is well made, light-minded, knows how to pay compliments, and with these talents he will always get on well in society. Second. He has received an ecclesiastical educa- tion, and it is very late to undo that. Monseignor the Bishop of Autun would have given him a fat living, and he would have been sure to become a bishop. What an advantage for the family ! Monseignor of Autun has done all he could to encourage him to per- severe, promising that he should never repent. Should he persist in wishing to be a soldier, I must praise him, provided he has a decided taste for his profes- sion, the finest of all, and the great motive power of human affairs. . . . He wishes to be a military man. That is all very well ; but in what corps ? Is it the marine ? First : He knows nothing of mathe- matics ; it would take him two years to learn. Second : His health is incompatible with the sea. Is it the engineers ? He would require four or five years to learn what is necessary, and at the end of that time he would be only a cadet. Besides, working all day long would not suit him. The same reasons which apply to the engineers apply to the artillery, with this exception ; that he would have to work eighteen months to become a cadet, and eighteen months more to become an officer. . . . No doubt he wishes to join the infantry. . . . And what is the slender artillery officer? Three-fourths of the time a scapegrace. ... A last effort will be made to persuade him to enter the Church, in default of which, father will take him to Corsica, where he will be under his eye." It was not strange that Charles Bonaparte considered the advice of a son who could write so clear-headed a letter as the one just quoted, nor that the boy's uncle Lu- cien said, before dying : " Remember, that if Joseph is the older, Napoleon is the real head of the house." Now that young Bonaparte was in an in- dependent position, he felt still more keenly his responsibility, and it was for this reason, as well as because of ill-health, that he left his regiment in February, 1787, on a leave which he extended to nearly fifteen months, and which he spent in energetic efforts to better his family's situation, working to re- establish salt works and a mulberry plan- BONAPARTE'S LITERARY AMBITIONS. ii tation in which they were concerned, to secure the nomination of Lucien to the col- lege at Aix, and to place Louis at a French military school. LITERARY WORK. When he went back to his regiment, now stationed at Auxonne, he denied himself to send money home, and spent his leisure in desperate work, sleeping but six hours, eat- ing but one meal a day, dressing once in the week. Like all the young men of the coun- try who had been animated by the philoso- phers and encyclopedists, he had attempted literature, and at this moment was finishing a history of Corsica, a portion of which he had written at Valence and submitted to the Abbe Raynal, who had encouraged him to go on. The manuscript was completed and ready for publication in 1788, and the author made heroic efforts to find some one who would accept a dedication, as well as some one who would publish it. Before he had succeeded, events had crowded the work out of sight, and other ambitions occupied his forces. Napoleon had many literary projects on hand at this time. He had been a prodigious reader, and was never so happy as when he could save a few cents with which to buy second-hand books. From everything he read he made long ex- tracts, and kept a book of " thoughts." Most curious are some of these fragments, reflections on the beginning of society, on love, on nature. They show that he was passionately absorbed in forming ideas on the great questions of life and its relations. Besides his history of Corsica, he had already written several fragments, among them a romance, an historical drama called the " Count of Essex," and a story, the " Masque Prophete." He undertook, too, to write a sentimental journey in the style of Sterne, describing a trip from Valence to Mont-Cenis. Later he competed for a prize offered by the Academy of Lyons on the subject : " To determine what truths and feelings should be inculcated in men for their happiness." He failed in the contest ; indeed, the essay was severely criticised for its incoherency and poor style. The Revolution of 1789 turned Napo- leon's mind to an ambition greater than that of writing the history of Corsica he would free Corsica. The National Assem- BONAPARTE'S FIRST BATTLE. From a lithograph by Raffet. Bonaparte first took up arms in Sardinia, and even received there a slight wound in the leg. In the beginning of 1793 he took part in an expedition against the island ; with two Corsican battalions he gained possession of the fort of St. Etienne and the islands of La Madeleine. This was his first mili- tary success. But the naval division charged to disembark troops for his support was dispersed by a storm ; the expedition ended in failure, and the young Bonaparte received orders to abandon his conquest and return to Corsica. I have been unable to find any other picture consecrated to this feat of arms. A. D. PE AT THE SltOE This reproduction of the original water color is of particular interest. It was executed during the siege, that is. In 1793, by a Toulonese artist named Gregoire. One may say that it is the unique original picture dating from that period. It was not till after Arcola that artists began going back to the siege of Toulon, and even to the Sardinian campaign, to paint Bonaparte's brilliant actions. In Gregoire's fine sepia the young officer is observing, from the parapet of the fort, the English fleet. bly had lifted the island from its inferior relation and made it a department of France, but sentiment was much divided, and the ferment was similar to that which agitated France. Napoleon, deeply inter- ested in the progress of the new liberal ideas, and seeing, too, the opportunity for a soldier and an agitator among his country- men, hastened home, where he spent some twenty-five months out of the next two and a half years. That the young officer spent five-sixths of his time in Corsica, instead of in service, and that he in more than one instance pleaded reasons for leaves of ab- sence which one would have to be exceed- ingly unsophisticated not to see were trumped up for the occasion, cannot be attributed merely to duplicity of character and contempt for authority. He was doing only what he had learned to do at the military schools of Brienne and Paris, and what he saw practised about him in the army. Indeed, the whole French army at that period made a business of shirking duty. Every minister of war in the period complains of the incessant desertions among the common soldiers. Among the officers it was no better. True, they did not desert ; they held their places and did nothing. "Those who were rich and well born had no need to work," says the Marshal Due de Broglie. " They were promoted by favoritism. Those who were poor and from the provinces had no need to work either. It did them no good if they did, for, not having patronage, they could not advance." The Comte de Saint- Germain said in regard to the officers : " There is not one who is in active service ; they one and all amuse themselves and look out for their own affairs." Napoleon, tormented by the desire to help his family, goaded by his ambition and that imperative need of action and achievement with which he had been born, still divided in his allegiance between France and Corsica, could not have been expected, in his environment, to take noth- ing more than the leaves allowed by law. PRIVATION AND ECONOMIES. Revolutionary agitation did not absorb all the time he was in Corsica. Never did he work harder for his family. The por- tion of this two and a half years which he LIEUTENANT-COLONEL BONAPARTE Engraved by Edwards. spent in France, he was accompanied by Louis, whose tutor he had become, and he suffered every deprivation to help him. Napoleon's income at that time was sixty- five cents a day. This meant that he must live in wretched rooms, prepare himself the broth on which he and his brother OF THE CORSICAN VOLUNTEERS. After Philippoteaux. dined, never go to a cafe, brush his own clothes, give Louis lessons. He did it bravely. " I breakfasted off dry bread, but I bolted my door on my poverty." he said once to a young officer complaining of the economies he must make on two hundred dollars a month. THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. Economy and privation were always more supportable to him than borrow- ing. He detested irregularities in financial matters. "Your finances are deplorably conducted, apparently on metaphysical principles. Believe me, money is a very physical thing," he once said to Joseph, when the latter, as King of Naples, could not make both ends meet. He put Jerome to sea largely to stop his reckless expendi- tures. (At fifteen that young man paid three thousand two hundred dollars for a shaving case "containing everything ex- cept the beard to enable its owner to use it.") Some of the most furious scenes which occurred be- tween Napoleon and Josephine were be- cause she was con- tinually in debt . After the divorce he frequently cautioned her to be watchful of her money. "Think what a bad opinion I should have of you if I knew you were in debt with an in- come of six hundred thousand dollars a year," he wrote her in 1813. The methodical habits of Marie Louise were a con- stant satisfaction to Napoleon. " She settles all her ac- counts once a week, deprives herself of new gowns if neces- sary, and imposes privations upon her- self in order to keep outof debt," hesaidproudly. Abillof sixty- BONAPARTE, LIEUTENANT OF ARTILLERY. From a water color in the collection of Baron Larrey. In spite of many efforts, I have been unable to discover the name of the author of this charming picture, or the date of its execution. This is the first time it has been reproduced. A. D. the island had made to the French govern- ment of the way he had handled his bat- talion of National Guards in a riot at Ajaccio, Napoleon lost his place in the French army. He came to Paris in the spring of 1792, hoping to regain it. But in the confused condition of public affairs little attention was given to such cases, and he was obliged to wait. Almost penniless, he dined on six-cent dishes in cheap restaurants, pawned his watch, and with Bourrienne devised schemes for making a fortune. One was to rent some new houses going up in the city and to sub-let them. While he waited he saw the famous days of the "Second Revolution " the zoth of June, when the mob surrounded the Tuileries, over- ran the palace, put the bonnet rouge on Louis XVI. 's head, did everything but strike, as the agita- tors had intended. Napoleon and Bour- rienne, loitering on the outskirts, saw the outrages, and he said, in disgust : " Che cog I tone, why did they allow these brutes to come in ? They ought to have shot down five or six hundred of them with cannon, and the rest would soon have run." He saw the loth of August, when the king was deposed. He was still in Paris when the horrible Sep- two francsand thirty-two centimes was once tember massacres began those massacres sent to him for window blinds placed in the in which, to " save the country," the fanati- salon of the Princess Borghese. "As I did cal and terrified populace resolved to put not order this expenditure, which ought not " rivers of blood" between Paris and the to be charged to my budget, the princess Emigre's. All these excesses filled him with will pay it," he wrote on the margin. It was not parsimony. It was the man's sense of order. No one was more gener- ous in gifts, pensions, salaries ; but it irri- tated him to see money wasted or managed carelessly. NAPOLEON AND THE REVOLUTION. disgust. He began to understand that the Revolution he admired so much needed a head. In August Napoleon was restored to the army. The following June found him with his regiment in the south of France. In the interval spent in Corsica, he had aban- doned Paoli and the cause of Corsican Through his long absence in Corsica, and independence. His old hero had been the complaints which the conservatives of dragged, in spite of himself, into a move- THE SIEGE OF TOULON. ment for separating the island from France. Napoleon had taken the position that the French government, whatever its excesses, was the only advocate in Europe of liberty and equality, and that Corsica would better remain with France rather than seek Eng- lish aid, as it must if it revolted. But he and his party were defeated, and he with his family was obliged to flee. The Corsican period of his life was over ; the French opened. He began it as a thorough republican. The evolution of his enthusiasm for the Revolution had been natural enough. He had been a devoted believer in Rous- seau's principles. The year 1789 had struck down the abuses which galled him in French so- ciety and govern- ment. After the flight of the king in 1791 hehad taken the oath : " I swear to employ the arms placed in my hands for the defence of the country, and to maintain against all her enemies, both from within and from with- out, the Constitution as declared by the Na- tional Assembly ; to die rather than to suffer the invasion of the French territory by foreign troops, and to obey orders given in accord- ance with the decree of the National Assem- bly." " The nation is now the paramount object," he wrote ; " my natural inclinations are now in har- mony with my duties." The efforts of the court and the Emigre's to overthrow the new government had increased his devotion to France. " My southern blood leaps in my veins with the rapidity of the Rhone," he said, when the question of the preservation of the Consti- tution was brought up. The months spent at Paris in 1792 had only intensified his radical notions. Now that he had aban- doned his country, rather than assist it to fight the Revolution, he was better pre- pared than ever to become a French- man. It seemed the only way to repair his and his family's fortune. JOSEPHINE (MARIE JOSEPHINE ROSE) TASCHER DE LA PAGERIE. After an unpublished miniature, by Rocher, in the collec- tion of the Marquis de Girardin. It must have been shortly after Josephine's arrival in France (in 1778). and some months after her marriage, that this delicate painting was done from life. It is the only one known to me representing Josephine as a very young woman. A. D. FIRST SUCCESS. The condition of the Bonapartes on ar- riving in France after their expulsion from Corsica was abject. Their property " pil- laged, sacked, and burned," they had es- caped penniless were, in fact, refugees dependent upon French bounty. They wandered from place to place, and soon found a good friend in Monsieur Clary of Marseilles, a soap-boiler, with two pretty daughters, Julie and De"sire"e, and Joseph and Napoleon became inmates of his house. It was not as a soldier but as a writer that Napo- leon first distin- guished himself in this new period of his life. An insur- rection against the government had arisen in Marseilles. In an imaginary conversation called le souper de Beau- caire, Napoleon discussed the situa- tion so clearly and justly that Sali- cetti, Gasparin, and Robespierre the younger, the depu- ties who were look- ing after the South, ordered the paper published at public expense, and dis- tributed it as a cam- paign document. More, they prom- ised to favor the au- thor when they had an opportunity. It soon came. Toulon had opened its doors to the English and joined Marseilles in a counter-revolution. Napoleon was in the force sent against the town, and he was soon promoted to the command of the Second Regiment of artillery. His energy and skill won him favorable attention. He saw at once that the important point was not besieging the town, as the general in command was doing and the Convention had ordered, but in forcing the allied fleet from the harbor, when the town must fall of itself. But the commander-in-chief was slow, and it was not until the command was changed and an officer of experience and wisdom put in charge that Napoleon's THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. plans were listened to. The new general saw at once their value, and hastened to carry them out. The result was th'e with- drawal of the allies in December, 1793, and the fall of Toulon. Bonaparte was men- tioned by the general-in-chief as " one of those who have most distinguished them- selves in aiding me," and in February, 1794, was made general of brigade. It is interesting to note that it was at Toulon that Napoleon first came in contact with the English. Here he made the ac- quaintance of Junot, Marmont, and Duroc. Barras, too, had his attention drawn to him at this time. The circumstances which brought Junot and Napoleon together at Toulon were es- pecially heroic. Some one was needed to carry an order to an exposed point. Na- poleon asked for an under officer, audacious and intelligent. Junot, then a sergeant, was sent. " Take off your uniform and carry this order there," said Napoleon, indicating the point. Junot blushed and his eyes flashed. "1 am not a spy," he answered ; " find some one beside me to execute such an order." "You refuse to obey?" said Napoleon. " I am ready to obey," answered Junot, "but I will go in my uniform or not go at all. It is honor enough then for these Englishmen." The officer smiled and let him go, but he took pains to find out his name. A few days later Napoleon called for some one in the ranks who wrote a good hand to come to him. Junot offered him- self, and sat down close to the battery to write the letter. He had scarcely finished when a bomb thrown by the English burst near by and covered him and his letter with earth. "Good," said Junot, laughing, "I shall not need any sand to dry the ink." Bonaparte looked at the young man, who had not even trembled at the danger. From that time the young sergeant re- mained with the commander of artillery. CHAPTER III. NAPOLEON AND ROBESPIERRE. OUT OF WORK. GENERAL-IN-CHIEF OF THE ARMY OF THE INTERIOR. THE favors granted Napoleon for his services at Toulon were extended to his family. Madame Bonaparte was helped by the municipality of Marseilles. Joseph was made commissioner of war. Lucien was joined to the Army of Italy, and in the town where he was stationed became famous as a popular orator " little Robes- pierre," they called him. He began, too, here to make love to his landlord's daughter, Christine Boyer, afterwards his wife. The outlook for the refugees seemed very good, and it was made still brighter by the very particular friendship of the younger Robespierre for Napoleon. This friendship was soon increased by the part Napoleon played in a campaign of a month with the Army of Italy, when, largely by his genius, the seaboard from Nice to Genoa was put into French power. If this Victory was much for the army and for Robes- pierre, it was more for Napoleon. He looked from the Tende, and saw for the first time that in Italy there was "a land for a conqueror." Robespierre wrote to his brother, the real head of the govern- ment at the moment, that Napoleon pos- sessed " transcendent merit." He engaged him to draw up a plan for a campaign against Piedmont, and sent him on a secret mission to Genoa. The relations between the two young men were, in fact, very close, and, considering the position of Robespierre the elder, the outlook for Bonaparte was good. That Bonaparte admired the powers oi the elder Robespierre, is unquestionable He was sure that if he had " remained in power, he would have reestablished order and law ; the result would have been at- tained without any shocks, because it would have come through the quiet exercise of power." Nevertheless, it is certain that the young general was unwilling to come into close contact with the Terrorist leader, as his refusal of an offer to go to Paris to take the command of the garrison of the city shows. No doubt his refusal was partly due to his ambition he thought the open- ing better where he was and partly due, too, to his dislike of the excesses which the government was practising. That he never favored the policy of the Terrorists, all those who knew him testify, and there are many stories of his efforts at this time to save Emigre's and suspects from the vio- lence of the rabid patriots ; even to save the English imprisoned at Toulon. He al- ROBESPIERRE, MAXIMILIEN (1758-1794). Robespierre was born at Arras and educated in Paris for the law. He was admitted to the bar in 1781, and returned to Arras to practice, where he soon became known as a successful and conscientious advocate. In 1783 he was admitted to the academy of the town, and he competed for prizes offered by provincial academies, though with- out success. In 1789 he was elected a deputy of the Tiers tats to the States-General, and afterwards to the Constit- uent Assembly. He obtained great influence over the people of Paris ; and when the Constituent Assembly dis- solved in 1791 he was crowned with Petion an " incorruptible patriot." The Girondins accused him of aspiring" to the dictatorship, and a war between him and that party was waged until their expulsion from the Convention, May 31, 1793. On July 27, 1793, he was elected to the Committee of Public Safety the real executive govern- ment of France at the moment and he has been credited with being the inventor of the Reign of Terror which that committee inaugurated. On July 26, 1794, Robespierre declared in the Convention that the Terror ought to be ended and deputies who had exceeded their powers punished. His enemies used his speech to arouse a revolt against him, and the next day, gth Thermidor. he was arrested. His friends rescued him and took him. to the Hotel de Ville, where he was again arrested. In the arrest he was horribly wounded. The next day (28tb July) he was executed with twenty-one of his followers i8 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON ways remembered Robespierre the younger with kindness, and when he was in power gave Charlotte Robespierre a pension. Things had begun to go well for Bona- parte. His poverty passed. If his plan for an Italian campaign succeeded, he might even aspire to the command of the army. His brothers received good positions. Joseph was betrothed to Julie Clary, and life went gayly at Nice and Marseilles, where Napoleon had about him many of his friends Robespierre and his sister ; his own two pretty sisters ; Marmont, and Junot, who was deeply in love with Pauline. Suddenly all this hope and happiness were shattered. On the gth Thermidor Robes- pierre fell, and all who had favored him were suspected, Napoleon among the rest. His secret mission to Genoa gave, a pre- text for his arrest, and for thirteen days, in August, 1794, he was a prisoner, but through his friends was liberated. Soon after his release, came an appoint- ment to join an expedition against Cor- sica. He set out, but the undertaking was a failure, and the spring found him again without a place. OUT OF WORK. In April, 1795, Napoleon received orders to join the Army of the West. When he reached Paris he found that it was the infantry to which he was assigned. Such a change was considered a disgrace in the army. He refused to go. " A great many officers could command a brigade better than I could," he wrote a friend, " but few could command the artillery so well. I retire, satisfied that the injustice done to the service will be sufficiently felt by those who know how to appreciate matters." But though he might call himself " satis- fied," his retirement was a most serious affair for him. It was the collapse of what seemed to be a career, the shutting of the gate he had worked so fiercely to open. He must begin again, and he did not see how. A sort of despair settled over him. " He declaimed against fate," says the Duchess d'Abrantes. " I was idle and dis- contented," he says of himself. He went to the theatre and sat sullen and inatten- tive through the gayest of plays. " He had moments of fierce hilarity," says Bourri- enne. A pathetic distaste of effort came over him at times ; he wanted to settle. "If I could have that house," he said one day to Bourrienne, pointing to an empty house near by, " with my friends and a cabriolet, I should be the happiest of men." He clung to his friends with a sort of desperation, and his letters to Joseph are touching in ^the extreme. Love as well as failure caused his mel- ancholy. All about him, indeed, turned his thoughts to marriage. Joseph was now married, and his happiness made him en- vious. " What a lucky rascal Joseph is ! " he said. Junot, madly in love with Paul- ine, was with him. The two young men wandered through the alleys of the Jardin des Plantes and discussed Junot's passion. In listening to his friend, Napoleon thought of himself. He had been touched by Desir^e -Clary, Joseph's sister-in-law. Why not try to win her ? And he began to de- mand news of her from Joseph. De"sire"e had asked for his portrait, and he wrote : " I shall have it taken for her ; you must give it to her, if she still wants it ; if not, keep it yourself. " He was melancholy when he did not have news of her, accused Joseph of purposely omitting her name from his letters, and Desire"e herself of forgetting him. At last he consulted Joseph : " If I remain here, it is just possible that I might feel inclined to commit the folly of marry- ing. I should be glad of a line from you on the subject. You might perhaps speak to Eugenie's [Desiree's] brother, and let me know what he says, and then it will be settled." He waited the answer to his overtures " with impatience " ; urged his brother to arrange things so that nothing " may prevent that which I long for." But Desiree was obdurate. Later she married Bernadotte and became Queen of Sweden. Yet in all these varying moods he was never idle. As three years before, he and Bourrienne indulged in financial specula- tions ; he tried to persuade Joseph to invest his wife's dot in the property of the emigres. He prepared memorials on the political disorders of the times and on military questions, and he pushed his brothers as if he had no personal ambition. He did not neglect to make friends either. The most important of those whom he cultivated was Paul Barras, revolutionist, conventionalist, member of the Directory, and one of the most influential men in Paris at that mo- ment. He had known Napoleon at Tou- lon, and showed himself disposed to be friendly. "I attached myself to Barras," said Napoleon later, " because I knew no one else. Robespierre was dead ; Barras was playing a role : I had to attach myself to somebody and something." One of his plans for himself was to go to Turkey. For two or three years, in fact, Napoleon THE THIRTEENTH VENDEMIAIRE. had thought of the Orient as a possible field It was on the night of i2th Vende'mi- for his genius, and his mother had often aire that Napoleon was appointed. With worried lest he should go. Just now it incredible rapidity he massed the men and happened that the Sultan of Turkey asked cannon he could secure at the openings the French for aid in reorganizing his ar- into the palace and at the points of ap- tillery and perfecting the defences of his proach. He armed even the members of forts, and Napoleon asked to be allowed to the Convention as a reserve. When the undertake the work. While pushing all sections marched their men into the streets his plans with extraordinary enthusiasm, and upon the bridges leading to the Tuile- even writing Joseph almost daily letters ries, they were met by a fire which scattered about what he would do for him when he was settled in the Orient, he was called to do a pieceof work which was to be of importance in his future. The war committee needed plans for an Ital- ian campaign ; the head of the committee was in great perplexity. No- body knew anything about the condition of things in the South. By chance, one day, one of Napoleon's acquaint- ances heard of the diffi- culties and recommended the young general. The memorial he prepared was so excellent that he was invited into the topo- graphical bureau of the Committee of Public Safety. His knowledge, sense, energy, fire, were so remarkable that he made strong friends, and he became an important personage* Such was the impres- sion he made, that when. in October, 1795, the gov- ernment was threatened by the revolting sections, Barras, the nominal head of the defence, asked Na- poleon to command the forces which protected the Tuileries, where the Convention had them at once. That night Paris was quiet. gone into permanent session. He hesitated The next day Napoleon was made general for a moment. He had much sympathy of division. On October 26th he was ap- for the sections. His sagacity conquered, pointed general-in-chief of the Army of the The Convention stood for the republic ; an Interior. overthrow now meant another proscription, more of the Terror, perhaps a royalist sue- GENERAL-IN-CHIEF OF THE ARMY OF THE INTERIOR NAPOLEON IN PR After a lithograph by Motte. Bonaparte, master of Toulon, had already at- tained fame when the events of Thermidor imposed a sudden check on his career. His relations with the younger Robespierre laid him open to suspicion : he was sus- pended from his functions and put under arrest by the deputies of the Convention. cession, an English invasion. "I accept," he said to Barras; "but I warn you that once my sword is out of the scabbard I shall not replace it till I have so long and so eagerly had come. It was established order." a proud position for a young man o'f twenty- At last the opportunity he had sought THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. six, and one may well stop and ask how what is, but what might be." Certainly in he had obtained it. The answer is not no respect had he been worse than his difficult for one who, dismissing the preju- environment, and in many respects he had dice and superstitions which have long been far above it. He had struggled for enveloped his name, studies his story as he place, not that he might have ease, but that would that of an unknown individual. He he might have an opportunity for action ; had won his place as any poor and ambi- not that he might amuse himself, but that tious boy in any country and in any age he might achieve glory. Nor did he seek must win his by hard work, by grasping honors merely for himself ; it was that he at every opportunity, by constant self- might share them with others. denial, by cour- age in every failure, by springing to his feet after every fall. He succeeded because he knew every de- tail of his busi- ness (" There is nothing I can- not do for my- self. If there is no one to make powder for the cannon I can do it ") ; because neither ridicule norcoldnessnor even the black discouragement which made him write once to Joseph, " If this state of things continuesl shall end by not turn- ing out of my path when a car- riage passes," could stop him ; because he had profound faith in himself. "Do these people imagine that I want their help to rise ? They will be too glad some day to accept mine. My sword is at was at the Permons', where Monsieur Per- my side, and I will go far with it." That mon had just died. "He was like a son, a he had misrepresented conditions more brother." This relation he soon tried to than once to secure favor, is true; but in change, seeking to marry the beautiful doing this he had done simply what he saw widow Permon. When she laughed merrily done all about him, what he had learned at the idea, for she was many years his from his father, what the oblique morality senior, he replied that the age of his wife of the day justified. That he had shifted was a matter of indifference to him so long opinions and allegiance, is equally true ; but as she did not look over thirty. he who in the French Revolution did not The change in Bonaparte himself was shift opinion was he who regarded " not great. Up to this time he had gone about PEN PORTRAIT OF BONAPARTE IN PROFILE. LOUVRE By Gros. This drawing, which I discovered among the portfolios of the Louvre, is one of the most precious documents of Napoleonic por- traiture. It was the gift of Monsieur Delestre. the pupil and biographer of Gros. In this clear profile we see already all that characteristic expres- sion sought for by Gros above everything, and superbly rendered by him soon after in the portrait of Bonaparte at Arcola. I imagine that this pen sketch was preparatory to a finished portrait. A. D. The first use Bonaparte made of his power after he was appointed general-in-chief of the Army of the Interior, was for his fam- ily and friends. Fifty or sixty thousand francs, asst- gnats, and dresses go to his mother and sisters ; Joseph is to have a consulship; "a roof, a table, and carriage" are at his dis- posal in Paris ; Louis is made a lieutenant and his aide- de- camp ; Lucien, commissioner of war ; Junot and Marmo nt are put on his staff. He for- gets nobody. The very day after the i3th Vende"miaire, when his cares andexcitements were numerous and intense, he JOSEPHINE DE BEAUHARNAIS. Pans " in an awkward and ungainly man- ner, with a shabby round hat thrust down over his eyes, and with curls (known at that time as oreilles des chiens] badly pow- dered and badly combed, and falling over the collar of the iron-gray coat which has since become so celebrated ; his hands, long, thin, and black, without gloves, be- cause, he said, they were an unnecessary expense ; wearing ill-made and ill-cleaned boots." The majority of people saw in him only what Monsieur de Pontecoulant, 21 who took him into the War Office, had seen at their first interview : " A young man with a wan and livid complexion, bowed shoulders, and a weak and sickly appear- ance." But now, installed in an elegant Mtel, driving his own carriage, careful of his person, received in every salon where he cared to go, the young general-in-chief is a changed man. Success has had much to do with this ; love has perhaps had more. CHAPTER IV. NAPOLEON'S COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE. HIS DEVOTION TO JOSEPHINE. IN the five months spent in Paris before the 1 3th Vendemiaire, Bonapartesaw some- thing of society. One interesting company which he often joined, was that gathered about Madame Permon at a hotel in the Rue des Filles Saint-Thomas. This Ma- dame Permon was the same with whom he had taken refuge frequently in the days when he was in the military school of Paris, and whom he had visited later, in 1792, when lingering in town with the hope of recovering his place in the army. On this latter occasion he had even exposed himself to aid her and her husband to es- cape the fury of the Terrorists and to fly from the city. Madame Permon had re- turned to Paris in the spring of 1795 f r a few weeks, and numbers of her old friends had gathered about her as before the Ter- ror, among them, Bonaparte. Another house and one of very differ- ent character at which he was received, was that of Barras. The 9th Thermidor, as the fall of Robespierre is called, released Paris from a strain of terror so great that, in reaction, she plunged for a time into violent excess. In this period of decadence Barras was sovereign. Epicurean by na- ture, possessing the tastes, culture, and vices of the old regime, he was better fitted than any man in the government to create and direct a dissolute and luxurious society. Into this set Napoleon was introduced, and more than once he expressed his astonish- ment to Joseph at the turn things had taken in Paris. " The pleasure-seekers have reappeared, and for- get, or, rather, remember only as a dream, that they ever ceased to shine. Libraries are open, and lec- tures on history, chemistry, astronomy, etc. , succeed each other. Everything is done to amuse and make life agreeable. One has no time to think ; and how- can one be gloomy in this busy whirlwind ? Women are everywhere at the theatres, on the promenades, in the libraries. In the study of the savant you meet some that are charming. Here alone, of all places in the world, they deserve to hold the helm. The men are mad over them, think only of them, live only by and for them. A woman need not stay more than six months in Paris to Ifarn what is due her and what is her empire. . . . This great nation has given itself up to pleasure, dancing, and theatres, and women have become the principal occu- pation. Ease, luxury, and bon ton have recovered their throne ; the Terror is remembered only as a dream." Bonaparte took his part in the gayeties of his new friends, and was soon on easy terms with most of the women who fre- quented the salon of Barras, even with the most influential of them all, the famous Madame Tallien, the great beauty of the Directory. JOSEPHINE DE BEAUHARNAIS. Among the women whom he met in the salon of Madame Tallien and at Barras's own house, was the Viscountess de Beau- harnais (nde Tascher de la Pagerie), widow of the Marquis de Beauharnais, guillotined on the 5th Thermidor, 1794. At the time of the marquis's death his wife was a prisoner. She owed her release to Madame Tallien, with whom she since had been on intimate terms. All Madame Tallien's circle had, indeed, become attached to Josephine de Beauharnais, and with Barras she was on terms of intimacy which led to a great amount of gossip. Without fortune, hav- \ "ROSE JOSEPHINE BONAPARTE, N'feE DE LA PAGERIE. Companion piece to portrait on page 23, and executed at same time and place Milan, 1796. ing two children to support, still trembling at the memory of her imprisonment, indo- lent and vain, it is not remarkable that Josephine yielded to the pleasures of the society which had saved her from prison and which now opened its arms to her, nor that she accepted the protection of the pow- erful Director Barras. She was certainly one of the regular habitues of his house, and every week kept court for him at her little home at Croissy, a few miles from Paris. The Baron Pasquier, afterwards one of the members of Napoleon's Council of State, was at that moment living in poverty at Croissy and was a neighbor of Josephine. In his " Memoirs " he has left a paragraph on the gay little outings taken there by Barras and his friends. " Her house was next to ours," says Pasquier. " She did not come out often at "BONAPARTE, GENERAL EN CHEF DE I.'ARMHE D'lTALIE." " Designed after nature, and engraved at Milan in 1796." This is supposed to be the first engraving of Napoleon ever made. Below the print runs the legend : Italico peperit triumphc that time, rarely more than once a week, to receive Barras and the troop which al- ways followed him. From early in the morning we saw the hampers coming. Then mounted gendarmes began to circu- late on the route from Nanterre to Croissy, Hor. Od. 3, Lib. 2. for the young Director came usually on horseback. " Madame de Beauharnais's house had, as is often the case among Creoles, an appear- ance of luxury ; but, the superfluous aside, the most necessary things were lacking. THE LIFE GF NAPOLEON. Birds, game, rare fruits, were piled up in the kitchen (this was the time of our greatest famine), and there was such a want of stew- ing-pans, glasses, and plates, that they had to come and borrow from our poor stock." There was much about Josephine de Beauharnais to win the favor of- such a man as Barras. A Creole past the freshness of youth Josephine was thirty-two years old in 1795 she had a grace, a sweetness, a charm, that made one forget that she was not beautiful, even when she was beside such brilliant women as Madame Tallien and Madame R6camier. It was never pos- sible to surprise her in an attitude that was not graceful. She was never ruffled nor irritable. By nature she was the perfection of ease and repose. Artist enough to dress in clinging stuffs made simply, which harmonized perfectly with her style, and skilful enough to use the arts of the toilet to conceal defects which care and age had brought, the Vis- countess de Beauharnais was altogether one of the most fascinating women in Madame Tallien's circle. The goodness of Josephine's heart un- doubtedly won her as many friends as her grace. Everybody who came to know her at all well, declared her gentle, sympa- thetic, and helpful. Everybody except, perhaps, the Bonaparte family, who never cared for her, and whom she never tried to win. Lucien, indeed, draws a picture of her in his "Memoirs " which, if it could be regarded as unprejudiced, would take much of her charm from her : " Josephine was not disagreeble, or perhaps I better say, everybody declared thai she ivas very good; but it was especially when goodness cost her no sacrifice. She had very little wit, and no beauty at all ; but there was a certain Creole suppleness about her form. She had lost all natural freshness of com- plexion, but that the arts of the toilet remedied by candle-light. ... In the brilliant companies of the Directory, to which Barras did me the honor of admitting me, she scarcely attracted my attention, so old did she seem to me, and so inferior to the other beauties which ordinarily formed the court of the voluptuous Directors, and among whom the beautiful Tallien was the true Calypso." NAPOLEON ATTRACTED FROM THE FIRST. But if Lucien was not attracted to Jo- sephine, Napoleon was from the first ; and when, one day, Madame de Beauharnais said some flattering things to him about his military talent, he was fairly intoxicated by her praise, followed her everywhere, and fell wildly in love with her ; but by her station, her elegance, her influence, she seemed inaccessible to him, and then, toe he was looking elsewhere for a wife. When he first knew her, he was thinking of De"si- ree Clary ; and he had known Josephine some time when he sought the hand of the widow Permon. Though he dared not tell her his love, all his circle knew of it, and Barras at last said to him, "You should marry Madame de Beauharnais. You have a position and talents which will secure advancement ; but you are isolated, without fortune and without relations. You ought to marry ; it gives weight," and he asked permission to negotiate the affair. Josephine was distressed. Barras was her protector. She felt the wisdom of his advice, but Napoleon frightened and wearied her by the violence of his love. A letter of hers, written at this stage of the affair, shows admirably her feelings : " ' Do you like him ? ' you ask. No ; I do not. ' You dislike him, then ? ' you say. Not at all ; but I am in a lukewarm state that troubles me, and which in religion is considered more difficult to manage than unbelief itself, and that is why I need your advice, which will give strength to my feeble nature. To take any positive step has always seemed most fatigu- ing to my Creole nonchalance. I have always found it far easier to yield to the wishes of others. " I admire the courage of the General, the extent of his information (for he speaks equally well on all subjects), the vivacity of his wit, and the quick in- telligence which enables him to grasp the thoughts of others almost before they are expressed ; but I am terrified, I admit, at the empire he seems to exercise over all about him. His keen gaze has an inexpli- cable something which impresses even our Directors ; judge, then, if he is not likely to intimidate a woman. In short, just that which ought to please me the strength of a passion of which he speaks with an energy that permits no doubt of his sincerity is precisely that which arrests the consent that often hovers on my lips. " Having passed my premiere jennesse, can I hope to preserve for any length of time this violent tender- ness, which in the General amounts almost to de- lirium? If when \ve are married he should cease to love me, would he not reproach me for what I had allowed him to do? Would he not regret a more brilliant marriage that he might have made ? What, then, could I say? What could I do? Nothing but weep. " Barras declares that if I will marry the General he will certainly secure for him the command of the Army of Italy. Yesterday Bonaparte, in speaking of this favor, which has ex'cited a murmur of discon- tent in his brother officers, even though not yet granted, said to me : ' Do thy think that I need protection to rise ? They will be glad enough some day if I grant them mine. My sword is at my side, and with it I can go far.' "What do you say of this certainty of success? Is it not a proof of self-confidence that is almost ridiculous? A general of brigade protecting the heads of government ! I feel that it is ; and yet this preposterous assurance affects me to such a degree that I can believe everything may be possible to this NAPOLEON'S LOVE LETTERS. man, and with his imagination, who can tell what he a good long letter, and accept a thousand and one may be tempted to undertake ? " But for this marriage, which worries me, I should by very gay in spite of many other things ; but until this is settled one way or another, I shall torment myself." kisses from your best and most loving friend." Arrived in Italy he wrote : " I have received all your letters, but none has made such an impression on me as the last. How ru , i. i -11 i . * can you think, my dear love, of writing to me in such In spite of her doubts she yielded at last, a way? Don '- t > ou bdieve ' my pos on is already and on the pth of March, 1796, they were cruel enough, without adding to my regrets and tor- married. Shortly before, Napoleon had menting my soul ? What a style ! What feelings are been appointed commander-in-chief of the thos e you describe ! It's like fire ; it burns my poor Armv of Ttalv and two davs later he left heart " M >' onl y Josephine, away from you there is no Army or Italy, a later ne leu happiness . away {rom you> the world is a desert in his Wife for his post. which I stand alone, with no chance of tasting the delicious joy of pouring out my heart. You have robbed me of more than my soul ; you are the sole NAPOLEON'S LOVE FOR HIS WIFE. thought of my life. If I am worn out by all the tor- ments of events, and fear the issue, if men disgust , . , me, if I am ready to curse life, I place my hand on From every station on his route he wrote my heart . your f mage is beating there I ' toflfc at it> her passionate letters : and love is for me perfect happiness ; and everything is smiling, except the time that I see myself absent " Every moment takes me farther from you, and from my love. By what art have you learned how to captivate all my faculties, to concentrate my whole being in yourself ? To live for Josephine ! That's the story of my life. I do everything to get to you ; I am dying to join you. Fool ! Do I not see that I every moment I feel less able to be away from you. You are ever in my thoughts ; my fancy tires itself in trying to imagine what you are doing. If I picture you sad, my heart is wrung and my grief is increased. If you are happy and merry with your friends, I blame am only going farther from you ? How many lands you for so soon forgetting the painful three days' sep- and countries separate us ! How long before you aration ; in that case you are frivolous and destitute will read these words which express but feebly the of deep feeling. As you see, I am hard to please ; emotions of the heart over which you reign ! . . ." but, my dear, it is very different when I fear your health is bad, or that you have any reasons for being " Don't be anxious ; love me like your eyes but sad ; then I regret the speed with which I am being that's not enough like yourself ; more than yourself, separated from my love. I am sure that you have no longer any kind feeling toward me, and I can only be satisfied when I have heard that all goes well with you. When any one asks me if I have slept well, I feel that I cannot answer until a mes- senger brings me word that you have rested well. The illnesses and anger of men affect me only so far as I think they may af- fect you. May my good genius, who has always pro- tected me amid great perils, guard and protect you ! I will gladly dis- pense with him. Ah ! don't be happy, but be a little melancholy, and, above all, keep sorrow from your mind and illness from your body. You remember what Ossian says about that. Write to me, my pet, and GENERAL BONAPARTE. Medallion in terra-cotta. By Boizot. Collection of Monsieur Paul le Roux. All historians who have seriously studied the complex and mysterious iconography of Napoleon, agree in stating that the medallion of Boizot is one of the most faithful portraits of Bonaparte at the time of the Italian campaign. Boizot did not content himself with the few moments of pose accorded by the general, but, before definitely execut- ing his medallion, followed, observed, spied on him, and sketched at all angles the countenance of his glorious model. I have myself handled one or two of those precious little pencil sketches. A. D. than your thoughts, your mind, your life, your all. But forgive me, I'm raving. Nature is weak when one loves . . ." " I have received a letter which you interrupt to go, you say, into the country ; and after- wards you pretend to be jealous of me, who am so worn out by work and fatigue. Oh, my dear! ... Of course, I am in the wrong. In the early spring the country is beauti- ful ; and then the nineteen - year old lover was there, without a doubt. The idea of wast- ing another mo- ment in writing to the man three hun- dred leagues away, who lives, moves, exists only in mem- ory of you ; who reads your letters as one devours one's favorite dishes after hunt- ing for six hours! " 26 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. CHAPTER V. THE FIRST ITALIAN CAMPAIGN. NAPOLEON'S WAY OF MAKING WAR, BUT Napoleon had much to occupy him besides his separation from Josephine. Extraordinary difficulties surrounded his new post. Neither the generals nor the men knew anything of their future commander. u Who is this General Bonaparte ? Where has he served? .No one knows anything about him," wrote Junot's father when the latter at Toulon decided to follow his artil- lery commander. In the Army of Italy they were asking the same questions, and the Directory could only answer as Junot had done : " As far as I can judge, he is one of those men of whom nature is avaricious, and that she permits upon the earth only from age to age." He was to replace a commander-in-chief who had sneered at his plans for an Italian campaign and might be expected to put obstacles in his way. He was to take an army which was in the last stages of pov- erty and discouragement. Their garments were in rags. Even the officers were so nearly shoeless that when they reached Milan and one of them was invited to dine at the palace of a marquise, he was obliged to go in shoes without soles and tied on by cords carefully blacked. They had provi- sions for only a month, and half rations at that. The Piedmontese called them the " rag heroes." Worse than their poverty was their in- activity. " For three years they had fired off their guns in Italy only because war was going on, and not for any especial object only to satisfy their consciences." Dis- content was such that counter-revolution gained ground daily. One company had even taken the name of " Dauphin," and royalist songs were heard in camp. Napoleon saw at a glance all these diffi- culties, and set himself to conquer them. With his generals he was reserved and severe. " It was necessary," he explained afterward, "in order to command men so much older than myself." His look and bearing quelled insubordination, restrained familiarity, even inspired fear. "From his arrival," says Marmont, " his attitude was that of a man born for power. It was plain to the least clairvoyant eyes that he knew how to compel obedience, and scarcely was he in authority before the line of a cele- brated poet might have been applied to him : " ' Des egaux ? des longtemps Mahomet n'en a plus.'" General Decres, who had known Napoleon well at Paris, hearing that he was going to pass through Toulon, where he was sta- tioned, offered to present his comrades. "I run," he says, "full of eagerness and joy ; the salon opens ; I am about to spring forward, when the attitude, the look, the sound of his voice are sufficient to stop me. There was nothing rude about him, but it was enough. From that time I was never tempted to pass the line which had been drawn for me." Lavalette says of his first interview with him : " He looked weak, but his regard was so firm and so fixed that I felt myself turn- ing pale when he spoke to me." Augereau goes to see him at Albenga, full of con- tempt for this favorite of Barras who has never known an action, determined on insubordination. Bonaparte comes out, little, thin, round-shouldered, and gives Augereau, a giant among the generals, his orders. The big man backs out in a kind of terror. " He frightened me," he tells Masse"na. "His first glance crushed me." He quelled insubordination in the ranks by quick, severe punishment, but it was not long that he had insubordination. The army asked nothing but to act, and imme- diately they saw that they were to move. He had reached his post on March 226 ; nineteen days later operations began. The theatre of action was along that por- tion of the maritime Alps which runs par- allel with the sea. Bonaparte held the coast and the mountains; and north, in the foot-hills, stretched from the Tende to Genoa, were the Austrians and their Sar- dinian allies. If the French were fully ten thousand inferior in number, their posi- tion was the stronger, for the enemy was scattered in a hilly country where it was difficult to unite their divisions. As Bonaparte faced his enemy, it was with a youthful zest and anticipation which explains much of what follows. " The two armies are in motion," he wrote Josephine, " each trying to outwit the other. The more skilful will succeed. ' I am much OPENING OF ITALIAN CAMPAIGN. 27 pleased with Beaulieu. He ma- noeuvres very well, and issuperior to his predecessor. 'I shall beat him, I hope, out of his boots." SIX VICTORIES IN FIFTEEN DAYS. The first step in the campaign was a skilful stratagem. He spread rumors which made Beau- lieu suspect that he intended marching on Genoa, and he threw out his lines in that direc- tion. The Austrian took the feint as a genuine movement, and marched his left to the sea to cut off the French advance. But Bonaparte was not march- ing to Genoa, and, rapidly col- lecting his forces, he fell on the Austrian army at Montenotte on April 1 2th, and defeated it. The right and left of the allies were divided, and the centre broken. By a series of clever feints, Bonaparte prevented the various divisions of the enemy from re- enforcing each other, and forced them separately to battle. At Millesimo, on the i4th, he de- feated one section ; on the same day, at Dego, another ; the next morning, near Dego, another. The Austrians were now driven back, but their Sardinian allies were still at Ceva. To them Bonaparte now turned, and, driving them from their camp, defeated them at Mondovi on the 22d. It was phenomenal in Italy. In ten days the " rag heroes," at whom they had been mocking for three years, had defeated two well-fed armies ten thousand stronger than themselves, and might at any moment march on Turin. The Sardinians sued for peace. The victory was as bewilder- ing to the French as it was ter- rifying to the enemy, and Napoleon used it to stir his army to new conquests. " Soldiers ! " he said, " in fifteen days you have gained six victories, taken twenty-one stands of colors, fifty-five pieces of cannon, and several fortresses, and conquered the richest part of Piedmont. You have made fifteen hundred prisoners, and killed or wounded ten thousand men. " Hitherto, however, you have been fighting for BONAPARTE, GENERAL OF THE ARMY IN ITALY. Profile in plaster. By David d' Angers. Collection of Monsieur Paul le Roux. This energetic profile presents considerable artistic and iconc- graphic interest. It is the first rough cast of the face of Bonaparte on the pediment of the Pantheon at Paris. Some months ago, Baron Larrey told me an interesting anecdote regarding this statue. The Baron, son of the chief surgeon to Napoleon I., and himself ex-military surgeon to Napoleon III., happening to be with the emperor at the camp of Chalons conceived the noble idea of trying to save the pediment of the Pantheon, then about to be destroyed to satisfy the Archbishop of Paris, who re- garded with lively displeasure the image of Voltaire figuring on the fa9ade of a building newly consecrated to religion. At the emperor's table, Baron H. Larrey adroitly turned the conversation to David, and informed the sovereign, to his surprise, that the proudest effigy of Napo- leon was to be seen on this pediment. Bonaparte, in fact, is represented as seizing for himself the crowns distributed by the Fatherland, while the other personages receive them. On hearing this, Napoleon III. was silent ; but the next day the order was given to respect the pediment. The plaster cast I reproduce here is signed /. David, and dates from 1836. The Pantheon pediment was inaugurated in 1837. A. D. barren rocks, made memorable by your valor, but use- less to the nation. Your exploits now equal those of the conquering armies of Holland and the Rhine. You were utterly destitute, and have supplied all your wants. You have gained battles without cannons, passed rivers without bridges, performed forced marches without shoes, bivouacked without brandy, and often without bread. None but republican pha- lanxes soldiers of liberty could have borne what you have endured. For this you have the thanks of your country. THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. " The two armies which lately attacked you in full confidence, now fly before you in consternation. But, soldiers, it must not be concealed that you have done nothing, since there remains aught to do. Neither Turin nor Milan is ours. . . . The greatest difficulties are no doubt surmounted ; but you have still battles to fight, towns to take, rivers to cross. Not less clever in diplomacy than in battle, Bonaparte, on his own responsibility, concluded an armistice with the Sardinians, which left him only the Austrians to fight, and at once set out to follow Beaulieu, who had fled beyond the Po. As adroitly as he had made Beaulieu believe, three weeks before, that he was going to march on Genoa, he now deceives him as to the point where he proposes to cross the Po, leading him to believe it is at Valenza. When certain that Beaulieu had his eye on that point, Bonaparte marched rapidly down the river, and crossed at Placentia. If an unforeseen delay had not occurred in the passage, he would have been on the Austrian rear. As it was, Beaulieu took alarm, and withdrew the body of his army, after a slight resistance to the French advance, across the Adda, leaving but twelve thousand men at Lodi. Bonaparte was jubilant. "We have crossed the Po," he wrote the Directory. " The second campaign has commenced. Beaulieu is disconcerted; he miscalculates, and continually falls into the snares I set for him. Perhaps he wishes to give battle, for he has both audacity and energy, but not genius. . . . Another victory, and we shall be masters of Italy." Determined to leave no enemies behind him, Bonaparte now marched against the twelve thousand men at Lodi. The town, lying on the right bank of the Adda, was guarded by a small force of Austrians ; but the mass of the enemy was on the left bank, at the end of a bridge some three hundred and fifty feet in length, and commanded by a score or more of cannon. Rushing into the town on May roth the French drove out the guarding force, and arrived at the bridge before the Austrians had time to destroy it. The French gren- adiers pressed forward in a solid mass, but, when half way over, the cannon at the opposite end poured such a storm of shot at them that the columnwavered and fell back. Several generals in the ranks, Bonaparte at their head, rushed to the front of the force. The presence of the officers was enough to inspire the soldiers, and they swept across the bridge with such impetuosity that the Austrian line on the opposite bank al- lowed its batteries to be taken, and in a few moments was in retreat. " Of all the actions in which the soldiers under my command have been engaged," wrote Bonaparte to the Directory, " none has equalled the tremendous passage of ihe bridge of Lodi. If we have lost but few soldiers, it was merely owing to the prompt- itude of our attacks and the effect pro- duced on the enemy by the formidable fire from our invincible army. Were I to name all the officers who distinguished them- selves in this affair, I should be obliged to enumerate every carabinier of the advanced guard, and almost every officer belonging to the staff." The Austrians now withdrew beyond the Mincio, and on the i5th of May the French entered Milan. The populace greeted their conquerors as liberators, and for several days the army rejoiced in comforts which it had not known for years. While it was being feted, Bonaparte was instituting the Lombard Republic, and trying to conciliate or outwit, as the case demanded, the nobles and clergy outraged at the introduction of French ideas. It was not until the end of May that Lombardy was in a situation to permit Bonaparte to follow the Austrians. After Lodi, Beaulieu had led his army to the Mincio. As usual, his force was divided, the right being near Lake Garda, the left at Mantua, the centre about half- way between, at Valeggio. It was at this latter point that Bonaparte decided to attack them. Feigning to march on their right, he waited until his opponent had fallen into his trap, and then sprang on the weakened centre, broke it to pieces, and drove all but twelve thousand men, escaped to Mantua, into the Tyrol. In fifty days he had swept all but a remnant of the Austrians away from Italy. Two weeks later, having taken a strong position on the Adige, he began 'the siege of Mantua. The French were victorious, but their position was precarious. Austria was pre- paring a new army. Between the victors and France lay a number of feeble Italian governments whose friendship could not be depended upon. The populace of these states favored the French, for they brought promises of liberal government, of equal- ity and fraternity. The nobles and clergy hated them for the same reason. It was evident that a victory of the Austrians would set all these petty princes on Bona- parte's heels. The Papal States to the south were plotting. Naples was an ally of Austria. Venice was neutral, but she could not be trusted. The English were- "NAPOLEONE BUONAPARTE, GEXERAL-IN-CHIEF " From an original drawing in the possession of the Rev. J. Thomas," Epsom. Engraved by John Whessel. Published November 4, 1797, by John Harris, Sweetings Alley, London. off the coast, and might, at any moment, make an alliance which would place a formidable enemy on the French rear. THE AUSTRIANS BRING A NEW ARMY INTO THE FIELD. While waiting for the arrival of the new Austrian army, Bonaparte set himself to lessening these dangers. He concluded a peace with Naples. Two divisions of the army were sent south, one to Bologna, the other into Tuscany. The people received the French with such joy that Rome was glad to purchase peace. Leghorn was taken. The malcontents in Milan were silenced. Bv the time afresh Austrian armv THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. BONAPARTE. "Drawn from the life in Italy. Tomkins, No. 49 New Bond Street." Napoleon published in London. Published in London, April 20, 1797, by This is probably the first engraving of of sixty thousand men, under a new general, Wurmser, was ready to fight, Italy had been effectually quieted. The Austrians advanced against the French in three columns, one to the west of Lake Garda, under Quasdanovich, one on each side of the Adige, east of the lake, under Wurmser. Their plan was to attack the French outposts on each side of the lake simultaneously, and then envelop the army. The first movements were success- ful. The French on each side of the lake were driven back. Bonaparte's army was inferior to the one coming against him, but ness, he fell on the enemy piecemeal. Wherever he could engage a division he did so, providing his own force was superior to that of the Austrians at the moment of the battle. Thus, on July 3ist, at Lonato, he defeated Quas- danovich, though not so decisively but that the Austrian collected his divi- sion and returned towards the same place, hoping to unite there with Wurmser, who had foolishly divided his divisions, sending one to Lonato and another to Castiglione, while he him- self went off to Mantua to relieve the garrison there. Bonaparte engaged the forces at Lonato and at Castiglione on the same day (August 3d), defeating them both, and then turned his whole army against the body of Austrians under Wurmser, who, by this time, had returned from his relief expedition at Mantua. On August 5th, at Castiglione, Wurmser was beaten, driven over the Mincio and into the Tyrol. In six days the campaign has been fin- ished. "The Austrian army has vanished like a dream," Bonaparte wrote home. It had vanished, true, but only for a day. Reinforcements were soon sent, and a new campaign started early in September. Leaving Davidovich in the Tyrol with twenty thousand men, Wurmser started down the Brenta with twenty-six thousand men, intending to fall on Bonaparte's rear, cut him to pieces, and relieve Mantua. But Bonaparte had a plan of his own this time, and, without waiting to find out where Wurmser was going, he started up the Adige, intending to attack the Austrians in the Tyrol, and join the army of the Rhine, then on the upper Danube. As it hap- the skill with which he handled his forces pened, Wurmser's plan was a happy one for and used the blunders of the enemy more than compensated for lack of numbers. Raising the siege of Mantua, he concen- trated his forces at the south of the lake in such a way as to prevent the reunion of the Bonaparte. The French found less than half the Austrian army opposing them, and, after they had beaten it, discovered that they were actually on the rear of the other half. Of course Bonaparte did not lose the Austrians. Then, with unparalleled swift- opportunity. He sped down the Brenta ALVINZI ENTERS ITALY. 3 r behind Wurmser, overtook him at Bassano commander-in-chief, Alvinzi, put at its on the 8th of September, and of course head. ~ The Austrians advanced in two defeated him. The Austrians fled in terri- divisions, one down the Adige, the other by ble demoralization. Wurmser succeeded the Brenta. The French divisions which in reaching Mantua, where he united with met the enemy at Trent and Bassano were the garrison. The sturdy old Austrian driven back. In spite of his best efforts, had the courage, in spite of his losses, to Bonaparte, was obliged to retire with his come out of Mantua and meet Bonaparte main army to Verona. Things looked on the i5th, but he was defeated again, and obliged to take refuge in the fortress. If the Austri- ans had been beaten repeatedly, they had no idea of yielding, and, in fact, there was apparently every reason to continue the struggle. The French army was in a most desperate condition. Its number was reduced to barely forty thou- sand, and this number was poorly supplied, and many of them were ill. Though living in the richest of countries, the rapacity and dis- honesty of the army contractors were such that food reached the men half spoiled and in insufficient quantities, while the clothing sup- plied was pure shoddy. Many- officers were laid up by wounds or fatigue ", those who remained at their posts were discouraged, and threatening to resign. The Direc- tory had tampered with Bona- parte'sarmistices and treaties until Naples and Rome were ready to spring upon the French; and Venice, if not openly hostile, was irritating the army in many ways. Bonaparte, in face of these diffi- culties, was in genuine despair : " Everything is being spoiled in Italy," he wrote the Directory. " Thft prestige of our forces is being lost. A policy which will give you friends among the princes as well as among the people, is necessary. Diminish your enemies. The influence of Rome is beyond calculation. It was a great mistake to quarrel with that power. Had I been consulted I should have de- layed negotiations as I did with Genoa and Venice. Whenever your general in Italy is not the centre of everything, you will run great risks. This language is not that of ambition ; I have only too many honors, and my health is so impaired that I think I shall be forced to demand a successor. I can no longer get on horseback. My courage alone remains, and that is not sufficient in a position like this." It was in such a situation that Bonaparte saw the Austrian force outside of Mantua, increased to fifty thousand men, and a new JUNOT (1771-1813). Junot, afterwards Due d'Abrantes, was born at Bussy-le-Grand. He studied law, and in 1791 joined a company of volunteers. His com- rades gave him the name of The Tempest. At Toulon, where he was sergeant, Napoleon took him for a secretary. Junot distinguished himself in the Italian campaign, particularly at Lonato, where he was severely wounded in the head. He went to Egypt, and there became General-in-Chief. In the battle of Nazareth he showed the most bril- liant courage, breaking a column of ten thousand Turks with a body of three hundred horse. Junot was severely wounded in Egypt, in a duel that he fought on account of his General-in-Chief, to whom he was devoted. After the battle of Marengo he was named Com- mander of Paris, General of Division, and then Colonel-General (1804). He was sent as ambassador to the court of Lisbon from 1804-1805, was present at Austerlitz, was Governor of Paris in 1806, and in 1807 was given the command of the Army of Portugal. He conquered this kingdom in less than two months, a success which earned him the title of the Due d'Abrantes, but was subsequently beaten by Wellington, and was obliged to evacuate the country in 1808. He showed himself incapable in the Russian campaign, and was appointed to a position in the government of the Illyrian provinces. His grief at this deranged him, and he was sent home to be cared for. In his insanity he threw himself from the window, suffering injuries from which he died some days afterward, July 29, 1813. Junot married Mademoiselle Permon, daughter of the Madame Pennon who was so kind to Napoleon in his youth at Paris. THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. "In a effort." THE BATTLE OF ARCOLA. serious. Alvinzi was pressing close to rowfully among themselves that Itaiy was Verona, and the army on the Adige was lost. When far enough from Verona to slowly driving back the French division escape the attention of the enemy, Bona- sent to hold it in check. If Davidovich parte wheeled to the southeast. On the and Alvinzi united, Bonaparte was lost. morning of the i5th he crossed the Adige, " Perhaps we are on the point of losing intending, if possible, to reach the defile by Italy," wrote Bonaparte to the Directory, which alone Alvinzi could escape from his few days we shall make a last position. The country into which his army marched was a morass crossed by two cause- ways. The points which it was necessary to take to command the defile were the town of On November i4th this last effort was Arcola and a bridge over the rapid stream made. Alvinzi was close upon Verona, on which the town lay. The Austrians discovered the plan, and hastened out to dispute Arcola and the bridge. All day long the two armies fought desper- ately, Bonaparte and his generals putting them- selves at the head of their columns and doing the work of common soldiers. But at night Arcola was not taken, and the French retired to the right bank of the Adige, only to return on the 1 6th to reengage Alvinzi, who, fearful lest his retreat be cut off, had withdrawn his army from near Verona, and had taken a position at Arcola. For two days the French struggled with the Austrians, wrenching the victory from them before the close of the i7th, and sending them flying towards Bassano. Bona- parte and his army re- turned to Verona, but this time it was by the gate which the Austrians, (AUGEREAIT, 1757-1816.) Engraved by Lefevre, after a design by Le Dru. Began his military career as a carbineer in the Neapolitan army. In 1792 joined the republican army. From the army of the Pyrenees he passed to that of Italy, where his intrepidity and mili- tary talents soon won him a first place. He distinguished himself at Lodi, Casti- glione, and Arcola. After the death of Hoche he was sent to take his place in the army of the Rhine-and-Moselle. Augereau was a member of the Council of Five Hundred, and after the i8th Brumaire, received the command of the army of Hol- land. When Napoleon became emperor, Augereau was made marshal, was given the eagle of the Legion of Honor, and the title of Duke of Castiglione. On the Restoration, Augereau joined Louis XVIII.: but when Napoleon returned from Elba he tried to regain his good will. The Bourbons refused him after the Hundred Days. He died in 1816. three days before, were pointing out as the place where they should enter. It was a month and a half before the Austrians holding a position shut in by rivers and could collect a fifth army to send against mountains on every side, and from which the French. Bonaparte, tormented on there was but one exit, a narrow pass at every side by threatened uprisings in Italy ; his rear. The French were in Verona. opposed by the Directory, who wanted to On the night of the i4.th of November make peace ; and distressed by the condi- Bonaparte went quietly into camp. Early tion of his army, worked incessantly to in the evening he gave orders to leave strengthen his relations, quiet his enemies, Verona, and took the road westward. It and restore his army. When the Austrians, looked like a retreat. The French army some forty-five thousand strong, advanced believed it to be so, and began to say sor- in January, 1797, against him, he had a " BONAPARTE A LA BATAILLE o'ARCOLE, LE 27 BRUMAIRE, AN V.' la. Vallette, vol. i. p. 193. 34 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. force of about thirty-five thousand men ready to meet them. Some ten thousand of his army were watching Wurmser and the twenty thousand Austrians shut up at Mantua. Alvinzi had planned his attack skilfully. Advancing with twenty-eight thousand men by the Adige, he sent seventeen thou- sand under Provera to approach Verona from the east. The two divisions were to approach secretly, and to strike simulta- neously. At first Bonaparte was uncertain of the position of the main body of the enemy. Sending out feelers in every direction, he became convinced that it must be that it approached Rivoli. Leaving a force at Verona to hold back Provera, he concen- trated his army in a single night on the plateau of Rivoli, and on the morning of January i4th advanced to the attack. The struggle at Rivoli lasted two days. Noth- ing but Bonaparte's masterly tactics won it, for the odds were greatly against him. His victory, however, was complete. Of the twenty-eight thousand Austrians brought to the field, less than half escaped. While this battle was waging, Bonaparte was also directing the fight with Provera, who was intent upon reaching Mantua and attacking the French besiegers on the rear, while Wurmser left the city and en- gaged them in front. The attack had be- gun, but Bonaparte had foreseen the move, and sent a division to the relief of his men. Thisbattle, known as La Favorita, destroyed Provera's division of the Austrian army, and so discouraged Wurmser, whose army was terribly reduced by sickness and star- vation, that he surrendered on February 2d. The Austrians were driven utterly from Italy, but Bonaparte had no time to rest. The Papal States and the various aristo- cratic parties of southern Italy were threat- ening to rise against the French. The spirit of independence and revolt which the in- vaders were bringing into the country could not but weaken clerical and monarchical institutions. An active enemy to the south would have been a serious hindrance to Napoleon, and he marched into the Papal States. A fortnight was sufficient to si- lence the threats of his enemies, and on February 19, 1797, he signed with the Pope the treaty of Tolentino. The peace was no sooner made than he started again against the Austrians. When Mantua fell, and Austria saw her- self driven from Italy, she had called her ablest general, the Archduke Charles, from the Rhine, and given him an army of over one hundred thousand men to lead against Bonaparte. The French had been ree'n- forced to some seventy thousand, and though twenty thousand were necessary to keep Italy quiet, Bonaparte had a fine army, and he led it confidently to meet the main body of the enemy, which had been sent south to protect Trieste. Early in March he crossed the Tagliamento, and in a series of contests, in which he was uniformly successful, he drove his oppo- nent back, step by step, until Vienna itself was in sight, and in April an armistice was signed. In May the French took posses- sion of Venice, which had refused a French alliance, and which was playing a perfidious part, in Bonaparte's judgment, and a repub- lic on the French model was established. Italy and Austria, worn out and discour- aged by this "war of principle," as Napo- leon called it, at last compromised, and on October i7th, one year, seven months, and seven days after he left Paris, Napoleon signed the treaty of Campo Formio. By this treaty France gained the frontier of the Rhine and the Low Countries to the mouth of the Scheldt. Austria was given Venice, and a republic called the Cisalpine was formed from Reggio, Modena, Lom- bardy, and part of the States of the Pope. NAPOLEON'S kuLES OF WAR. The military genius that this twenty- seven-year-old commander had shown in the campaign in Italy bewildered his ene- mies and thrilled his friends. " Things go on very badly," said an Austrian veteran taken at Lodi. " No one seems to know what he is about. The French general is a young blockhead who knows nothing of the regular rules of war. Sometimes he is on our right, at others on our left ; now in front, and presently in our rear. This mode of warfare is contrary to all system, and utterly insufferable." It is certain that if Napoleon's opponents never knew what he was going to do, if his generals themselves were frequently un- certain, it being his practice to hold his peace about his plans, he himself bad defi- nite rules of warfare. The most important of these were : "Attacks should not be scattered, but should be concentrated." " Always be superior to the enemy at the point of attack." " Time is everything." To these formulated rules he joined mar- vellous fertility in stratagem. The feint by which, at the beginning of the cam- II "o . 1! gs rS "o ?, 2 2. 0) * ^ o S: e^ E" w 5 I ^ II ! a O rt From a lithograph by Raffet. paign, he had enticed Beaulieu to march on Genoa, and that by which, a few days later, he had induced him to place his army near Valenza, were masterpieces in their way. His quick-wittedness in emergency fre- quently saved him from disaster. Thus, on August 4th, in the midst of the excite- ment of the contest, Bonaparte went to Lonato to see what troops could be drawn from there. On entering he was greatly surprised to receive an Austrian parlemen- taire, who called on the commandant of Lonato to surrender, because the French were surrounded. Bonaparte saw at once that the Austrians could be nothing but a division which had been cut off and was seeking escape ; but he was embarrassed, for there were only twelve hundred men at Lonato. Sending for the man, he had his eyes unbandaged, and told him that if his commander had the presumption to capture the general-in-chief of the army of Italy he might advance ; that the Austrian divi- sion ought to have known that he was at Lonato with his whole army; and he added that if they did not lay down their arms in eight minutes he would not spare a man. This audacity saved Bonaparte, and won him four thousand prisoners with guns and cavalry. His fertility in stratagem, his rapidity of action, his audacity in attack, bewildered and demoralized the enemy, but it raised the enthusiasm of his imaginative Southern troops to the highest pitch. He insisted in this campaign on one other rule : " Unity of command is necessary to assure success." After his defeat of the Piedmontese, the Directory ordered him, May 7, 1796, to divide his command with Kellermann. Napoleon answered : " I believe it most impolitic to divide the army of Italy in two parts. It is quite as much against the interests of the republic to place two different gene- rals over it. ... " A single general is not only necessary, but also it is essential that nothing trouble him in his march and operations. I have conducted this campaign without consulting any one. I should have done nothing of value if I had been obliged to reconcile my plans with those of another. I have gained ad- vantage over superior forces and when stripped of everything myself, because persuaded, that your con- fidence was in me. My action has been as prompt as my thought. " If you impose hindrances of all sorts upon me, if I must refer every step to government commission- ers, if they have the right to change my movements, of taking from me or of sending me troops, expect no more of any value. If you enfeeble your means by dividing your forces, if you break the unity of mili- tary thought in Italy, I tell you sorrowfully you will lose the happiest opportunity of imposing laws on Italy. " In the condition of the affairs of the republic in Italy, it is indispensable that you have a general that has your entire confidence. If it is not I, I am sorry for it, but I shall redouble my zeal to merit your es- teem in the post you confide to me. Each one has NAPOLEON AND HIS SOLDIERS. 37 his own way of carrying on war. General Keller- mann has more experience and will do it better than I, but both together will do it very badly. " I can only render the services essential to the country when invested entirely and absolutely with your confidence." He remained in charge, and throughout the rest of the campaign continued to act more and more independently of the Di- rectory, even dictating terms of peace to please himself. INFLUENCE OVER SOLDIERS AND GENERALS. It was in this Italian campaign that the almost superstitious adora- tion which Napoleon's sol- diers and most of hisgenerals felt for him began. Brilliant generalship was not the only reason for this. It was due largely to his personal cour- age, which they had discov- ered at Lodi. A charge had been ordered across a wooden bridge swept by thirty pieces of cannon, and beyond was the Austrian army. The men hesitated. Napoleon sprang to their head and led them into the thickest of the fire. From that day he was known among them as the " Little Corporal." He had won them by the quality which appeals most deeply to a soldier in the ranks con- tempt of death. Such was their devotion to him that they gladly exposed their lives if they saw him in dan- ger. There were several such cases in the battle of Arcola. The first day, when Bonaparte was exposing himself in an advance, his aide-de-camp, Colonel Muiron, saw that he was in immi- nent danger. Throwing himself before Bonaparte, the colonel covered him with his body, receiving the wound which was destined for the general. The brave fel- low's blood spurted into Bonaparte's face. He literally gave his life to save his com- mander's. The same day, in a final effort to take Arcola, Bonaparte seized a flag, rushed on the bridge, and planted it there. His column reached the middle of the bridge, but there it was broken by the enemy's flanking fire. The grenadiers at the head, find- ing themselves deserted by the rear, were compelled to retreat ; but, critical as their position was, they refused to abandon their general. They seized him by his arms, by his clothes, and dragged him with them through shot and smoke. When one fell out wounded, another pressed to his place. Precipitated into the morass, Bonaparte sank. The enemy were sur- rounding him when the gren- adiers perceived his danger. A cry was raised, " Forward, soldiers, to save the Gen-' eral ! " and immediately they fell upon the Austrians with such fury that they drove them off, dragged out their hero, and bore him to a safe place. His addresses never failed to stir them to action and enthusiasm. They were ora- PORTRAIT OF RAFFET. Drawn by himself in the costume worn by him during his travels in Southern Russia with Prince Demidoff, in 1837. This portrait, for which we are indebted to Monsieur Auguste Raffet, son of the illustrious artist, is one of the best like- nesses of the latter. Raffet saw Napoleon only once. (This interesting fact was communicated to me also by Monsieur Auguste Raffet.) It was at the close of 1813, when Raffet was only about twelve years old : but in spite of his youth, he retained, graven on his memory, an ineffaceable impression of the emperor's features. Yet he had but a momentary glimpse ; for the emperor was passing rapidly along the boulevards in a carriage, surrounded by a numerous escort. The emperor was already suffering from the malady which was to cause his death, and the apprehension of near and inevi- table disaster gave to his deathly pale countenance a painful and tragic expression. This vision strongly impressed the child Raffet. He became, as it were, possessed by it ; and whether he is depicting 1796, 1810, 1812, 1814, or 1815. he shows us always a gloomy, careworn, tragic Bonaparte. It can hardly be said that among the numerous artists who painted Napoleon, Raffet is the one who respected most conscientiously the truth to life of his representation. It would have been difficult for him to do so, considering that he was barely thirteen years old when the emperor embarked for St. Helena, that he saw him only on one occasion, and that his young fingers did not even trace from life the outline of his features. But he has succeeded, with astonishing skill, in embodying, in his numerous paintings of Napoleon, the characteristic features of the different portraits which were taken from life ; and I will not hesitate to say that it is in the work of Raffet that future generations will delight to seek for the true image of Napoleon. And it is there they will find it, both legendary and true, but always heroic, such as they will have pictured it in their dreams. The emperor of Raffet and of Meissonier will remain the definite portrait of Napoleon ; and it must be added, to the glcry of Raffet, that Meissonier's effigies of Napoleon were inspired entirely by his. A. D. BONAPARTE. Engraved by Bartolozzi, R.A., an Italian engraver, resident of England, after the portrait by Appiani. torical, prophetic, and abounded in phrases which the soldiers never forgot. Such was his address at Milan : " Soldiers ! you have precipitated yourselves like a torrent from the summit of the Apennines ; you have driven back and dispersed all that opposed your march. Piedmont, liberated from Austrian tyranny, has yielded to her natural sentiments of peace and amity towards France. Milan is yours, and the Re- publican flag floats throughout Lombardy, while the Dukes of Modena and Parma owe their political ex- istence solely to your generosity. The army which so haughtily menaced you, finds no barrier to secure it from your courage. The Po, the Ticino, and the Adda have been unable to arrest your courage for a single day. Those boasted ramparts of Italy proved insufficient. You have surmounted them as rapidly as you cleared the Apennines. So much success has diffused joy through the bosom of your country. Yes, soldiers, you have done well ; but is there nothing more for you to accomplish ? Shall it be said of us that we knew how to conquer, but knew not how to profit by victory ? Shall posterity reproach us with having found a Capua in Lombardy ? But I see you rush to arms ; unmanly repose wearies you, and the days lost to glory are lost to happiness. THE PARISIANS AND THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN. 39 " Let us set forward. We have still forced marches to perform, enemies to conquer, laurels to gather, and injuries to avenge. Let those tremble who have whetted the poniards of civil war in France ; who have, like dastards, assassinated our ministers, and burned our ships in Toulon. The hour of vengeance is arrived, but let the people be tranquil. We are the friends of all nations, particularly the descendants of the Brutuses, the Scipios, and those illustrious per- sons we have chosen for our models. To restore the Capitol, replace with honor the statues of the heroes who rendered it renowned, and rouse the Roman peo- ple, become torpid by so many ages of slavery shall, will, be the fruit of your victories. You will then return to your homes, and your fellow-citizens when pointing to you will say, ' He was of the army of Italy.' " Such was his address in March, before the final campaign against the Austrians : ' ' You have been victorious in fourteen pitched battles and sixty-six combats ; you have taken one hundred thousand prisoners, five hundred pieces of large cannon and two thousand pieces of smaller, four equipages for bridge pontoons. The country has nourished you, paid you during your campaign, and you have beside that sent thirty millions from the public treasury to Paris. You have enriched the Museum of Paris with three hundred chefs-d'ceuvre of ancient and modern Italy, which it has taken thirty ages to produce. You have conquered the most beautiful country of Europe. The French col- ors float for the first time upon the borders of the Adriatic. The kings of Sardinia and Naples, the Pope, the Duke of Parma have become allies. You have chased the English from Leghorn, Genoa, and Corsica. You have yet to march against the Em- peror of Austria." His approval was their greatest joy. Let him speak a word of praise to a regiment, and they embroidered it on their banners. "I was at ease, the Thirty-second was there," was on the flag of that regiment. Over the Fifty-seventh floated a name Napoleon had called them by, " The ter- rible Fifty-seventh." His displeasure was a greater spur than his approval. He said to a corps which had retreated in disorder: "Soldiers, you have displeased me. You have shown neither courage nor constancy, but have yielded positions where a handful of men might have defied an army. You are no longer French soldiers. Let it be written on their colors, ' They no longer form part of the Army of Italy.' " A veteran pleaded that they be placed in the van, and during the rest of the campaign no regiment was more 'distinguished. The effect of his genius was as great on his generals as on his troops. They were dazzled by his stratagems and manoeuvres, inspired by his imagination. " There was so much of the future in him," is Marmont's expressive explanation. They could be- lieve anything of him. A remarkable set of men they were to have as followers and friends Augereau, Massena, Berthier, Marmont, Junot. IMPRESSIONS OF THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN IN PARIS. The people and the government in Paris had begun to believe in him, as did the Army of Italy. He not only sent flags and reports of victory ; he sent money and works of art. Impoverished as the Direct- ory was, the sums which came from Italy were a reason for not interfering with the high hand the young general carried in his campaign and treaties. "NAPOLEONE BUONAPARTE. "Engraved by Henry Richter from the celebrated bust by Ceracchi, lately brought from Paris and now in his pos- session. Published June i, 1801, by H. Richter, No. 26 New- man Street, Oxford Street." This bust was made in the Italian campaign by Ceracchi. a Corsican working in Rome. Ceracchi left Rome in 1799 to escape punishment for taking part in an insurrection in the city, and went to Paris, where he hoped to receive aid from the First Consul. He made the busts of several generals--Berthier, Masse'na, and Berna- dotte but as orders did not multiply, and Napoleon did nothing for him, he became incensed against him, and took part in a plot to assassinate the First Consul at the opera, the i8th Brumaire, 1801. Arrested on his way to the loge in the opera, he was executed soon after. BONAPARTE AT MALMAISON. The title on the engraving reads: "Bonaparte, d^did & Madame Bonaparte '' Engraved in 1803 by Godefroy, after Isabey. In 1798, after Josephine de Beauharnais had become Madame Bonaparte, she bought, for thirty-two thousand dollars, a property at Marly, eight miles from Paris, known as Malmaison. While Napoleon was in Egypt, Josephine spent most of her time here, gathering about her a circle of the beaux esprits of the day, including Ber- nardin de Saint-Pierre, Arnault, Chenier, Talma, Gerard, Girodet, Mesdames Tallien, Regnault de Saint Jean d'Angely, the Comtesse d'Houdetot, and Fanny de Beauharnais. When Napoleon returned from Egypt he found waiting him a powerful salon. After the i8th Brumaire, Malmaison was enlarged and beautified, becoming, in fact, another Trianon. Its park contained kiosks, a Aameau, a temple of love, a theatre, fountains, lakes, and gardens, and the chateau a fine library and many valuable works of art. A few of the pictures brought to France as spoils of war were deposited at Malmaison. especially two superb Paul Potters. Napoleon is said to have always regretted, when he looked at them, that Josephine had taken them, as he wanted them for the Museum. Before the end of the consulate the Bonapartes left Malmaison for Saint Cloud, and after the Empire the place was almost entirely abandoned. When the divorce was pronounced in 1811 Josephine retired to Malmaison, where she died in 1814, three days after a visit from the Emperor Alexander, whose army had just invaded France. Napoleon visited Malmaison after his return from Elba, and spent five days there after Waterloo. Malmaison passed to Prince Eugene, who sold it to private parties in 1826. In 1861 the state bought it, and still owns it. JOSEPHINE AT MALMAISON. By Prud'hon. This charming portrait, which is one of Prud'hon's most successful works, and also one of the most graceful and faithful likenesses of Josephine, was doubtless executed at the same time as Isabey's pic- ture of Napoleon wandering, a solitary dreamer, in the long alleys at Malmaison, (1798). (See opposite page.) Prud'hon shows us Josephine in the garden of the chateau she loved so well, and in which she spent the happiest moments of her life, before seeking it as a final refuge in her grief and despair. The empress presents a full- length portrait, turned to the left ; she is seated on a stone bench amid the groves of the park, in an attitude of reverie, and wears a white decollete robe embroidered in gold. A crimson shawl is draped round her. A. D THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. Never before had France received such letters from a general. Now he announces that he has sent " twenty first masters, from Correggio to Michael Angelo ; " now, " a dozen millions of money ;" now, two or three millions in jewels and diamonds to be sold in Paris. In return he asks only for men and officers " who have fire and a firm resolution not to make learned retreats." The entry into Paris of the first art ac- quisitions made a profound impression on the people: " The procession of enormous cars, drawn by richly caparisoned horses, was divided into four sections. First came trunks filled with books, manuscripts, including the antiques of Josephus, on papyrus, with works in the handwriting of Galileo. . . . ^^^^ mmmm ,^ mmm ^ m Then followed collections of mineral products. . . . For the occasion were added wagons laden with iron cages containing lions, tigers, pan- thers, over which waved enor- mous palm branches and all kinds of exotic shrubs. After- wards rolled along chariots bearing pictures carefully packed, but with the names of the most important inscribed in large letters on the outside, as, The Transfiguration, by Raphael ; The Christ, by Titian. The number was great, the value greater. When these trophies had passed, amid the applause of an excited crowd, a heavy rumbling announced the ap- proach of massive carts bear- ing statues and marble groups: the Apollo Belvidere; the Nine Muses ; the LaocoOn. . . . The Venus de Medici was eventually added, decked with bouquets, crowns of flowers, flags taken from the enemy, and French, Italian, and Greek inscriptions. De- tachments of cavalry and in- fantry, colors flying, drums beating, music playing, marched at intervals ; the members of the newly established Institute fell into line ; artists and savants ; and the singers of the theatres made the air ring with national hymns. This procession marched through all Paris, and at the Champ de Mars defiled before the five members of the Directory, surrounded by their subordinate officers." about its chief art objects, in order to demand them in case of victory, for it was by treaty that they were usually obtained. Among the works of art which Napoleon sent to Paris were twenty-five Raphaels, twenty-three Titians, fifty-three Rubenses, thirty-three Van Dykes, thirty-one Rem- brandts. NAPOLEON'S STAR. In Italy rose Napoleon's " star," that mysterious guide which he followed from Lodi to Waterloo. Here was born that faith in himself and his future, that belief that he " marched under the protection of the goddess of fortune and of war," that con- fidence that he was en- dowed with a " good genius." He called Lodi the birthplace of this faith. "Vendemiaire and even Montenotte did not make me believe myself a superior man. It was only after Lodi that it came into my head that I could become a deci- sive actor on our politi- cal field. Then was born the first spark of high ambition." Trained in a religion full of mysticism, taught to believe in signs, guided by a "star," there is a tinge of super- stition throughout his active, practical, hard- working life. Marmont tells that one day while in Italy the glass over the portrait of his wife, which he always wore, was broken. " He turned frightfully pale, and the im- pression upon him was most sorrowful. ' Marmont,' he said, 'my wife is very ill or she is unfaithful.' " There are many similar anecdotes to show his dependence upon and confidence in omens. ' 'I "THE GENERAL OF THE GRAND ARMY. This pencil portrait by David is nothing but a rapid sketch, but its iconographic interest is undeniable.- David doubtless executed this design towards the end of 1797, after Bona- parte's return from Italy. It belongs to Mon- sieur Cheramy, a Paris lawyer. A. D. The practice of sending home works of art, begun in the Italian campaign, Napo- leon continued throughout his military career, and the art of France owes much LOVE IN WAR. to the education thus given the artists of the first part of this century. In a campaign of such achievements as His agents ransacked Italy, Spain, Ger- that in Italy there seems to be no time for many, and Flanders for chefs-d'oeuvre, love, and yet love was never more impera- When entering a country one of the first ~tive, more absorbing, in Napoleon's life things he did was to collect information than during this period. LOVE AND WAR. 43 " Oh, my adorable wife," he wrote Josephine in April, " I do not know what fate awaits me, but if it keeps me longer from you, I shall not be able to en- dure it ; my courage will not hold out to that point. There was a time when I was proud of my courage ; and when I thought of the harm that men might do me, of the lot that my destiny might reserve for me, I looked at the most terrible misfortunes without a quiver, with no surprise. But now, the thought that my Josephine may be in trouble, that she may be ill, and^ above all, the cruel, fatal thought that she may love me less, inflicts torture in my soul, stops the beating of my heart, makes me sad and dejected, robs me of even the courage of fury and despair. I often used to say, ' Man can do no harm to one who is willing to die ; ' but now, to die without being loved by you, to die without this certainty, is the torture of hell ; it is the vivid and crushing image of total anni- hilation. It seems to m; as if I were choking. My only companion, you who have been chosen by fate to make with me the painful journey of life, the day when I shall no longer possess your heart will be that when for me the world shall have lost all warmth and all its vegetation. ... I will stop, my sweet pet ; my soul is sad. I am very tired, my mind is worn out, I am sick of men. I have good reason for hating them. They separate me from my love." Josephine was indifferent to this strong passion. " How quee^ Bonaparte is ! " she said coldly at the evidences of his affection which he poured upon her ; and when, after a few weeks separation, he began to im- plore her to join him, she hesitated, made excuses, tried in every possible way to evade his wish. It was not strange that a woman of her indolent nature, loving flattery, hav- ing no passion but for amusement, reckless expenditure, and her own ease, should pre- fer life in Paris. There she shared with Madame Tallien the adoration which the Parisian world is always bestowing on some fair woman. At opera and ball she was the centre of attraction ; even in the street the people knew her. Notre Dame des Victoires was the name they gave her. In desperation at her indifference, Napo- leon finally wrote her, in June, from Tor- tona : " My life is a perpetual nightmare. A black pre- sentiment makes breathing difficult. I am no longer alive ; I have lost more than life, more than happi- ness, more than peace ; I am almost without hope. I am sending you a courier. He will stay only four hours in Paris, and then will bring me your answer. Write to me ten pages ; that is the only thing that can console me in the least. You are ill ; you love me ; I have distressed you ; you are with child ; and I do not see you. ... I have treated you so ill that I do not know how to set myself right in your eyes. I have been blaming you for staying in Paris, and you have been ill there. Forgive me, my dear ; the love with which you have filled me has robbed me of my reason, and I shall never recover it. It is a malady from which there is no recovery. My fore- bodings are so gloomy that all I ask is to see you, to hold you in my arms for two hours, and that we may die together. Who is taking care of you ? I suppose that you have sent for Hortense ; I love the dear child a thousand times better since I think that she may console you a little. As for me, I am without consolation, rest, and hope until I see again the mes- senger whom I am sending to you, and until you explain to me in a long letter just what is the matter with you, and how serious it is. If there were any danger, I warn you that I should start at once for Paris. . . . You ! you ! and the rest of the world will not exist for me any more than if it had been annihilated. I care for honor because you care for it ; for victory, because it brings you pleasure ; other- wise, I should abandon everything to throw myself at your feet." After this letter Josephine consented to go to Italy, but she left Paris weeping as if going to her execution. Once at Milan, where she held almost a court, she re- covered her gayety, and the two were very happy for a time. But it did not last. Napoleon, obliged to be on the march, would implore Josephine to come to him here and there, and once she narrowly escaped with her life when trying to get away from the army. Wherever she was installed she had a circle of adorers about her, and as a result she neglected writing to her husband. Re- proaches and entreaties filled his letters. He begged her for only a line, and he im- plored her that she be less cold. " Your letters are as cold as fifty years of age ; one would think they had been written after we had been, married fifteen years. They are full of the friendli- ness and feelings of life's winter. . . . What more can you do to distress me ? Stop loving me ? That you have already done. Hate me ? Well, I wish you would ; everything degrades me except hatred; but indifference, with a calm pulse, fixed eyes, monotonous walk ! . . . A thousand kisses, ten- der, like my heart." It was not merely indolence and indiffer- ence that caused Josephine's neglect. It was coquetry frequently, and Napoleon, in- formed by his couriers as to whom she received at Milan or Genoa, and of the pleasures she enjoyed, was jealous with all the force of his nature. More than one young officer who dared pay homage to Jo- sephine in this campaign was banished " by order of the commander-in-chief." Reach' ing Milan once, unexpectedly, he found her gone. His disappointment was bitter. " I reached Milan, rushed to your rooms, having thrown up everything to see you, to press you to my heart you were not there ; you are travelling about from one town to another, amusing yourself with balls. . . . My unhappiness is inconceivable. Don't put yourself out ; pursue your pleas- ure ; happiness is made for you." It was between such extremes of triumph- ant love and black despair that Napoleon lived throughout the Italian campaign. THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON CHAPTER VI. NAPOLEON'S RETURN TO PARIS. THE EGYPTIAN CAMPAIGN. THE i8TH BRUMAIRE IN December, 1797, he returned to Paris. On the 4th of May he left Paris for Tou- His whole family were collected there, Ion. forming a " Bonaparte colony," as the To Napoleon this expedition was a mer- Parisians called it. There were Joseph and ciful escape. He once said to Madame his wife; Lucien, now married to Christine Re"musat : Boyer, his old landlord's daughter, a mar- riage Napoleon never forgave ; Eliza, now " In Paris, and Paris is France, they never can take Madame Bacciochi ; Paul- ine, now Madame Leclerc. Madame Letitia was in the city, with Caroline ; Louis and Jerome were still in school. Josephine had her daughter Hortense, a girl of thirteen, with her. Her son Eugene, though but fifteen years old, was away on a mission for Napoleon, who, in spite of the boy's youth, had already taken him into his confidence According to Napoleon's express de- sire, all the family lived in great simplicity. The return to Paris of the commander-in-chieL of the Army of Italy was the sig- nal for a popular ovation. The Directory gave him every honor, changing the name of the street in which he lived to rue de la Victoire, and making him a member of the Institute ; but, con- scious of its feebleness, and inspired by that suspicion which since the Revolution began had caused the ruin of so many men, it planned to get rid of him. Of the coalition against France, formed in 1793, one member alone remained in arms England. Napoleon was to be sent against her. An invasion of the island was first discussed, and he BUST OF BONAPARTE. Bust in terra cotta, occupying a place of honor in the Museum of Ver- sailles. It is one of the best likenesses of Bonaparte. The original has been sought in vain ; the probability is that it no longer exists, and that the Ver- sailles copy is the only one. As far as we know, this remarkable work has never before been reproduced, prob- ably on account of the bad light in which it stands. It bears the follow- ing inscription: " Le gtnera.1 Bona- parte en l*an 8. Fait par Corbet en fan VIII." 1 This bust was made in Egypt. A very beautiful marble copy of the Corbet bust, made by Iselin, is in the fine Napoleonic collection of Mr. Charles Bonaparte of Baltimore. the smallest interest in things, if they do not take it in persons. . . . The great difficulty of the Direct- ory was that no one cared about them, and that people began to care too much about me. This was why I conceived the happy idea of going to Egypt." He was under the influ- ence, too, of his imagina- tion ; the Orient had always tempted him. It is certain that he went away with gigantic projects nothing less than to conquer the whole of the East, and to become its ruler and law- giver. "I dreamed of all sorts of things, and I saw a way of carry- ing all my projects into practical execution. I would create a new religion. I saw myself in Asia, upon an elephant, wearing a tur- ban, and holding in my hand a new Koran which I had myself composed. I would have united in my enterprise the experiences of two hemispheres, exploring for my benefit and instruction all his- tory, attacking the power of Eng- land in the Indies, and renewing, by their conquest, my relations with old Europe. The time I passed in Egypt was the most delightful period of my life, for it was the most ideal." His friends, watching his irritation during the days before the campaign had been decided upon, said : " A free flight in space is what such wings demand, made an examination of the north coast. He will die here. He must go." He himself His report was adverse, and he substituted said : " Paris weighs on me like a leaden a plan for the invasion of Egypt an old mantle." idea in the French government. The Directory gladly accepted the EXPEDITION IN EGYPT, 1798-1799- change, and Napoleon was made com- Napoleon sailed from France on May mander-in-chief of the Army of Egypt. 19, 1798 ; on June 9th he reached Malta, VISCOUNT NELSc'N, DUKE OF BRONTE (1758-1805). Engraved by Dick, after portrait by Knight. Nelson was born at Barnham, England. He entered the navy at twelve years of age. Was made a post-captain when twenty-one years old, and during the next few years was engaged actively in the American war. When war was declared between France and England in 1793, Nelson was given command of the "Agamemnon," and sent to the Mediterranean, where he took part in the sieges of Bastia and Cadiz. For his services in the winter of 1795-96 he was made commodore, and for his daring and skill in the engagement with the Spanish off Cape St. Vincent, February 13, 1797, he received the Order of the Bath and was made admiral. When Napoleon started for Egypt, Nelson was ordered to intercept him, but his squadron was crippled in a gale and Napoleon escaped. On August i, 1798, he attacked the French fleet in the harbor of Aboukir, and destroyed all but two of the thirteen French ships. For the battle of the Nile, Nelson received a peerage. Nelson now went against Naples, where, after the French had been driven from Italy and an amnesty declared, he allowed the trial and sentence of Caraccioli, the admiral of the Neapolitan fleet a judicial murder similar to that of the Due d'Enghien. In the spring of 1801 Nelson went to the Baltic. At Copenhagen he engaged the Danish and won the title of viscount. On the renewal of war between France and England in 1803, Nelson went to the Mediterranean, where for two years he kept the French shut in port at Toulon, while Napoleon was preparing for the invasion of England at Boulogne. In March, 1805, the French Admiral Villeneuve escaped. Nelson sought him in the Mediterranean, chased him across the Atlantic and back again, and finally, in September, 1805, found him at Cadiz. In October the French were forced to battle off Cape Trafalgar, where Nelson won a glorious victory, though at the cost of his life. His remains were interred in St. Paul's Cathedral on January 9, 1806. KAPOLEON AS GENERAL-IN-CHIEF OF THE ARMY IN EGYPT. UESAIX. The portraits on passes 46, 47, 48, and 49, of the principal members of the Egyptian Commission and the principal gen- erals of the Army of the East, are by Dutertre, and from the collection of Baron Larrey. Hitherto unpublished. They are of great importance on account of their unflinching reality. Dutertre. who took part in the expedition in the quality of official painter, was above all things a skilful draughtsman ; his pencil was always well-sharpened and his observation penetrating. Inaccessible to flattery, he never sought to idealize his models, or to represent them with Olympian features and in the attitude of demi-gods. His portraits, all taken from life, will live in history as most reliable documents. A. D. and won for France " the strongest place in Europe." July 2d he entered Alexan- dria. On July 3d he entered Cairo, after the famous battle of the Pyramids. The French fleet had remained in Abou- kir Bay after landing the army, and on August ist was attacked by Nelson. Na- poleon had not realized, before this battle, the power of the English on the sea. He knew nothing of Nelson's genius. The de- struction of his fleet, and the consciousness that he and his army were prisoners in the Orient, opened his eyes to the greatest weakness of France. The winter was spent in reorganizing the government of Egypt and in scientific work. Over one hundred scientists had been added to the Army of Egypt, includ- ing some of the most eminent men of the day : Monge, Geoffroy-St.-Hilaire, Berthol- let, Fourier, and Denon. From their arrival every opportunity was given them to carry on their work. To stimulate them, Napo- leon founded the Institute of Egypt, in which membership was granted as a reward for services. These scientists went out in every direc- tion, pushing their investigations up the Nile as far as Philoe, tracing the bed of the old canal from Suez to the Nile, un- earthing ancient monuments, making col- lections of the flora and fauna, examining in detail the arts and industries of the peo- ple. Everything, from the inscription on the Rosetta Stone to the incubation of chickens, received their attention. On the return of the expedition, their researches were published in a magnificent work called " Description de 1'Egypte." The information gathered by the French at this time gave a great impetus to the study of Egyptology, and their investiga- tions on the old Suez canal led directly to the modern work. The peaceful work of science and law- giving which Napoleon was conducting in Egypt was interrupted by the news that the Porte had declared war against France, and that two Turkish armies were on their way to Egypt. In March he set off to Syria to meet the first. This Syrian expedition was a failure, end- ing in a retreat made horrible not only by the enemy in the rear, but by pestilence and heat. The disaster was a terrible disillusion for Napoleon. It ended his dream of an Ori- ental realm for himself, of a kingdom em- bracingthe whole Mediterranean for France. " I missed my fortune at St. Jean d'Acre," he told his brother Lucien afterward ; and again, " I think my imagination died at St. Jean d'Acre." The words are those of the man whose discouragement at a failure was as profound as his hope at success was high. As Napoleon entered Egypt from Syria, he learned that the second Turkish army was near the Bay of Aboukir. He turned against it and defeated it completely. In the exchange of prisoners made after the battle, a bundle of French papers fell into his hands. It was the first news he had had for ten months from France, and sad news it was : Italy lost, an invasion of Austrians and Russians threatening, the Directory discredited and tottering. If the Oriental empire of his imagination . BERTHIER. had fallen, might it not be that in Europe a kingdom awaited him? He decided to leave Egypt at once, and with the greatest secrecy prepared for his departure. The army was turned over to Kleber, and with four small vessels he sailed for France on the night of August 22, 1799. On October 1 6th he was in Paris. THE l8TH BRUMAIRE. For a long time nothing had been heard of Napoleon in France. The people said he had been exiled by the jealous Direct- ory. His disappearance into the Orient had all the mystery and fascination of an Eastern tale. His sudden reappearance had something of the heroic in it. He came like a god from Olympus, unheralded, but at the critical instant. The joy of the people, who at that day certainly preferred a hero to suffrage, was spontaneous and sincere. His journey from the coast to Paris was a triumphal march. Le retour du he'ros was the word in everybody's mouth. On every side the people cried : " You alone can save the country. It is perishing without you. Take the reins of government." At Paris he found the government wait- ing to be overthrown. " A brain and a sword " was all that was needed to carry out a coup d'etat organized while he was still in Africa. Everybody recognized him as the man for the hour. A large part of the military force in Paris was devoted to him. His two brothers, Lucien and Joseph, were in positions of influence, the former president of the Five Hundred, as one of the two chambers was called. All that was most distinguished in the political, mili- tary, legal, and artistic circles of Paris rallied to him. Among the men who supported him were Talleyrand, Sieyes, Kl.EllER. Che"nier, Roederer, Monge, Cambaceres, Moreau, Berthier, Murat. On the i8th Brumaire (the gth of No- vember), 1799, the plot culminated, and Napoleon was recognized as the temporary Dictator of France. NAPOLEON AND JOSEPHINE. The private sorrow to which Napoleon returned, was as great as the public glory. During the campaign in Egypt he had learned beyond a doubt that Josephine's coquetry had become open folly, and that a young officer, Hippolyte Charles, whom he had dismissed from the Army of Italy two years before, was installed at Malmai- son: The liaison was so scandalous that Gohier, the president of the Directory, advised Josephine to get a divorce from Napoleon and marry Charles. These rumors reached Egypt, and Na- poleon, in despair, even talked them over with Eugene de Beauharnais. The boy defended his mother, and for a time suc- ceeded in quieting Napoleon's resentment. At last, however, he learned in a talk with Junot that the gossip was true. He lost all control of himself, and declared he would have a divorce. The idea was aban- doned, but the love and reverence he had given Josephine were dead. From that time she had no empire over his heart, no power to inspire him to action or to enthu- siasm. When he landed in France from Egypt, Josephine, foreseeing a storm, started out to meet him at Lyons. Unfortunately she took one road and Napoleon another, and when he reached Paris at six o'clock in the morning he found no one at home. When Josephine arrived Napoleon refused to see her, and it was three days before he re- lented. Then his forgiveness was due to the intercession of Hortense and Eugene, to both of whom he was warmly attached. But if he consented to pardon, he could never give again the passionate affection which he once had felt for her. He ceased to be a lover, and became a commonplace, tolerant, indulgerit, bourgeois husband, upon whom his wife, in matters of impor- tance, had no influence. Josephine was hereafter the suppliant, 'but she never re- gained the noble kiagdom she had despised. RETURN OF PEACE. Napoleon's domestic sorrow weakened in no way his activity and vigor in public affairs. He realized that, if he would keep his place in the hearts and confidence of the people, he must do something to show his strength, and peace was the gift he pro- posed to make to the nation. When he returned he found a civil war raging in La Vendee. Before February he had ended it. All over France brigandage had made life and property uncertain. It was stopped by his new regime. Two foreign enemies only remained at war with France Austria and England. He offered them peace. It was refused. Nothing remained but to compel it. The Austrians were first engaged. They had two armies in the field ; one on the Rhine, against which Moreau was sent, the other in Italy now lost to France besieging the French shut up in Genoa. Moreau conducted the campaign in the Rhine countries with skill, fighting two successful battles, and driving his opponent from Ulm. Napoleon decided that he would him- self carry on the Italian campaign, but of that he said nothing in Paris. His army was quietly brought together as a reserve force ; then suddenly, on May 6, 1800, he left Paris for Geneva. Immediately his plan became evident. It was nothing else than to cross the Alps and fall upon the rear of the Austrians, then besieging Genoa. Such an undertaking^was a veritable coup de theatre. Its accomplishment was not less brilliant than its conception. Three principal passes lead from Switzerland ipto Italy : Mont Cenis, the Great Saint Ber- nard, and the Mount Saint Gothard. The last was already held by the Austrians. The first is the westernmost, and here Na- poleon directed the attention of General Melas, the Austrian commander. The cen- tral, or Mount Saint Bernard, Pass was left almost defenceless, and here the French army was led across, a passage surrounded by enormous difficulties, particularly for the artillery, which had to be taken to pieces and carried or dragged by the men. Save the delay which the enemy caused the French at Fort Bard, where five hun- dred men stopped the entire army, Napo- leon met with no serious resistance in en- tering Italy. Indeed, the Austrians treated the force with contempt, declaring that it was not the First Consul who led it, but an adventurer, and that the army was not made up of French, but of refugee Italians. This rumor was soon known. to be false. On June 2d Napoleon entered Milan. It was evident that a conflict was imminent, and to prepare his soldiers Bonaparte ad- dressed them : " Soldiers, one of our departments was in the power of the enemy ; consternation was in the south of France ; the greatest part of the Ligurian terri- tory, the most faithful friends of the Republic, had been invaded. The Cisalpine Republic had again become the grotesque plaything of the feudal regime. Soldiers, you march, and already the French terri- tory is delivered ! Joy and hope have succeeded in your country to consternation and fear. " You give back liberty and independence to the people of Genoa. You have delivered them from their eternal enemies. You are in the capital of the JVN01. Cisalpine. The enemy, terrified, no longer hopes for anything, except to regain its frontiers. You have taken possession of its hospitals, its magazines, its resources. "The first act of the campaign is terminated. Every day you hear millions of men thanking you for your deeds. "But shall it be said that French territory has been violated with impunity? Shall we allow an army which has carried fear into our families to return to its firesides ? Will you run with your arms ? Very well, march to the battle ; forbid their retreat ; tear from them the laurels of which they have taken possession ; and so teach the world that the curse of destiny is on the rash who dare insult the territory of the Great People. The result of all our efforts will be spotless glory, solid peace." Melas, the Austrian commander, had lost much time ; but finally convinced that it was really Bonaparte who had invaded Italy, and that he had actually reached Milan, he advanced into the plain of Marengo. He had with him an army of from fifty to sixty thousand men well supplied with artillery. Bonaparte, ignorant that so large a force was at Marengo, advanced into the plain with only a portion of his army. On June i4th Melas attacked him. Before noon the French saw that they had to do with the entire Austrian army. For hours the battle was waged furiously, but with constant loss on the side of the, French. In spite of the most intrepid fighting the army gave way. "At four o'clock in the afternoon," says a soldier who was present, "there remained in a radius of two leagues not over six thousand infantry, .a thousand horse, and six pieces of cannon. A third of our army was not in condition for battle. The lack of carriages to transport the sick made another third necessary for this painful task. Hunger, thirst, fatigue, had forced a great number to withdraw. The sharp-shooters for the most part had lost the direction of their regiments. " He who in these frightful circumstances i. would have said, 'In two hours we shall have gained the battle, made ten thousand prisoners, taken several generals, fifteen flags, forty cannons ; the enemy shall have delivered to us eleven fortified places and all the territory of beautiful Italy ; they will soon defile shamefaced before our ranks ; an armistice will suspend the plague of war and bring back peace into our country,' he, I say, who would have said that, would have seemed to insult our desperate situa- tion." The battle was won finally by the French, through the fortunate arrival of Desaix with reinforcements and the imperturbable courage of the commander-in-chief. Bona- parte's coolness was the marvel of those who surrounded him. "At the moment when the dead and the dying covered the earth, the Consul was constantly braving death. He gave his orders with his accustomed coolness, and saw the storm approach without seeming to fear it. Those who saw him, forgetting the danger that menaced them, said : ' What if he should be killed? Why does he not go back?' It is said that General Berthier begged him to do so. "Once General Berthier came to him to tell him that the army was giving way and that the retreat had commenced. Bona- parte said to him : ' General, you do not tell me that with sufficient coolness.' This greatness of soul, this firmness, did not leave him in the greatest dangers. When the Fifty-ninth Brigade reached the bat- tle-field the action was the hottest. The First Consul advanced toward them and cried: 'Come, my brave soldiers, spread your banners ; the moment has come to distinguish yourselves. I count on your courage to avenge your comrades.' At the moment that he pronounced these words, five men were struck down near him. He turned with a tranquil air towards the NAPOLEON AT THE BATTLE OF THE PYRAMIDS, Jl'LV 21, 1798. Engraved by Vallot in 1838. after painting by Gros (1810). The moment chosen by the artist is that when Napoleon addressed to his soldiers that short and famous harangue, "Soldiers, from the summit of these Pyramids forty cen- turies look down upon you." In the General's escort are Murat, his head bare and his sword clasped tightly : and after him. in order, Duroc. Sulkowski, Berthier. Junot. and Eugfene de Beauharnais, then sub-lieutenant, all on horse- back. On the right are Rampon, Desaix, Bertrand. and Lasalle. This picture was ordered for the Tuileries, and was exhibited first in 1810. Napoleon gave it to one of his generals, and it did not reappear in Paris until 1832. It is now in the gallery at Versailles. Gros regarded this picture as his best work, and himself chose Vallot to engrave it. FRANCE AT PEACE. enemy, and said: 'Come, my friends, charge them.' "I had curiosity enough to listen atten- tively to his voice, to examine his features. The Parisians were dazzled by the cam- paign. Of the passage of the Alps they said, " It is an achievement greater than Hannibal's ; " and they repeated how The most courageous man, the hero the "the First Consul had pointed his finger at most eager for glory, might have been over- the frozen summits, and they had bowed come in his situation without anyone blam- ing him. But he was not. In these fright- ful moments, when fortune seemed to desert him, he was still the Bonaparte of Arcola and Aboukir." When Desaix came up with his division, Bonaparte took an hour to ar- range for the final charge. During this time the Aus- trian artillery was thundering upon the army, each volley car- ry i n g away whole lines. The men re- ceived death without mo ing from the. places, and the ranks closed over the bodies of their com- rades. This deadly artillery even reached the cavalry, drawn up be- hind, as well as a large number of infantry who, encour- aged by De- saix's arrival, had hastened MEDALLION OF back to the field of honor. In spite of the horror of this preparation Bonaparte did not falter. When he was ready he led his army in an impetuous charge which overwhelmed the Austrians completely, though it cost the French one of their bravest generals, Desaix. It was a frightful struggle, but the perfection with which the final attack was planned, won the battle of Marengo and drove the Austrians from Italy. their heads." At the news of Marengo the streets were lit with " joy fires," and from wall to wall rang the cries of Vive la republique ! Vive le premier consul ! Vive /'arme'e ! The campaign against the Austrians was finished De- cember .3, 1800, by the battle of Ho hen linden, won by Mo- reau, and in February the treaty of Lune- v i 1 1 e estab- lished peace. England was slower in com- ing to terms, it not being until March, 1802, that she signed the treaty of Amiens. At last France was at peace with all the world. She hailed Napo- leon as h e r savior, and or- dered that the iSth Brumaire be celebrated throughout the republic as a solemn fete in his honor. The country The following inscription, written in French, by Dutertre, the official painter of the principal personages in the Egyptian expedi- tion, appears on the reverse side of this medallion, which frames one of the most precious gems of Napoleonic iconography. " I. Dutertre, made this drawing of the general in-chief from nature, on board the vessel ' L'Orient.' during the crossing of the expedition to Egypt in the year VII. (sic) of the Republic." A short time ago the drawing came into the possession of the Versailles Museum. saw in him something greater than a peacemaker. She was discovering that he was to be her lawgiver, for, while ending the wars, he had begun to bring order into the interior chaos which had so long tormented the French people, to reestablish the finances, the laws, the industries, to restore public works, to encourage the arts and sciences, even to harmonize the interests of rich and poor, of church and state. Pencil sketch by Baron Gros. Collection of Baron Larrey. This is a sketch cf the highest artistic and historical value. It has never before been published, and I owe the right of reproduction to the great kindness of Baron Larrey, ex-military-surgeon to Napoleon III., and son of Baron Larrey, surgeon-in-chief to the armies of Napoleon I. This drawing was presented to Baron Larrey by Gros himself. It was the first sketch, the germ, of the famous picture in the Louvre, also reproduced here. It seems that Baron Gros greatly modified his first design at the request of Denon, superintendent of the Beaux-Arts, who thought the picture too realistic, although heroic in idea and true to history. Thus it happened that in the final design Bonaparte is represented as merely touching- with the tips of his fingers the tumor of one of the plague-stricken, while in the original drawing (here reproduced) he clasps the body of an unfortunate victim in his arms with a movement of rare energy. I cannot help regretting that the great painter should have felt obliged to yield to the counsels and entreaties of Denon. A. D. CHAPTER VII. NAPOLEON AS STATESMAN AND LAWGIVER. THE FINANCES. THE 1NDUSTRIES.- THE PUBLIC WORKS. THE NEW CONSTITUTION. " Now we must rebuild, and, moreover, we must rebuild solidly," said Napoleon to his brother Lucien the day after the coup a Mat which had overthrown the Directory and made him the temporary Dictator of France. The first necessity was a new constitu- tion. In ten years three constitutions had been framed and adopted, and now the third had, like its predecessors, been de- clared worthless. At Napoleon's side was a man who had the draft of a constitution ready in his pocket. It had been promised him that, if he would aid in the i8th Bru- maire, this instrument should be adopted. This man was the Abbe Sieyes. He had been a prominent member of the Ccristit- uent Assembly, but, curiously enough, his fame there had been founded more on his silence and the air of mystery in which he enveloped himself than on anything he had done. The superstitious veneration which he had won, saved him even during the Terror, and he was accustomed to say laconically, when asked what he did in that period, "I lived." It was he who, when Napoleon was still in Egypt, had seen the necessity of * a g 131 : let O KLfiBER, 1753 OR 1754-1800. Engraved by G. Fiesinger, after portrait by Gue'rin. Jean-Baptist Kleber was born at Striiiburg i.ii 1754 (?). The son of a mason, he studied architecture for a time, but abandoned it to enter the military school of Munich, from which he went into the Austrian army. In 1783 he left the army to return to archi- tecture. In 1792 he joined the revolutionary army, and served first on the Rhine, later in the Vendee,, where he distinguished himself. Made general of division in the army of the North, Kleber won laurels, at Fleurus, Mons, Louvain, and Maastricht, and in the campaign of 1796. He was appointed commander- in-chief temporarily, but was recalled when about to enter Frankfort in 1797, the command being given to- Hoche. Disappointed, he resigned from the army. When Napoleon went to Egypt, he asked for Kleber. In all the battles of the campaign he showed his bravery and skill ; and when Napoleon left for France he transferred his command to him. The situation of the French army in Egypt soon became desperate, and Kleber was trying to negotiate with the English and Turks an honorable retirement, when Admiral Keith ordered him to give up his army as prisoners of war. Kleber published the letter in the army, with the words, " Soldiers, such insolence can be answered but by victories ; prepare for combat." At Heli- opolis, with eight thousand men, he met the Grand Vizir with eighty thousand, and completely conquered him. Soon after he put down a revolt in Cairo, and was beginning to reconquer and reorganize the: country when he was assassinated, June 14. 1800. " BUONAPARTE." Fiesinger engraver, after Guerin. Published " 29 Vende'tniaire, 1'an VII." (1799.) It: Dt this portrait that Taine writes : ' Look now at this portrait by GueVin, this lean body, these narrow shoulders in their uniform creased by his brusque motions, this neck enveloped in a high wrinkled cravat, these temples concealed by long hair falling straight over them, nothing to be seen but the face ; these hard features made prominent by strong contrasts of light and shade ; these cheeks as hollow as the interior angle of the eye ; these prominent cheek-bones ; this massive protruding chin ; these curving, mobile, attentive lips : these great, clear eyes deeply set under the overarching eyebrows ; this fixed, in- comprehensible look, sharp as a sword ; these two straight wrinkles which cross the forehead from the base of the nose like a furrow of continual anger and inflexible will." THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. head which crowned the edifice was called, did nothing but live at Versailles and draw a princely salary. Napoleon saw at once the weak points of the structure, but he saw how it could be re- arranged to serve a dic- tator. He demanded that the Senate be stripped of its power, and that the Grand Elector be replaced by a First Consul, to whom the executive force should be confided. Sieyes consented, and Napoleon was named -First Consul. The whole machin- ery of the government was now centred in one man. "The state, it was I," said Napoleon at St. Helena. The new constitution was founded on principles the very opposite of those for which the Revolution had been made, but it was the only hope there was of dragging France from the slough of anarchy and despair into which she had fallen. Napoleon undertook the work of reconstruc- tion which awaited him, with courage, energy, and amazing a military dictatorship, and had urged the audacity. He was forced to deal at once Directory to order Napoleon home to help with all departments of the nation's life him reorganize the government an order with the finances, the industries, the emigres, which was never received. the Church, public education, the codifica- Soon after the i8th Brumaire, Sieyes tion of the laws, presented his constitution. No more bun- gling and bizarre instrument for conducting the affairs of a nation was ever devised. Warned by the experience of the past ten " I.UC1EN BONAl'ARTE, PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL OF THE KIVE KINDRED, iSl'H BRUMAIRE, 1799.'" Lucien Bonaparte, born at Ajaccio, March 21, 1775, was educated in France, and returned to Corsica in 1792. Ardent revolutionist, he abandoned Paoli, and left Corsica for France. Obtaining a place at Saint Maximin, he became prominent as an agitator. Here he married Christine Boyer, his landlord's daughter. In 1795 Lucien left Saint Maximin, and soon after was made commissary to the Army of the North, but resigned the next year. The two years following he passed in Corsica, but went to Paris in 1798, on being elected deputy to the Council of Five Hundred. He soon became prominent as a speaker, and his house was a centre for the best literary society of the capital. He was made president of the Council of Five Hundred after Napoleon's return from Egypt, and aided in the coup d'etat of the i8th Brumaire. In the reor- ganization of the government Lucien was named Minister of the Interior, but he and Napoleon did not get on well, and he was sent as ambassador to Spain. Returning, he took an active part in the delicate work of the Concordat and Legion of Honor. Lucien was made senator after the Consulate for life was arranged, but he made a second marriage which displeased Napoleon. He left France, settling in Rome. THE FINANCES. The first question was one of money. years, he abandoned the ideas of 1789, and The country was literally bankrupt in declared that the power must come from 1799. The treasury was empty, and the above, the confidence from below. His government practised all sorts of make- system of voting took the suffrage from shifts to get money to pay those bills which the people ; his legislative body was com- could not be put off. One day, having to posed of three sections, each of which was send out a special courie r , it was obliged practically powerless. All the force of the to give him the receipts o r the opera to pay government was centred in a senate of aged his expenses. And, again, it was in such men. The Grand Elector, as the figure- a tight pinch that it was on the poip f of NAPOLEON AND GAUDIN. sending the gold coin in the Cabinet of Medals to the mint to be melted. Loans could not be negotiated ; government paper was worthless ; stocks were down to the lowest. One of the worst features of the situation was the condition of the taxes. The assessments were as arbitrary as before the Revolution, and they were collected with greater difficulty. To select an honest, capable, and well- 57 known financier was Napoleon's first act. The choice he made was wise a Monsieur Gaudin, afterward the Duke de Gae'te, a quiet man, who had the confidence of the people. Under his management credit was restored, the government was able to make the loans necessary, and the department of finance was reorganized in a thorough fashion. Napoleon's gratitude to Monsieur Gaudin GENERAL BONAPARTE AT THE C<">rNCIL OF THE FIVE HUNDRED AT SAINT-CLOUD, NOVEMBER IO, 1799 (igTH BRUMAIRE). By Franois Bouchot. On the ioth of November the Anciens assembled in the gallery of the chateau, and the Five Hundred in the orangery. Bonaparte presented himself first at the bar of the A nczens, and then betook himself to the Council of Five Hundred, presided over by his brother Lucien. He entered with bared head, accompanied by only four grenadiers. Hardly had he crossed the threshold when cries of " hors de loi" were heard. In vain he tried to speak ; his bitterest enemies advanced against him with clinched fists and threatening looks, and covered him with insults. The grenadiers whom he had left at the door ran up, and, thrusting aside the deputies, seized him by the middle. Lucien quitted the chair, and coming to the side of his brother pronounced the dissolution of the Assembly. Soon after, the battal- ion of grenadiers, with fixed bayonets, advanced along the full width of the orangery, and so dispersed the deputies. Such was the famous scene which Bouchot has represented with conscientious regard for history in this superb canvas, now in the Versailles gallery. A. D. 58 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. was lasting. Once when asked to change nothing but fresh water, whilst with my him for a more brilliant man, he said : good Gaudin 1 can always rely on having " I fully acknowledge all your protigi! good crown pieces." is worth ; but it might easily happen that, The famous Bank of France dates from with all his intelligence, he would give me this time. It was founded under Napo- " INSTALLATION OF THE COUNCIL OF STATE AT THE PALACE OF THE PETIT I.r.XEMBOl'KG, DECEMBER 29, 1799. Dy Auguste Conder. The Councillors of State having assembled in the hall which had been arranged for ;he occasion, the First Consul opened the seance and heard the oath taken by the sectional presidents Boulay de la Meurthe (legislation), Brune (war), Deferment (finances), Ganteaume (marine), Roederer (interior). The First Consul drew up and signed two proclamations, to the French people and to the army. The Second Consul, Cambac^res, and the Third Consul, Lebrun, were present at the meeting. Locre, secretaire-general du Conseil d^Etat, conducted the f races-verbal. This picture is at Versailles. REFORM OF THE TAXES. 59 Icon's personal direction, and he never A great improvement was that the taxes ceased to watch over it jealously. became fixed and regular. Napoleon wished Most important of all the financial meas- that each man- should know what he had ures was the reorganization of the system to pay out each year. " True civil liberty of taxation. The First Consul insisted depends on the safety of property," he told that the taxes must meet the whole ex- his Council of State. " There is none in a pense of the nation, save war, which must country where the rate of taxation is pay for itself ; and he so ordered affairs changed every year. A man who has three that never after his administration was thousand francs income does not know how fairly begun was a deficit known or a loan much he will have to live on the next year, made. This was done, too, without the His whole substance may be swallowed up people feeling the burden of taxation. In- by the taxes." deed, that burden was so much lighter Nearly the whole revenue came from in- under his administration than it had been direct taxes applied to a great number of under the old regime, that peasant and articles. In case of a war which did not workman, in most cases, probably did not know they were being taxed. " Before 1789," says Taine, " out of one hundred francs of net revenue, the workman gave fourteen to his seignor, fourteen to the clergy, fifty- three to the state, and kept only eigh- teen ornineteen for himself. Since 1800, from one hun- dred francs income he pays nothing to the seignor or the Church, and he pays to the state, the depart me nt, and the commune but twenty-one francs, leaving seventy-nine in his pocket." And such was the method and care with which this system was administered, that the state received more BONAPARTE, K1RST CONSUL. One of the best portraits of the First Consul the truest of all, perhaps. Unlike Bouillon, Van Bree, Geliotte, Isabey, Boilly painted him in his real aspect, without any striving after the ideal. This is really the determined little Corsican, tor- mented by ambition and a thirst for conquest. This fine por- trait has been admirably etched by Duplessis-Bertaux. A. D. wine. pay its way, Napo- leon proposed to raise each of these a few centimes. The nation would surely prefer this, to paying it to the Russians or Aus- trians. When pos- sible the taxes were reduced. " Better leave the money in the hands of the citizens than lock it up in a cellar, as they do in Prussia." He was cautious that extra taxes should not come on the very poor, if it could be avoided. A suggestion to charge the vege- table and fish sell- ers for their stalls came before him. "The public square, like water, ought to be free. It is quite enough that we tax salt and It would become the city than twice as much as it had before. The of Paris much more to think of restoring enormous sums which the police and tax- the corn market." collectors had appropriated now went to An important part of his financial policy the state. Here is but one example of was the rigid economy which was insisted numbers which show how minutely Napo- on in all departments. If a thing was Icon guarded this part of the finances. It bought, it must be worth what was paid is found in a letter to Fouch, the chief of for it. If a man held a position, he must police : do its duties. Neither purchases norposi- " What happens at Bordeaux happens at Turin, at tions could be made unless reasonable and Spa, at Marseilles, etc. The police commissioners useful. This was in direct opposition to derive immense profits from the gaming-tables. My the old regime, of which waste, idleness, intention is that the towns shall reap the benefit of d parasites were the chief characteristics, the tables. I shall employ the two hundred thousand , . . ,. francs paid by the tables of Bordeaux in building a Tne saving in expenditure was almost m- bridge or a canal. . . ." credible. Atrip to Fontainebteau, which 6o THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. cost Louis XVI. four hundred thousand dollars, Napoleon would make, in no less state, for thirty thousand dollars. .The expenses of the civil household, which amounted to five million dollars under the old regime, were now cut down to six hundred thousand dollars, though the elegance was no less. THE INDUSTRIES. A master who gave such strict attention to the prosperity of his kingdom would not, of course, overlook its industries. In fact, they were one of Napoleon's chief cares. His policy was one of protection. He would have France make everything she wanted, and sell to her neighbors, but never buy from them. To stimulate the manufactories, which in 1799 were as nearly bankrupt as the public treasury, he visited the factories himself to learn their needs, He gave liberal orders, and urged, even commanded, his associates to do the same. At one time, anxious to aid the batiste factories of Flanders, he tried to force Josephine to give up cotton goods and to set the fashion in favor of the batistes ; but she made such an outcry that he was obliged to abandon the idea. For the same reason he wrote to his sister Eliza : " I beg that you will allow your court to wear nothing but silks and cambrics, and that you will exclude all cottons and muslins, in order to favor French industry." Frequently he would take goods on con- signment, to help a struggling factory. Rather than allow a manufactory to be idle, he would advance a large sum of money, and a quantity of its products would be put under government control. After the battle of Eylau, Napoleon sent one million six hundred thousand francs to Paris, to be used in this way. To introduce cotton-making into the country was one of his chief industrial am- bitions. At the beginning of the century it was printed in all the factories of France, but nothing more. He proposed to the Council of State to prohibit the importa- tion of cotton thread and the woven goods. There was a strong opposition, but he car- ried his point. "As a result," said Napoleon to Las Cases complacently, " we possess the three branches, to the immense advantage of our population and to the detriment and sorrow of the English ; which proves that, in administration as in war, one must ex- ercise character. ... I occupied my- -sclf no less in encouraging silks. As Emperor, and King of Italy, I counted one hundred and twenty millions of income from the silk harvest." In a similar way he encouraged agricul- ture ; especially was he anxious that France should raise all her own articles of diet. He had Berthollet look into maple and tur- nip sugar, and he did at last succeed in persuading the people to use beet sugar ; though he never convinced them that Swiss tea equalled Chinese, or that chicory was as good as coffee. PUBLIC WORKS. The works he insisted should be carried on in regard to roads and public buildings were of great importance. There was need that something be done. " It is impossible to conceive, if one had not been a witness of it before and after the i8th Brumaire [said the chancellor Pasquier], of the widespread ruin wrought by the Revolution. . . . There were hardly two or three main roads [in France] in a fit condition for traffic ; not a single one was there, perhaps, wherein was not found some obstacle that could not be surmounted without peril. With regard to the ways of internal communication, they had been indefinitely suspended. The navigation of rivers and canals was no longer feasible. " In all directions, public buildings, and those monuments which represent the splendor of the state, were falling into decay. It must fain be admitted that if the work of destruction had been prodigious, that of restoration was no less so. Everything was taken hold of at one and the same time, and every- thing progressed with a like rapidity. Not only was it resolved to restore all that required restoring in various parts of the country, in all parts of the public service, but new, grand, beautiful and useful works were decided upon, and many were brought to a happy termination. This certainly constitutes one of the most brilliant sides of the consular and imperial regime." In Paris alone vast improvements were made. Napoleon began the Rue de Rtvo- li, built the wing connecting the Tuileries and the Louvre, erected the triumphal arch of the Carrousel, the Arc de Triomphe at the head of the Champs Elyse"es, the Col- umn Vendome, the Madeleine, began the Bourse, built the Pont d'Austerlitz, and ordered, commenced, or finished, a number of minor works of great importance to the city. The markets interested him particu- larly. " Give all possible care to the con- struction of the markets and to their healthfulness, and to the beauty of the Halle-aux-bl^s and of the Halle-aux-vins. The people, too, must have their Louvre." The works undertaken outside of Paris in France, and in the countries under her rule in the time that Napoleon was in power, were of a variety and extent which PUBLIC I IMPROVEMENTS. 6r would be incredible, if every traveller in Europe did not have the evidence of them still before his eyes. The mere enu- meration of these works and of the industrial achievements of Napo- leon, made by Las Cases, reads like a fairy story. " You wish to know the treasures of Napoleon ? They are immense, it is true, but they are all ex- posed to light. They are the noble harbors of Ant- werp and Flushing, which are capable of containing the largest fleets, and of protecting them against the ice from the sea ; the hydraulic works at Dun- kirk, Havre, and Nice ; the immense harbor of Cherbourg ; the maritime works at Venice ; the beautiful roads from Ant- werp to Amsterdam, from Mayence to Metz, from Bordeaux to Bayonne ; the passes of the Simplon, of Mont Cenis, of Mount (ienevre, of the Corniche, which open a communica- tion through the Alps in four different directions, and which exceed in gran- deur, in boldness, and in skill of execution, all the works of the Romans (in that alone you will find eight hundred millions) ; the roads from the Pyre- nees to the Alps, from Parma to Spezia, from Savona to Piedmont ; the bridges of Jena, Auster- litz, Des Arts, Sevres, Tours, Roanne, Lyons, Turin ; of the Isere, of the Durance, of Bordeaux, of Rouen, etc.; the canal which connects the Rhine with the Rhone by the Doubs, and thus unites the North Sea with the Medi- terranean; the canal which joins the Scheldt with the Somme, and thus joins Paris and Amsterdam ; the canal which unites the Ranee to the Vilaine ; the canal of Aries ; that of Pavia, and the canal of the Rhine ; MOREAU, ABOUT Engraved by Elizabeth G. Berhan, after Gue'rin. Moreau (Jean- Victor) was born at Morlaix in 1763. Studied law at Renncs. In 1792 entered the army of Dumouriez. Was made general of brigade in 1793, and general of division in 1794. Two years later received the command of the Army of the Rhine and Moselle, which he conducte'd with rare skill. Having seized a correspondence of the Prince of Conde" and Pichegru, which proved the latter a conspirator, he con- cealed it out of friendship for Pichegru until after the i8th Fructidor, when the lat- ter was arrested. For this he was retired from service for eighteen months, but returned to the Army of Italy in 1799. Returning to Paris in 1799, ne first met Bonaparte, whom he aided on the i8th Brumaire. Moreau, as a reward for his services, was named general-in-chief of the Army of the Rhine. His campaign at the head of his new army was brilliant, ending in the great victory at Hohen- linden on December 3, 1800. Returning to Paris, he became the centre of a faction discontented with Bonaparte, and refused the title of marshal and the decoration of the Legion of Honor which the latter offered him. He was approached by agents of Louis XVIII., and was supposed to be connected indirectly with the Georges plot. Was arrested, tried, and exiled for two years. He retired to the United States, where at first he travelled extensively. Moreau settled in this coun- try, leading a quiet life until 1813, when he was invited by the Emperor Alexan- der to return to Europe. With Bernadotte he prepared the plans of the campaign of 1813 and 1814, and it was by his advice that the allies refused to give general battle to Napoleon. At Dresden, on August 27, 1813, he was mortally wounded : it is said, by a French bullet. the draining of the marshes of Bourgoin, of the Cotentin, of Rochefort ; the rebuilding of the greater part of the churches de- stroyed by the Revolution ; the building of others; theinstitution of numerous estab- 62 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. lishments of industry for the suppression of mendicity ; the gallery at the Louvre ; the construction of public warehouses, of the Bank, of the canal of the Ourcq ; the distribution of water in the city of Paris ; of many hundreds of manufactories of cotton, for spinning and for weaving, which employ several millions of workmen ; funds accumulated to establish upwards of four hundred manufactories of sugar from NAPOLEON CROSSING THE GKEAT ST. BERNARD, l8oo. Engraved by Francois, after a picture by Delaroche, painted in !8 4 8, published in 1852 by P. & D. - '' The Queen of England possesses at Osborne a reduction of this portrait made Colnaghisco, London, by Delaroche himself." the numerous drains, the quays, the em- bellishments, and the monuments of that large capital ; the works for the embellish- ment of Rome ; the reestablishment of the manufactures of Lyons ; the creation beet-root, for the consumption of part of France, and which would have furnished sugar at the same price as the West Indies, if they had continued to receive encourage- ment for only four years longer ; the sub- NAPOLEON THE GREAT CROSSING THE MOUNT ST. BERNARD, MAY, l8dO. Engraved by Antonio Gilbert in 1809, under the direction of Longhi, after portrait painted by David in 1805. Dedicated to the Prince Eugene Napoleon of France, Viceroy of Italy. It was soon after his return from Marengo that Napoleon expressed a wish to be painted by David. The artist had long desired this work, and seized the opportunity eagerly. He asked the First Consul when he would pose for him. " Pose i " said Bonaparte. " Do you suppose the great men of antiquity posed for their portraits ? " " But I paint you for your time, for men who have seen you. They would like to have it like you." 'Like me! It is not the perfection of the features, a pimple on the nose, which makes resemblance. It is the character of the face that should be represented. No one cares whether the portraits of great men look like them or not. It is enough that their genius shines from the picture." " I have never considered it in that way. But you are right, Citizen Consul. You need not pose : I will paint you without th=t." David went to breakfast daily after this with Napoleon, in order to study his face, and the Consul put at his service all the garments he had worn at MarengD. It is told that David mounted Napoleon on a mule for this picture, but that the General demurred. He sprang upon his horse, and, making him rear, said to the artist, -' Faint me ths ** THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. stitution of woad for indigo, which would have been at last brought to a state of perfection in France, and obtained as good and as cheap as the indigo from the colonies', numerous manufactories for all kinds of objects of art, etc.; fifty millions expended in repairing and beautifying the palaces belonging to the Crown ; sixty millions in furniture for the palaces belong- ing to the Crown in France, in Holland, at Turin, and at Rome ; sixty millions of diamonds for the Crown, all purchased with Napoleon's money ; the Regent (the only diamond that was left belonging to the former diamonds of the Crown) with- drawn from the hands of the Jews at Berlin, in whose hands it had been left as a pledge for three millions. The Napoleon Museum, valued at upwards of four hun- dred millions, filled with objects legiti- mately acquired, either by moneys or by treaties of peace known to the whole world, by virtue of which the chefs-axuvre it contains were given in lieu of territory or of contributions. Several millions amassed to be applied to the encouragement of agriculture, which is the paramount con- sideration for the interest of France ; the introduction into France of merino sheep, etc. These form a treasure of several thou- sand millions which will endure for ages." Napoleon himself looked on these achieve- ments as his most enduring monument. " The allied powers cannot take from me here- after," he told O'Meara, "the great public works I have executed, the roads which I made over the Alps, and the seas which I have united. They cannot place their feet to improve where mine have not been before. They cannot take from me the code of laws which I formed, and which will go down to posterity." CHAPTER VIII. RETURN OF THE EMIGRES. THE CONCORDAT. LEGION OF HONOR. CODE NAPOLEON. THE EMIGRES. BUT there were wounds in the French nation more profound than those caused by lack of credit, by neglect and corrup- tion. The body which in 1789 made up France had, in the last ten. years, been violently and horribly wrenched asunder. One hundred and fifty thousand of the richest, most cultivated, and most capable of the population had been stripped of wealth and position, and had emigrated to foreign lands. Napoleon saw that if the emigre's could be reconciled, he at once converted a pow- erful enemy into a zealous friend. In spite of the opposition of those who had made the Revolution and gained their positions through it, he accorded an amnesty to the Emigre's, which included the whole one hun- dred and fifty thousand, with the exception of about one thousand, and this number, it was arranged, should be reduced to five hundred in the course of a year. More, he provided for their wants. Most of the smaller properties confiscated by the Revo- lution had been sold, and Napoleon insisted that those who had bought them from the state should be assured of their tenure ; but in case a property had not been disposed of, he returned it to the family, though rarely in full. In case of forest lands, not over three hundred and seventy-five -acres were given back. Gifts and positions were given to many emigre's, so that the majority were able to live in ease. A valuable result of this policy of recon- ciliation was the amount of talent, expe- rience, and culture which he gained for the government. France had been run for ten years by country lawyers, doctors, and pamphleteers, who, though they boasted civic virtue and eloquence, and though they knew their Plutarchs and Rousseaus by heart, had no practical sense, and little or no experience. The return of the Emigre's gave France a body of trained diplomats, judges, and thinkers, many of whom were promptly admitted to the government. THE CHURCH. More serious than the amputation of the aristocracy had been that of the Church. The Revolution had torn it from the nation, had confiscated its property, turned its cathedrals into barracks, its convents and seminaries into town halls and prisons, sold its lands, closed its schools and hospitals. It had demanded an oath of the clergy which had divided the body, and caused thousands to emigrate. Not content with this, it had REESTABLISHMENT OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. tried to supplant the old religion, first with a worship of the Goddess of Reason, after- wards with one of the Supreme Being. But the people still loved the Catholic Church. The mass of them kept their 65 but the decade,' 2 said a workman once, we change our shirts on Sunday." Napoleon understood the popular heart, and he proposed the reestablishment of the Catholic Church. The Revolutionists, even "NAPOLEONE BUONAPARTE, FIRST CONSUL OF FRANCE." l8oO. Painted by Masquerier, who visited Paris in 1800. where he made a portrait of Napoleon. " This, on being exhibited in England, where it was the first authentic portrait of the emperor, proved a source of considerable gain to the painter." The portrait was engraved, soon after his return to London, by C. Turner. crucifixes in their houses, told their beads, observed fast days. No matter how severe a penalty was attached to the observance of Sun'day instead of the day which had replaced it, called the " decade," at heart the people remembered it. "We rest on his warmest friends among the generals, opposed it. Infidelity was a cardinal point in the creed of the majority of the new regime. They not only rejected the Church, they ridiculed it. Rather than restore Catholicism, they advised Protestantism. 66 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. "But," declared Napoleon, " France is not Protestant ; she is Catholic." In the Council of State, where the ques- tion was argued, he said : " My policy is to govern men as the greatest number wish to be governed. ... I carried on the war of Vendee by becoming a Catholic ; I estab- lished myself in Egypt by becoming a Mussulman ; I won over the priests in Italy by becomingjUltramontane. If I governed Jews I should reestablish the temple of Solomon, the sovereignty of the people should be under- stood." Evidently this was a very differ- ent way of under- standing that famous doctrine from that which had been in vogue, which consisted in forc- ing the people to accept what each idealist thought was best, without consulting their prejudices or feelings. In spite of opposi- tion, Napoleon's will prevailed, and in the spring of 1802 the Con- cordat was signed. This treaty between the Pope and France is still in force in France. It is thus, I think, that "N. BONAPARTE, LUNEVILLE, AN IX. the government and army, but undoubtedly it was one of the most statesmanlike meas- ures carried out by Napoleon. " The joy of the overwhelming majority of France silenced even the boldest mal- contents," says Pasquier ; "it became evi- dent that Napoleon, better than those who surrounded him, had seen into the depths of the nation's heart." It is certain that in reestablishing the Church Napoleon did not yield to any religious prejudice, although the Catholic Church was the one he preferred. It was purely a question of policy. In ar- ranging the Con- cordat he might have secured more liberal measures measures in which hebelieved but he refused them. " Do you wish me to manufacture a religion of caprice for my own special use, a religion that would be nobody's? I do not so understand matters. What I want is the old Catho- lic religion, the only one which is im- bedded in every heart, and from which it has never been torn. This re- ligion alone can con- ciliate hearts in my favor ; it alone can smooth away all ob- stacles." Engraver signs U. P. It makes the __.._ e Catholic Church In discussing the state church, allows the government the subject at St. Helena he said to Las to name the bishops, compels it to pay the Cases : salaries of the clergy, and to furnish cathe- drals and churches for public worship, " When I came to the head of affairs, I had already which, however, remain national property. [ ed certain ^ n the great principles which ,-ni A j j j / ii hold society together. I had weighed all the im- The Concordat provided for the absolu- portance O f religion ; I was persuaded of it, and I tion of the priests who had married in the had resolved to reestablish it. You would scarcely Revolution, restored Sunday, and made believe in the difficulties that I had to restore Catholi- legal holidays of certain fete days. This cism - l would have been followed much more will- j . i < mely if I had unfurled the banner of Protestantism, arrangement was not made at the price of It is sure that in the disorder to which T intolerance towards Other bodies. 1 he succeeded, in the ruins where I found myself, I could French government protects and contrib- choose between Catholicism and Protestantism. And Utes towards the support of all religions it is true that at that moment the disposition was in Within its bounds, Catholic, Protestant, favor of the latter. But outside the fact thatl really T ' clung to the religion in which I had been born, I had Jew, or Mussulman. the highest motives to decide me. By proclaiming The Concordat was ridiculed by many ill Protestantism, what would I have obtained? I :;T\ " N. Bonaparte, NAPOLEON WHILE FIRST CONSUL OF FRANCE. Consul de la Re'publique Fran9aise." Engraved by Mercohy/j, after Dalbe. should have created in France two great parties about equal, when I wished there should be longer but one. I should have excited the fury of religious quarrels, when the enlightenment of the age and my desire was to make them disappear altogether. These two parties in tearing each other to pieces would have annihilated France and rendered her the slave of Europe, when I was ambitious of making her its mistress. With Catholicism I arrived much more surely at my great results. Within, at home, the great number would absorb the small, and I promised myself to treat with the latter so liberally that it would soon have no motive for knowing the difference. " Without, Catholicism saved me the Pope ; and with my influences and our forces in Italy I did not despair sooner or later, by one way or another, of finishing by ruling the Pope myself." EDUCATION. When the Church fell in France, the whole system of education went down with her. The Revolutionary govern- ments tried to remedy the condition, but beyond many plans and speeches little had GliANU KEVIEW BY THE FIRST CONSUL IN THE COURT OF THE TUILERIES. been done. Napoleon allowed the religious bodies to reopen their schools, and thus primary instruction was soon provided again ; and he founded a number of sec- ondary and special schools. The greatest of his educational undertakings was the organization of the University. This in- stitution was centralized in the head of the state as completely as every other Napoleonic institution. It exists to-day but little changed a most efficient body, in spite of its rigid state control. This university did nothing for woman. " I do not think we need trouble our- selves with any plan of instruction for young females," Napoleon told the Coun- cil. " They cannot be brought up better than by their mothers. Public education is not suitable for them, because they are never called upon to act in public. Man- ners are all in all to them, and marriage is all they look to. In times past the monastic life was open to women ; they espoused God, and, though society gained little by that alliance, the parents gained by pocketing the dowry." It was with the education of the daugh- ters of soldiers, civil functionaries, and members of the Legion of Honor, who had died and left their children unprovided for, that he concerned himself, establishing schools of which the well-known one at St. Denis is a model. The rules were pre- pared by Napoleon himself, who insisted that the girls should be taught all kinds of housework and needlework everything, in fact, which would make them good housekeepers and honest women. The military schools were also reorgan- ized -at this time. Remembering his own experience at the cole. Militaire, Napoleon arranged that the severest economy should be practised in them, and that the pupils should learn to do everything for them- selves. They even cleaned, bedded, and shod their own horses. THE LEGION OF HONOR. The destruction of the old system of privileges and honors left the government without any means of rewarding those who rendered it a service. Napoleon presented a law for a Legion of Honor, under control of the state, which should admit to its membership only those who had done some- thing of use to the public. The service might be military, commercial, artistic, humanitarian ; no limit was put on its nature ; anything which helped France in any way was to be rewarded by member- ship in the proposed order. In fact, it was "NAPOLEON REVIEWING THE CONSULAR GUARDS IN THE COURT OF THE TUILER1ES." l8. Engraved in London, by C. Turner, after a painting by J. Masquerier, made during his visit to Paris in 1800. A similar picture, the Revue du Decadi, was painted by Isabey and Carle Vernet, and engraved by Mecou. Masson considers Napoleon's face finer at this time than at any other period. the most democratic distinction possible, since the same reward was given for all classes of services and to all classes of people. Now the Revolutionary spirit spurned all distinction ; and as free discussion was allowed on the law, a severe arraignment of it was made. Nevertheless, it passed. It immediately became a power in the hands of the First Consul, and such it has re- mained until to-day in the government. Though it has been frequently abused, and never, perhaps, more flagrantly than by the present Republic, unquestionably the French " red button " is a decoration of which to be proud. THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. CODIFICATION OF THE LAWS. lieved justly that the greatest benefit he could render France would be to give her The greatest civil achievement of Napo- a complete and systematic code. He or- Up ganized the force for this gigantic task, Icon was the codification of the laws. to the Revolution, the laws of France had and pushed revision with unflagging energy! NAI'ULEON WHILE HKST CONSUL OK FRANCE. " Napoleon Bonaparte, Premier Consul de la Re'publique Fran9aise." Engraved by an English engraver, Dickinson, after a portrait by Gros. The original picture was given to the Second Consul, Cambace'res, by the First Consul, Bonaparte. been in a misty, incoherent condition, feu- dal in their spirit, and by no means uniform in their application. The Constituent As- sembly had ordered them revised, but the work had only been begun. Napoleon be- His part in the work was interesting and important. After the laws had been well digested and arranged in preliminary bodies, they were submitted to the Council of State. It was in the discussion before THE COUNCIL OF STATE. this body that Napoleon took part. That a man of thirty-one, brought up as a soldier, and having no legal training, could follow the discussions of such a learned and serious body as Napoleon's Council of State always was, seems incredible. In fact, he prepared for each session as thor- oughly as the law-makers themselves. His habit was to talk over, beforehand generally, with Cambaceres and Portalis, two legislators of great learning and clear- ness of judgment, all the matters which were to come up. ''He exam- ined each ques- tion by itself," says Roederer, " inquiring into all the authori- ties, times, ex- periences ; de- manding to know how i t had been under ancient juris- prudence, under Louis XIV., or Frederick the Great. When a bill was p r e - sented to the First Consul, he rarely failed to ask these ques- tions : Is this bill complete ? Does it cover every case? Why have you not thought of this ? Is that necessary ? Is it right or use- ful? What is done nowadays and elsewhere?" At night, after he had gone to bed, he would read or have read to him authorities on the subject. Such was his capacity for grasping an idea, that he would come to the Council with a perfectly clear notion of the subject to be treated, and a good idea of its historical development. Thus he could follow the most erudite and philo- sophical arguments, and could take part in them. He stripped them at once of all conven- tional phrases and learned terms, and stated clearly what they meant. He had no use for anything but the plain meaning. By "NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE, FIRST CONSUL." 1802. Painted in 1802 by T. Phillips, Esq , R.A. Engraved by C. Turner. thus going directly to the practical sense of a thing, he frequently cleared up the ideas of the revisers themselves. In framing the laws, he took care that they should be worded so that everybody could understand them. Thus, when a law relating to liquors was being prepared, he urged that wholesale and retail should be denned in such a way that they would be definite ideas to the people. " Pot and/>// must be inserted," he said. " There is no objection to those words. An excise act isn't an epic poem." Napoleon in- s i s t e d on the greatest free- dom of speech in the discus- sions on the laws, just as he did on " going straight to the point and not wasting time on idle talk." This clear-headed- ness, energy, and grasp of subject, e x er- c i s e d over a body of really remarkable men, developed the Council until its discus- sions became fa- mous through- out Europe. One of its wisest members, Chan- cellor Pasquier, says of Napo- leon's direction, that " it was of such a nature as to enlarge the sphere of one's ideas, and to give one's faculties all the development of which they were capable. The highest legislative, administrative, and sometimes even politi- cal matters were taken up in it (the Coun- cil). Did we not see, for two consecu- tive winters, the sons of foreign sovereigns come and complete their education in its midst ?" It was the genius of the head of the state, however, which was the most impres- sive feature of the Council of State. De Molleville, a former minister of Louis XVI., said once to Las Cases : THE FIRST CONSUL AND MADAME BONAPARTE VISITING THE MANUFACTORIES OF ROUEN, NOVKMBER, 1802. Sepia sketch, measuring not less than sixty-six inches by forty-eight ; one of the most important works of J. 14. Isabey. The First Consul, accompanied by Madame Bonaparte, left Paris October 28, 1802, in order to visit the important factories of the department of Seine-Infe'rieure. In his journey to Normandy, Napoleon wished to inspect all the public establishments : the hospitals, workyards, wharves, and manufactories of all kinds. He left every- where behind him marks of his kindness, generosity, and sense of justice. Isabey's beautiful sketch represents the moment when the First Consul and Josephine are visiting the manufactory of the Brothers SeVene. They pre- sented to him an old man who had worked there for fifty years. The First Consul received him kindly, accorded him a pension, and ordered to be admitted to the Prytantfe (military school) his grandson, whose father had been killed in the army. This sepia, which unfortunately becomes more and more discolored by the sun, was exhibited in the Salon of 1804. It is now in the Versailles collection. A. D. " It must be admitted that your Bonaparte, your Napoleon, was a very extraordinary man. We were far from understanding him on the other side of the water. We could not refuse the evidence of his vic- tories and his invasions, it is true ; but Genseric, Attila, Alaric had done as much ; so he made more of an impression of terror on me than of admiration. But when I came here and followed the discussions on the civil code, from that moment I had nothing but profound veneration for him. But where in the world had he learned all that ? And then every day I discovered something new in him. Ah, sir, what a man you had there ! Truly, he was a prodigy." The modern reader who looks at France and sees how her University, her special schools, her hospitals, her great honorary legion, her treaty with the Catholic Church, her code of laws, her Bank the vital ele- ments of her life, in short are as they came from Napoleon's brain, must ask, with De Molleville, How did he do it he a foreigner, born in a half-civilized island, reared in a military school, without diplo- matic or legal training, without the pres- tige of name or wealth ? How could he make a nation? How could he be other than the barbaric conqueror the English and the Smigrh first thought him ? Those who look at Napoleon's achieve- ments, and are either dazzled or horrified by them, generally consider his power su- perhuman. They call it divine or diabolic, according to the feeling he inspires in them ; but, in reality, the qualities he showed in his career as a statesman and lawgiver are very human ones. His stout grasp on sub- jects ; his genius for hard work ; his power of seeing everything that should be done, and doing it himself ; his unparalleled au- dacity, explain his civil achievements. The comprehension he had of questions of government was really the result of serious thinking. He had reflected from his first days at Brienne ; and the active interest he had taken in the Revolution of 1789 had made him familiar with many so- cial and political questions. His career in Italy, which was almost as much a diplo- matic as a military career, had furnished NAPOLEON WHILE FIRST CONSUL OF FRANCE. " Bonaparte, I er Consul de la Rep. Franc." Engraved in 1801 by Audouin, after a design by Bouillon. him an experience upon which he had founded maay notions. In his dreams "of becoming an Oriental lawgiver he had planned a system of government of which he was to be the centre. Thus, before the i8th Brumaire made him the Dictator of France, he had his ideas of centralized government all formed, just as, before he crossed the Great Saint Bernard, he had fought, over and over, the battle of Ma- rengo, with black- and red-headed pins stuck into a great map of Italy spread out on his study floor. His habit of attending to everything himself explains much of his success. No detail was too small for him, no task too THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. ... NAPOLEON IN " Buonaparte." Drawn from the life by T. Phillips, Esq., R.A., in 1802. Engraved by Edwards. menial. If a thing needed attention, no matter whose business it was, he looked after it. Reading letters once before Madame Junot, she said to him that such work must be tiresome, and advised him to give it to a secretary. " Later, perhaps," he said. " Now it is impossible ; I must answer for all. It is not at the beginning of a return to order that I can afford to ignore a need, a demand." He carried out this policy literally. When he went on a journey, he looked personally after every road, bridge, public building, he passed, and his let- ters teemed with orders about repairs here, restorations there. He" looked after individuals in the same way ; ordered a pen- sion to this one, a position to that one, even dictating how the gift should be made known so as to offend the least possi- ble the pride of the recipi- ent. When it came to foreign pol- icy, he told his diplomats how they should look, whether it should be grave or gay, whether they should discuss the opera or the political situation. The cost of the soldiers' shoes, the kind of box Joseph- ine took at the opera, the style of architecture for the Made- leine, the amount of stock left on hand in the silk factories, the wording of the laws, all was his business. He thought of the flowers to be scattered daily on the tomb of General Re"gnier, suggested the idea of a battle hymn to Rouget de 1'Isle, told the artists what expression to give him in their portraits, what accessories to use in their battle pieces, ordered everything, verified everything. "Beside him," said those who looked on in amazement, "the most punc- tilious clerk would have been a bungler." Without an extraordinary capacity for work, no man could have done this. Napo- leon would work until eleven o'clock in the evening, and be up again at three in the morning. Fre- quently he slept but an hour, and came Engraved by J. B. Massard. after J. H. Point. Below the portrait is printed in French and English the following legend : " His name will be renowned through all Europe and Egypt for his valor in combat, and yet more so for his wisdom in counsel." SIGNING OF CONCORDAT. By GeYard. The original is at Versailles. back as fresh as evei. No secretary could keep up to him, and his ministers some- times went to sleep in the Council, worn out with: the length of the session. " Come, citizen ministers," he would cry, " we must earn the money the French nation gives us." The ministers rarely went home from the meetings that they did not find a half- dozen letters from him on their tables to be answered, and the answer must be a clear, exact, exhaustive document. " Get your information so that when you do answer me, there shall be no ' buts,' no 'ifs,' and no ' becauses,' " was the rule Na- poleon laid down to his correspondents. He had audacity. He dared do what he would. He had no conventional notions to tie him, no master to dictate to him. The Revolution had swept out of his way the accumulated experience of centuries all the habits, the prejudices, the ways of doing things. He commenced nearer the bottom than any man in the history of the civilized world had ever done, worked with imperial self-confidence, with a conviction that he "was not like other men;" that the moral laws, the creeds, the conventions, which applied to them, were not for him. He might listen to others, but in the end he dared do as he would. CHAPTER IX. OPPOSITION TO THE CENTRALIZATION OF THE GOVERNMENT.- PROSPERITY. GENERAL OPPOSITION, AND HOW HE MET IT. THE centralization of France in Na- poleon's hands was not to be allowed to go on without interference. Jacobin- ism, republicanism, royalism, were deeply- rooted sentiments, and it was not long before they began to struggle for expres- sion. Early in the Consulate, plots of many descriptions were unearthed. The most serious before 1803 was that known as the " Opera Plot," or " Plot of the 3d Nivose " (December 24, 1800), when a bomb was MADAME RECAMIER. l8oO. By Jacquet, after David. Madame Recamier (Jeanne Francoise Julie Adelaide) was born in Lyons in 1777. Her father, Jean Bernard, afterwards moved to Paris, where he saw much of society and occupied a good position. In 1793 Julie was married to Monsieur Recamier, a rich banker twenty-seven years her senior. During the Directory Madame Recamier became intimate with the members of the Bonaparte family in Paris, and Lucien fell deeply in love with her, an affection she never returned. She first met the First Consul at Lucien's in the winter of 1799-1800, and he noticed her especially. She was much attracted by his simplicity and by his kindness. In 1802 Madame Recamier's father, who was Postmaster-General, was found to be sheltering a royalist correspondence, and was arrested and imprisoned. Through the intercession of Madame Recamier, Bernadotte secured his release from the First Consul. The arrest and trial of Moreau, who was a friend of Madame Re'camier, the exile of Madame de Stael, and the execu- tion of the Due d'Enghien, put her in opposition to the government, though she received both friends and enemies of Napoleon. In 1805 Fouch^ attempted to persuade her to accept a place at court, which she refused. In 1807 Madame Re'camier visited Madame de Stael at Coppet, where she met Prince Augustus of Prussia, who wished to marry her. She seems to have determined once to secure a divorce and marry the Prince, but abandoned the idea because of Monsieur Recamier's distress. In iSnshewas exiled forty leagues from Paris because cf her intimacy with Madame de Stael, and she did not return until after the invasion in 1814. In 1817, after Madame de Stael's death, she met Chateaubriand, with whom she remained intimately allied through the rest of her life. In 1830 Monsieur Re'camier died. Sixteen years afterwards Chateaubriand became a widower. He wished to marry Madame Recamier, but she refused. She died in Paris in 1849. Of all the women of the period, no one is more interesting than Madame Recamier. Purity of character, independence of spirit, and fidelity to friends distinguished her, as well as remarkable beauty. placed in the street, to be exploded as the First Consul's carriage passed. By an accident he was saved, and, in spite of the shock, went on to the opera. Madame Junot, who was there, gives a graphic description of the way the news was received by the house : " The first thirty measures of the oratorio were scarcely played, when a strong explosion like a can- non was heard. ''What does that mean?' exclaimed Junot with emotion. He opened the door of the loge and looked into the corridor. . . . ' It is strange ; how can they be firing the cannon at this hour ? ' And then, ' I should have known it. Give me my hat ; I am going to find out what it is. . . .' " At this moment the loge of the First Consul opened, and he himself appeared with General Lannes, Lauriston, Berthier, and Duroc. Smiling, he saluted the immense crowd, which mingled cries like those of love with its applause. Madame Bona- parte followed him in a few seconds. " Junot was going to enter the loge to see for him- self the serene air of the First Consul that I had just remarked, when Duroc came up to us with troubled face. " 'The First Consul has just escaped death,' he said quickly to Junot. ' Go down and see him ; he wants to talk to you.' . . . But a dull sound commenced to spread from parterre to orchestra, from orchestra to amphitheatre, and thence to the loges. " ' The First Consul has just been attacked in the Rue Saint Nicaise,' it was whispered. Soon the truth was circulated in the salle; at the same instant, and as by an electric shock, one and the same acclama- tion arose, one and the same look enveloped Napo- leon, as if in a protecting love. MADAME DE STAEL (ANNE LOUISE GEKMA1NE NECKER, BAKONNE DE STAEI.-HOLSTEIN). 1802. Engraved in 1818 by Laugier, after Gerard. Madame de Stael was born in Paris in 1766. Her father was the famous banker Necker, and her mother, Suzanne Curchod, the early love of Gibbon. She held a high position in Paris until the Terror obliged her to flee, when she went to Coppet, on Lake Geneva, where a number of her friends gathered about her. She returned to Paris under the Directory, and when Napoleon returned from the Italian cam- paign she pretended to have the greatest admiration for him, and persisted in putting herself in his way. His dis- like was so pronounced that she was irritated, and when, to this personal complaint, she added a more serious one the way he was centralizing power in his hands she became a noisy and troublesome critic of his policy. In 1803, when she came to Paris from Coppet, she was ordered not to reside within forty leagues of the city. For three years she obeyed, but in 1806 she came too near Paris. In 1807 the publication of " Corinne " called attention to her, and she was sent back to Coppet. For two years she was busy at her work on " Germany," which, when done, she published in Paris : but the whole edition of ten thousand copies was condemned as "not French," and she was forbidden to enter France. When Louis XVIII. was restored, she returned to Paris, but fled to Coppet at the news of Napoleon's return. She died on July 14, 1817. BONAPARTE AS GENERAL, CONSUL, MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE. These busts are in Sevres biscuit. The first, which is much superior to the other two, is attributed to Boizot. The manufactory of Sevres produced many such busts, especially in the consular period, and Bonaparte, anxious to see his face everywhere, encouraged the production and diffusion of them. I have before me an official document which shows that from the commencement of the year VI. to the end of the year IX. the factory produced more than four hundred busts and thirteen hundred medallions of Bonaparte A. D. " What agitation preceded the explosion of na- tional anger which was represented in that first quar- ter of an hour, by that crowd whose fury for so black an attack could not be expressed by words ! Women sobbed aloud, men shivered with indignation. What- ever the banner they followed, they were united heart and arm in this case to show that differences of opin- ion did not bring with them differences in under- standing honor." It was such attempts, and suspicion of like ones, that led to the extension of the police service. One of the ablest and craftiest men of the Revolution became Napoleon's head of police in the Consulate, Fouche. A con- summate actor and skilful flatterer, hindered by no conscience other than the duty of keeping in place, he acted a curious and entertaining part. Detective work was for him a game which he played with in- tense relish. He was a veritable amateur of plots, and never gayer than when trac- ing them. Napoleon admired Fouche, but he did not trust him, and, to offset him, formed a private police to spy on his work. He never succeeded in finding anyone suffi- ciently fine to match the chief, who several times was malicious enough to contrive plots himself, to excite and mislead the private agents. The system of espionage went so far that letters were regularly opened. It was commonly said that those who did not want their letters read, did not send them by post; and though it was hardly neces- sary, as in, the Revolution, to send them in pies, in coat-linings, or hat-crowns, yet care and prudence had to be exercised in hand- ling all political letters. It was difficult to get officials for the post-office who could be relied on to ,in- tercept the proper letters ; and in 1802, the Postmaster-General, Monsieur Bernard, the father of the beautiful Madame Re"ca- mier, was found to be concealing an active royalist correspondence, and to be per- mitting the circulation of a quantity of seditious pamphlets. His arrest and im- prisonment made a great commotion in his daughter's circle, which was one of social and intellectual importance. Through the intercessions of Bernadotte, Monsieur Bernard was pardoned by Napoleon. The cabinet noir, as the department of the post- office which did this work was called, was in existence when Napoleon came to the THE SUPPRESSION OF OPPOSITION. 79 MARIE JOSEPH DE CHfiNIER. 1764-1811. Anonymous portrait of the cel- ebrated French dramatic author, and brother of the poet Andr^ de Ch^nier, guillotined in 1794. The principal tragedies of Joseph de Chenier are, ' Charles IX." and 'Henry VIII.." but the work above all that makes his name popular and almost the equal of that of Rouget de Tlsle, is the famous revolution- ary hymn, " Le Chant du Depart," which M^hul set to music. Consulate, and he rather re- stricted than increased its operations. It has never been entirely given up, as many an inoffensive for- eigner in France can testify. The theatre and press were also subjected to a strict cen- sorship In 1800 the num- ber of news- papers in Paris was reduced to twelve ; and in three years there were but eight left, with a total subscrip- tion list of eigh- teen thousand six hundred and thirty. Napoleon's contempt for journalists and editors equalled that he had for lawyers, whom he called a "heap of babblers and revolutionists." Neither class could, in his judgment, be allowed to go free. The salons were watched, and it is certain that those whose habitues criticised Napo- leon freely were reported. One serious rupture resulted from the supervision of the salons, that with Madame de Stael. She had been an ardent admirer of Napo- leon in the beginning of the Consulate, and Bourrienne tells several amusing stories of the disgust Napoleon showed at the letters of admiration and sentiment which she wrote him even so far back as the Italian campaign. If the secretary is to be believed, Madame de Stael told Napoleon, in one of these letters, that they were cer- tainly created for each other, that it was an error in human institutions that the mild and tranquil Josephine was united to his fate, that nature evidently had intended for a hero such as he, her own soul of fire. Napoleon tore the letter to pieces, and he took pains thereafter to announce with great bluntness to Madame de Stael, whenever he met her, his own notions of women, which certainly were anything but " modern." As the centralization of the government increased, Madame de Stael and her friends criticised Napoleon more freely and sharply than they would have done, no doubt, had she not been incensed by his personal atti- tude towards her. This hostility increased until, in 1803, the First Consul ordered her out of France. " The arrival of this woman, like that of a bird of omen," he said in giv- ing the order, " has always been the signal for some trouble. It is not my intention to allow her to remain in France." In 1807 this order was repeated, and many of Madame de StaeTs friends were included in the proscription : " I have written to the Minister of Police to send Madame de Stael to Geneva. This woman continues her trade of intriguer. She went near Paris in spite of my orders. She is a veritable plague. Speak seriously to the Minister, for I shall be obliged to have her seized by the gendarmerie. Keep an eye upon Benjamin Constant ; if he meddles with any- thing I shall send him to his wife at Brunswick. I will not tolerate this clique." But when one compares the policy of re- striction during the Consulate with what it had been under the old regime and in the Revolution, it certainly was far in advance in liberty, discretion, and humanity. The republican government to-day, in its re- pression of anarchy and socialism, has acted with less wisdom and less respect for freedom of thought than Napoleon did at this period of his career ; and that, too, in circumstances less complicated and critical. MEHUL. 1763-1817. Celebrated French composer of music Author of a great number of operas, of which the most celebrated is " Joseph." It is Mehul who composed, to the words of Joseph de Chenier, the music of the "Chant du Depart," the/rere of " The Marseillaise." 8o THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. INTERNAL PEACE AND PROSPERITY. If there were still dull rumors of discon- tent, a cabinet noir, a restricted press, a censorship over the theatre, proscriptions, even imprisonments and executions, on the whole France was happy. " Not only did the interior wheels of the machine commence to run smoothly," says the Duchesse d'Abrantes, " but the arts themselves, that most peaceful part of the interior administration, gave striking proofs of the returning prosperity of France. The exposition at the Salon that year (1800) was remarkably fine. Guerin, David, Gerard, Girodet, a crowd of great talents, spurred on by the emulation which always awakes the fire of genius, produced works which must some time place our school at a high rank." The art treasures of Europe were pour- ing into France. Under the direction of Denon, that indefatigable dilettante and student, who had collected in the expedi- tion in Egypt more entertaining material than the whole Institute, and had written a report of it which will always be pre- ferred to the " Great Work," the galleries of Paris were reorganized and opened two days of the week to the people. Napoleon inaugurated this practice himself. Not only was Paris supplied with galleries : those department museums which surprise and delight the tourist so in France to-day were then created at Angers, Antwerp, Autun, Bordeaux, Brussels, Caen, Dijon, Geneva, Grenoble, Le Mans, Lille, Lyons, Mayence, Marseilles, Montpellier, Nancy, Nantes, Rennes, Rouen, Strasburg, Tou- FRANCOIS GERARD. 1770-1837. After a crayon by Girodet. Gerard was one of the best of the portrait painters of Bona- parte, and his " Consul " (collection of the Due d'Aumale) and his " Empereur " in cos- tume, are two of the principal pieces of the Napoleonic iconography. louse, and Tours. T h eprix deRome, for which there had been no money in the treasury for some time, was again reestab- lished. Every effort was made to stimulate scien- tific research. The case of Volta is one to BERNARDIN DE ST. PIERRE. 1737-1814. After a portrait by Girodet. Engraved by Wedge wood. Cel- ebrated French writer. Hisprin- cipal works are, " Paul and Virginia," "The Chaumiere In- dienne,'' and " Studies from Na- ture." the point. In 1801 Bonaparte called the emi- nent physicist to Paris to repeat his experiments before the Insti- tute. He pro- posed that a medal should be given him, with a sum of money, and in his honor he established a prize of sixty thousand francs, to be awarded to any one who should make a discovery similar in value to Volta's.* One of our own compatriots Robert Fulton was about the same time encour- aged by the First Consul. Fulton was ex- perimenting with his submarine torpedo and diving boat, and for four years had been living in Paris and besieging the Directory to grant him attention and funds. Napoleon took the matter up as soon as Fulton brought it to him, ordered a com- mission appointed to look into the inven- tion, and a grant of ten thousand francs for the necessary experiments. The Institute was reorganized, and to encourage science and the arts he founded, in 1804, twenty-two prizes, nine of which were of ten thousand francs, and thirteen *of five thousand francs. They were to be awarded every ten years by the emperor himself, on the i8th Brumaire. The first dis- tribution of these prizes was to have taken * The Volta prize has been awarded only three or four times. An award of particular interest to Americans was that made in 1880 to Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, the invent- or of the telephone. The amount of the prize was a little less than ten thousand dollars. Dr. Bell, being already in affluent circumstances, upon receiving this prize, set it apart to be used for the benefit of the deaf, in whose welfare he had for many years taken a great interest. He invested it in another invention of his, which proved to be very profit- able, so that the fund came to amount to one hundred thou- sand dollars. This he termed the Volta Fund. Some of this fund has been applied by Dr. Bell to the organization of the Volta Bureau, which collects all valuable information that can be obtained with reference to not only deaf mutes as a class, but to deaf-mutes individually. Twenty-five thousand dollars has been given to the Association for the Promotion of Teaching Speech to the Deaf. Napoleon is thus indirectly the founder of one of the most interesting and valuable present undertakings of the country. THE DESCENT ON ENGLAND. 81 place in 1809, but the judges could not agree on the laureates ; and before a con- clusion was reached, the Empire had fallen. In literature and in music, as in art and science, there was a renewal of activity. A circle of poets and writers gathered about the First Consul. Paisiello was summoned to Paris to direct the opera and conserva- tory of music. There was a revival of dignity and taste in strong contrast to the license and carelessness of the Revolution. The incroyable passed away. The Greek costume disappeared from the street. Men and women began again to dress, to act, to talk, according to conventional forms. Society recovered its systematic ways of doing things, and soon few signs of the general dissolution which had prevailed for ten years were to be seen. Once more the traveller crossed France in peace ; peasant and laborer went undis- turbed about their work, and slept without fear. Again the people danced in the fields and "sang their songs as they had in the days before the Revolution." " France has nothing to ask from Heaven," said Regnault de Saint Jean d'Angely, " but that the sun may continue to shine, the rain to fall on our fields, and the earth to render the seed fruitful." CHAPTER X. PREPARATIONS FOR WAR WITH ENGLAND. FLOTILLA AT BOULOGNE.- SALE. OF LOUISIANA. RUPTURE OF THE TREATY.OF AMIENS. IN the spring of 1803 the treaty of Amiens, which a year before had ended the long war with England, was broken. Both countries had many reasons for com- plaint. Napoleon was angry at the failure to evacuate Malta. The perfect freedom allowed the press in England gave the pamphleteers and caricaturists of the coun- try opportunity to criti- cise and ridicule him. He complained bitterly to the English ambassadors of this free press, an institu- tion in his eyes impracti- cal and idealistic. He complained, too, of the hostile emigres allowed to collect in Jersey ; of the presence in England of such notorious enemies of his as Georges Cadoudal ; and of the sympathy and money the Bourbon princes and many nobles of the old regime received in London society. Then, too, he regarded the country as his natural and inevitable enemy. England to Napo- leon was only a little island which, like Corsica and Elba, naturally belonged to France, and he considered it part of his business to get possession of her. England, on the other hand, looked with distrust at the extension of Napoleon's in- MAOAME TALLIEN. 1773-1835. By Quenedey. This picture may be re- garded as a faithful portrait of the famous wife of Tallien. It was probably taken whep. she was about twenty-five years old ; a period when she was frequently at Mal- fluence on the Continent. Northern Italy, Switzerland, Holland, Parma, Elba, were under his protectorate. She had been deeply offended by a report published in Paris, on the condition of the Orient, in which the author declared that with six thousand men the French could reconquer Egypt ; she resented the violent articles in the offi- cial press of Paris in answer to those of the free press of England ; her aristocratic spirit was irri- tated by Napoleon's suc- cess ; she despised this parvenu, this " Corsican scoundrel," as Nelson called him, who had had the hardihood to rise so high by other than the conventional methods for getting on in the world which she sanctioned. Real and fancied ag- gressions continued throughout the year of the peace; and when the break finally came,though both nations persisted in declaring that they did not want war, both. were in a thoroughly warlike mood. THE DESCENT ON ENGLAND. Napoleon's preparations against England form one of the most picturesque military movements in his career. Unable to cope NAPOLEON IN 1003. Painted by A. GeYard in 1803. Engraved by Richomme in 1835. This is considered by many the best portrait ol Napoleon painted in the consulship. with his enemy at sea, he conceived the audacious notion of invading the island, and laying siege to London itself. The plan briefly was this to gather a great army on the north shore of France, and in some port a flotilla sufficient to transport it to Great Britain. In order to prevent interference with this expedition, he would keep the enemy's fleet occupied in the Met! iterranean, or in the Atlantic, until the crit- ical moment. Then, leading the English naval commander by stratagem in the wrong direction, he would call his own fleet to the Channel to protect his passage. He counted to be in London, and to have compelled the English to peace, before By J B. Isabey. (Collection of M. Edmond Taigny ) This portrait in crayon, lightly touched with color, was executed at Malmaison, probably in the course of the year 1798. It is very little known. Isabey. whose pencil was quick and sure, must have requested Josephine to pose for a few minutes after a walk in the park. This sketch was given to M. Taigny by Isabey himself. A. D. Nelson could return from the chase he would have led him. The preparations began at once. The port chosen for the flotilla was Boulogne ; but the whole coast from Antwerp to the mouth of the Seine bristled with iron and bronze. Between Calais and Boulogne, at Cape Gris Nez, where the navigation was the most dangerous, the batteries literally touched one another. Fifty thousand men were put to work at the stupendous exca- vations necessary to make the ports large enough to receive the flotilla. Large num- bers of troops were brought rapidly into the neighborhood : fifty thousand men to Boulogne, under Soult ; thirty thousand 8 4 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. to Etaples, under Ney ; thirty thousand u> Ostend, under Davoust ; reserves to Arras, Amiens, Saint-Omer. The work of preparing the flat-bottomed boats, or walnut-shells, as the English called them, which were to carry over the army, went on in all the ports of Holland and France, as well as in interior towns situated on rivers leading to the sea. The troops were taught to row, each sol- dier being obliged to practise two hours a day, so that the rivers of all the north of France -were dotted with land-lubbers J. B. ISABEV AND HIS DAUGHTER. By Baron Gerard. At the Louvre. Isabey was born at Nancy in 1767, and died at Paris in 1855. He made several pictures of Napoleon in pencil and in oil, and many miniatures. The most famous of these are, "Napoleon at Malmaison," " The Con- sular Review," the thirty-two designs representing " The Coronation of Napoleon," the ' Congress of Vienna," and the ' Table of Marshals." The latter is executed on Sevres porcelain, and shows Napoleon surrounded by the illustrious generals of his time. handling the oar, the most of them for the first time. In the summer of 1803, Napoleon went to the north to look after the work. His trip was one long ovation. Le Chemin d Angleterre was the inscription the people of Amiens put on the triumphal arch erected to his honor, and town vied with town in showing its joy at the proposed descent on the old-time enemy. Such was the interest of the people, that a thousand projects were suggested to help on the invasion, some of them most amusing. In a learned and thoroughly serious memorial, one genius' proposed that while the flotilla was preparing, the sailors be employed in catching dolphins, which should be shut up in the ports, tamed, and taught to wear a harness, so as to be driven, in the water, of course, as horses are on land. This novel cavalry was to transport the French to the opposite side of the Channel. Napoleon occupied himself not only with the preparations at Bou- logne and with keeping Nelson busy elsewhere. Every project which could possibly facilitate his undertaking or dis- comfit his enemies, he considered. Fulton's diving-boat, the " Nau- tilus, "and his submarine torpedoes, were at that time attracting the atten- tion of the war depart- ments of civilized coun- tries. Already Napoleon had granted ten thou- sand francs to help the inventor. From the camp at Boulogne he again ordered the matter to be looked into. Ful- ton promised him a ma- chine which " would deliver France and the whole world from British oppression." " I have just read the pro- ject of Citizen Fulton, engi- neer, which you have sent me THE SALE OF LOUISIANA. much too late," he wrote, " since it is one that may change the face of the world. Be that as it may, I desire that you immediately confide its examination to a commission of members chosen by you among the different classes of the Institute. There it is that learned Europe would seek for judges to resolve the question under consideration. A great truth, a physical, palpable truth, is before my eyes. It will be for these gentlemen to try and seize it and see it. As soon as their report is made, it will be sent to you, and you will forward it to me. Try and let the whole be determined within eight days, as I am im- patient." He had his eye on every point of the earth where he might be weak, or where he might weaken his enemy. Hetook possession of Han- over. The Irish were promised aid in their efforts for freedom. " P r o - vided that twenty thousand united Irishmen join the French army on its landing," France is to give them in re- t u r n twenty-five thousand men, forty thousand muskets, with artillery and ammunition, and a promise that the French government will not make peace with England until the independenceof Ireland has been proclaimed. An attack on India was planned, his hope being that the princes of India would welcome an invader who would aid them in throw- ing off the English yoke. To strengthen himself in the Orient, he sought by letters and envoys to win the confidence, as well as to inspire the awe, of the rulers of Turkey and Persia. The sale of Louisiana to the United States dates from this time. This transfer, TALMA. 1763-1826. By Vigneron, after a lithograph by Constans. Through- out his life Napoleon was a warm friend of Talma. He never forgot the time when, disgraced because of his rela- tions with Robespierre, the great actor had been his friend, even aiding him by loans of money. stipulation of the treaties forbade its sale. But Napoleon was not of a nature to regard a treaty, if the interest of the moment de- manded it to be broken. To sell Louisiana now would remove a weak spot from France, upon which England would surely fall in the war. More, it would put a great territory, which he could not control, into the hands of a country which, he believed, would some day be a serious hinderance to English ambition. He sold the colony for the same reason that former French governments had helped the United States in her struggles for independence to crip- ple England. It BHmn^HBBB would help the United States, but it would hurt Eng- land. That was enough; and with characteristic eagerness he hurried through the nego- tiations. " I have just given England a maritime rival which, sooner or later, will humble her pride," he said exultingly, when the convention was signed. The sale brought him twelve million dollars, and the United States assumed the French spoliation claims. This sale of Louisiana caused one of the first vio- lent quarrels be- tween Lucien Bona- parteand Napoleon. Lucien had negoti- ated the return of the American territory to France in 1800. He had made a princely fortune out of the treaty, and he was very proud of the transaction ; and when his brother Joseph came to him one evening in hot haste, with the information that the General wanted to sell Louisiana, he hurried around of such tremendous importance to us, was to the Tuileries in the morning to remon- made by Napoleon purely for the sake of strate. hurting England. France had been in pos- session of Louisiana but three years. She had obtained it from Spain only on the Napoleon was in his bath, but, in the mode of the time, he received his brothers. He broached the subject himself, and condition that it should " at no time, under asked Lucien what he thought. no pretext, and in no manner, be alienated or ceded to any other power." The formal " I flatter myself that the Chambers will not give their consent." NAPOLEON THE GREAT ("NAPOLEON LE GRAND") IN CORONATION ROBES. 1805. Painted and engraved by order of the emperor. Engraved by Desnoyers, after portrait painted by Gerard in 1805. " You flatter yourself ? " said Napoleon. Icon, splashing around indignantly in the " That's good, I declare." opaque water. " I have already said the same to the " That you would do it in spite of the First Consul," cried Joseph. Chambers." " And what did I answer ? " said Napo- " Precisely. I shall do it without the 88 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. consent of anyone whomsoever. Do you understand ? " Joseph, beside himself, rushed to the bathtub, and declared that if Napoleon dared do such a thing he would put himself at the head of an opposition and crush him in spite of their fraternal relations. So hot did the debate grow that the First Con- sul sprang up shouting: "You are insolent ! I ought -" but at that moment he slipped and fell back violently. A great mass of perfumed water drenched Joseph to the skin, .and the conference broke up. An hour later, Lucien met his brother in his library, and the discussion was resumed, only to end in another scene, Napoleon hurling a beautiful snuff-box upon the floor, and shattering it ; while he told Lucien that if he did not cease his opposition he would crush him in the same way. These violent scenes were repeated, but to no pur- pose. Louisiana was sold. CHAPTER XL OPPOSITION TO NAPOLEON. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE EMPIRE. KING OF ITALY. PLOT AGAINST THE FIRST CONSUL. thizers as soon as the First Consul was killed. In this plot was associated Piche- WHILE the preparation for the invasion gru,who had been connected with the i8th was going on, the feeling against England Fructidor. General Moreau, the hero of was intensified by the discovery of a plot Hohenlinden, was suspected of knowing against the life of the First Consul, something of it. Georges Ca- doudal, a fana- tical royalist, who was ac- cused of being connected with the plot of the 3d Nivose (De- cember 24), and who had since been in Eng- land, had formed a gi- gantic conspir- acy, having as its object noth- inglessthanthe assassinationof Napoleon n broad daylight, in the streets of Paris. He had se- cured powerful aid to carry out his plan. The Bourbon princes sup- ported him, and oneof them was to land on the north coast to put himself at the head of the royalist sympa- It came to light in time, and a general arrest was made of those sus- pected of being privy to it. The first to be tried and punished was the Due d'Enghien, who had been seized in Ettenheim, EMPRESS JOSEPHINE. From a pencil sketch made by David in the Cathedral of Notre Dame at the time of Josephine's coronation, and presented to his son. The original is now in the Museum of Versailles. in Baden, a short distance from the French frontier, on the su ppo sition that he had been coming secretly to Paris to be present at the meetings of the conspira- tors. His trial at Vincennes was short, his execution im- mediate. There is good reason to believe that Napoleon had no suspicion that the Due d'Enghien DEATH OF THE DUG D'ENGHIEN. 89 would be executed so soon as he was, and even to suppose that he would have light- ened the sentence if the punishment had not been pushed on with an irregularity and inhumanity that recalls the days of the Terror. The execution was a severe blow to Napoleon's popularity, both at home and abroad. Fouche's cynical remark was just : members of Napoleon's own household met him with averted faces and sad counte- nances, and Josephine wept until he called her a child who understood nothing of politics. Abroad there was a revulsion of sympathy, particularly in the cabinets of Russia, Prussia, and Austria. The trial of Cadoudal and Moreau fol- lowed. The former with several of his NAPOLEON, EMPEROR OF TFTE FRENCH AND KING OF ITALY ("NAPOLEON, EMPEREUR DES FRANAIS, ROI D'lTALIE"). 1805. Engraved by Audouin, after Charles de Chatillon. "The- death of the Due d'Enghien is accomplices was executed. Moreau was worse than a crime ; it is a blunder." Cha- exiled for two years. Pichegru committed teaubriand, who had accepted a foreign suicide in the Temple. embassy, resigned at once, and a number of the old aristocracy, such as Pasquier and Mole, 1 who had been saying among themselves that it was their duty to sup- This plot showed Napoleon and his port Napoleon's splendid work of reor- friends that a Jacobin or royalist fanatic ganization, went back into obscurity. In might any day end the life upon which the society the effect was distressing. The scheme of reorganization depended. It is EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH, THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON IN STATE COSTUME (" I/EMPEREUR EN GRAND COSTUME 7 '). 1805. Engraved by Tardieu, after Isabey. Title piece engraved by Malbeste, after Percier. Isabey became intimate with the Bonapartes during the Consulate through Hortense. whose drawing-master he had been. It was then he executed his portraits of Bonaparte at Malmaison. and the Review of the Consular Guard. He enjoyed Napoleon's favor throughout the Empire, and was charged by him to execute a series of thirty-two designs to commemorate his coronation. He was afterwards Marie Louise's drawing-master. ^^^\^'m Vi Jig38 ^^iLww- THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE IN STATE COSTUME (" L'lMrfERATRICE EN GRAND COSTUME' Engraved by Audouin, after a design by Isabey and Percier. THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON IN ORDINARY COURT COSTUME ("l/EMPEREUR EN PETIT COSTUME"). 1805. Engraved by Ribault, after a design by Isabey and Percier. L ' ' : ^^%4.^ - :^Jj: * : . iCS THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE IN ORDINARY COURT COSTUME (" L'lMPERAT Engraved by Ribault, after a design by Isabey '**,- o ,:':.-, y^SFZA wii^y^^a!aH^~^*feaia E IN ORDINARY COURT COSTUME (" L'lMPfeRATRICE EN PETIT COSTUME*'). 1803. ngraved by Ribault, after a design by Isabey and Percier. l-HINE, EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH AND QUEEN OF ITALY (" JOSEPHINE, tMPlJRATKlCE 1JKS FKANfAIS ET KEINE D'ITALIE). 1805. Designed by Buguet. true he had already been made First Con- sul for life by a practically unanimous vote, but there was need of strengthening his position and providing a succession. In March, six days after the death of the Due d'Enghien, the Senate proposed to him that he complete his work and take the throne. In April the Council of State and the Tribunate took up the discussion The opinion of the majority was voiced by Regnault de Saint-Jean d'Ange"ly : " It is a long time since all reasonable men, all true friends of their country, have wished that the First Consul would make himself em- peror, and reestablish, in favor of his family, the old principles of hereditary succession. THE NEW COURT. 95 It is the only means of securing permanency enjoy the blessings of the present; guar- for his own fortune, and to the men whom antee to us the future." On the i8th of merit has raised to high offices. The Re- May, 1804, when thirty-five years old, public, which I loved passionately, while I Napoleon was first addressed as "sire," and detested the crimes of the Revolution, is congratulated on his elevation to the now in my eyes a mere Utopia. The throne of the French people. NAPOLEON. 1805. ("Napoleon I. Gall. Imp. Ital. Rex.") Designed and engraved by Longhi. First Consul has convinced me that he wishes to possess supreme power only to render France great, free, and happy, and to protect her against the fury of factions." The Senate soon after proceeded in a body to the Tuileries. " You have ex- tricated us from the chaos of the past," said the spokesman ; " you enable us to IMPERIAL HONORS AND ETIQUETTE. Immediately his household took on the forms of royalty. His mother was Madame Mere ; Joseph, Grand-Elector, with the title of Imperial Highness ; Louis, Con- stable, with the same title ; his sisters were Imperial Highnesses. Titles were given to JOSEPHINE. 1804. Engraved by Weber in 1814. Painted by Lethiere. all officials ; the ministers were excellen- his old generals, Berthier, Murat, Moncey cies ; Cambaceres and Le Brun, the Second Jourdan, Massena, Augureau, Bernadotte, Third Consuls, became Arch Chancellor Soult, Brune, Lannes, Mortier, Ney, Da- and Arch Treasurer of the Empire. Of voust, and Bessieres were made marshals. NAPOLEON. 1805. Engraved by Morghen, after Gerard, in 1807. Napoleon wrote a letter thanking Morghen for the beauty of this engraving, and subsequently decorated him with the Legion of Honor. The red button of the Legion of Honor was scattered in profusion. The title of citoyen, which had been consecrated by the Revolution, was dropped, and hereafter everybody was called monsieur. Two of Napoleon's brothers, unhappily, had no part in these honors. Jerome, who had been serving as lieutenant in the navy, had, in 1803, while in the United States, married a Miss Elizabeth Patterson of Bal- timore. Napoleon forbade the recording of the marriage, and declared it void. As Jerome had not as yet given up his wife, he had no share in the imperial rewards. NAPOLEON'S STATE CARRIAGE. Lucien was likewise omitted, and for a similar reason. His first wife had died in 1801, and much against Napoleon's wishes he had married a Madame Jouberthon, to whom he was deeply attached ; nothing could induce him to renounce his wife and take the Queen of Etruria, as Napoleon wished. The result of his refusal was a violent quarrel between the brothers, and Lucien left France. This rupture was certainly a grief to Napoleon. Madame de Remusat draws a pathetic little picture of the effect upon him of the last interview with Lucien : " It was near midnight when Bonaparte came into the room ; he was deeply dejected, and, throwing himself into an arm-chair, he exclaimed in a troubled voice, ' It is all over ! I have broken with Lucien, and ordered him from my presence.' Madame Bona- parte began to expostulate. ' You are a good woman,' he said, 'to plead for him.' Then he rose from his chair, took his wife in his arms, and laid her head softly on his shoulder, and with his hand still resting on the beautiful head, which formed a contrast to the sad. set countenance so near it, he told us that Lucien had resisted all his entreaties, .and that he had resorted equally in vain to both threats and persuasion. ' It is hard, though,' he added, ' to find in one's own family such stubborn opposition to interests of such magnitude. Must I, then, isolate myself from even- one ? Must I rely on myself alone ? Well ! I will suffice to myself ; and you, Josephine you will be-my comfort always.' " A fever of etiquette seized on all the in- habitants of the imperial palace of Saint Cloud. The ponderous regulations of Louis XIV. were taken down from the shelves in the library, and from them a code began to be compiled. Madqme Campan, who had been First Bedchamber Woman to Marie Antoinette, was sum- moned to interpret the solemn law, and to describe costumes and customs. Monsieur de Talleyrand, who had been made Grand Chamberlain, was an authority who was consulted on everything. " \Ve all felt ourselves more or less ele- vated, "-says Madame de Remusat. " Van- ity is ingenious in its expectations, and ours were unlimited. Sometimes it was disenchanting, for a moment, to observe the almost ridiculous effect which this agi- tation produced upon certain classes of society. Those who had nothing to do with our brand new dignities said with us avenge ourselves by Jests, more or less witty, or less ingenious, were Montaigne, ' Let railing at them.' and puns, more lavished on these new-made princes, and NAPOLEON AT BOULOGNE. 99 somewhat disturbed our brilliant visions ; but the number of those who dare to cen- sure success is small, and flattery was much more common than criticism." No one was more severe in matters of eti- quette than Napoleon himself. He studied the subject with the same attention that he did the civil code, and in much the same way. "In concert with Monsieur de Segur," he wrote De Champagny, " you must write me a report as to the way in which minis- ters and ambassadors should be received. It will be well for you to enlighten me as to what was the practice at Ver- sailles, and what is done at Vienna and St. Petersburg. Once my regulations adopted, everyone must conform to them. I am master, to establish what rules I like in France." He had some difficulty with his old co m r ades-in- arms, who were accustomed t o addressing him in the familiar second singular, and calling him Bonaparte, and who persisted, o c c asion ally, even after he was " sire," in using the language of easy intimacy. Lannes was even removed for some time from his place near the emperor for an indiscretion of this kind. THE FETE OF BOULOGNE. In August, 1 804, the new emperor visited Boulogne to re- ceive the con- gratulations of h i s army and distribute deco- rations. Hisvisit was celebrated by a magnificent fete. Those who know the locality of Boulogne, re- member, north of the town, an amphitheatre-like plain, in the centre of which is a hill. In this plain sixty thousand men were camped. On the elevation was erected a throne. Here- by stood- the chair of Dagobert ; behind it the armor of Francis I. ; and around rose scores of blood-stained, bullet-shot flags, the trophies of Italy and Egypt. Beside the emperor was the helmet of Bayard, filled with the decorations to be distrib- uted. Up and down the coast were the French batteries ; in the port lay the flo- tilla ; to the right and left stretched the splendid army. Just as the ceremonies were finished, a fleet of over a thousand boats came sailing into the harbor to join those already there, while out in the Channel English officers and sailors, with levelled glasses, watched from their vessels the splendid armament, NAl'ULE'iN, 1805. Engraved in 1812 by Massard, after Bouillou 100 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. which was celebrating its approaching de- scent on their shores. CORONATION OF NAPOLEON AND JOSEPHINE. On December ist the Senate presented the emperor the result of the vote taken among the people as to whether hereditary succession should be adopted. There were two thousand five hundred and seventy- nine votes against ; three million five hun- dred and seventy-five thousand for a vote more nearly unanimous than that for the life consulate, there being something like nine thousand against him then. The next day Napoleon was crowned at Notre Dame. The ceremony was prepared with the greatest care. Grand Master of Ceremonies de Segur, aided by the painter David, drew up the plan and trained the court with great severity in the etiquette of the occasion. He had the widest lib- erty, it even being provided that " if it be indispensable, in order that the cortege arrive at Notre Dame with greater facility, to pull down some houses," it should be done. By a master stroke of diplomacy Napoleon had persuaded Pope Pius VII. to cross the Alps to perform for him the solemn and ancient service of coronation. Of this ceremony we have no better description than that of Madame Junot : ' ' Who that saw Notre Dame on that memorable day can ever forget it ? I have witnessed in that venerable pile the celebration of sumptuous and solemn festivals ; but never did I see anything at all approximating in splendor the spectacle exhibited at Napoleon's coronation. The vaulted roof re- echoed the sacred chanting of the priests, who in- voked the blessing of the Almighty on the ceremony about to be celebrated, while they awaited the arrival of the Vicar of Christ, whose throne was prepared near the altar. Along the ancient walls covered with magnificent tapestry were ranged, according to their rank, the different bodies of the state, the deputies from every city ; in short, the representatives of all France assembled to implore the benediction of Heaven on the sovereign of the people's choice. The waving plumes which adorned the hats of the senators, counsellors of state, and tribunes ; the splen- did uniforms of the military ; the clergy in all their ecclesiastical pomp ; and the multitude of young and beautiful women, glittering in jewels, and arrayed in that style of grace and elegance which is only seen in Paris ; altogether presented a picture which has, perhaps, rarely been equalled, and certainly never excelled. "The Pope arrived first; and at the moment of his entering the Cathedral, the anthem Tu es Petms was commenced. His Holiness advanced from the door with an air at once majestic and humble. Ere long, the firing of a cannon announced the departure of the procession from the Tuileries. From an early hour in the morning the weather had been exceeding unfavorable. It was cold and rainy, and appear- ances seemed to indicate that the procession would be anything but agreeable to those who joined it. But, as if by the especial favor of Providence, of which so many instances are observable in the career of Napoleon, the clouds suddenly dispersed, the sky brightened up, and the multitudes who lined the streets from the Tuileries to the Cathedral, enjoyed the sight of the procession without being, as they had anticipated, drenched by a December rain. Napoleon, as he passed along, was greeted by heart- felt expressions of enthusiastic love and attachment. "On his arrival at Notre Dame, Napoleon as- cended the throne, which was erected in front of the grand altar. Josephine took her place beside him, surrounded by the assembled sovereigns of Europe. Napoleon appeared singularly calm. I watched him narrowly, with a view of discovering whether his heart beat more highly beneath the imperial trap- -pings than under the uniform of the guards ; but I could observe no difference, and yet I was at the distance of only ten paces from him. The length of the ceremony, however, seemed to weary him ; and I saw him several times check a yawn.' Nevertheless, he did everything he was required to do, and aid it with propriety. When the Pope anointed him with the triple unction on his head and both hands, I' fancied, from the direction of his eyes, that he was thinking of wiping off the oil rather than of anything else ; and I was so perfectly acquainted with the workings of his countenance, that I have no hesita- tion in saying that was really the thought that crossed his mind at that moment. During the ceremony of anointing, the Holy Father delivered that impressive prayer which concluded with these words : ' Diffuse, Lord, by my hands, the treasures of your grace and benediction on 'your servant Napoleon, whom, in spite of our personal unworthiness, we this day anoint emperor, in your name.' Napoleon listened to this prayer with an air of pious devotion ; but just as the Pope was about to take the crown, called the Crown of Charlemagne, from the altar, Napoleon seized it, and placed it on his own head. At that moment he was really handsome, and his counte- nance was lighted up with an expression of which no words can convey an idea. "He had removed the wreath of laurel which he wore on entering the church, and which encircles his brow in the fine picture of Gerard. The crown was, perhaps, in itself, less becoming to him ; but the expression excited by the act of putting it on, ren- dered him perfectly handsome. " When the moment arrived for Josephine to take an active part in the grand drama, she descended from the throne and advanced towards the altar, where the emperor awaited her, followed by her retinue of court ladies, and having her train borne by the Princesses Caroline, Julie, Eliza, and Louis. One of the chief beauties of the Empress Josephine was not merely her fine figure, but the elegant turn of her neck, and the way in which she carried her head ; indeed, her deportment altogether was con- spicuous for dignity and grace. I have had the honor of being presented to many real princesses, to use the phrase .of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, but 1 never saw one who, to my eyes, presented so per- fect a personification of elegance and majesty. In Napoleon's countenance I could read the conviction of all I have just said. He looked with an air of complacency at the empress as she advanced towards him ; and when she knelt down, when the tears, which she could not repress, fell upon her clasped hands, as they were raised to Heaven, or rather to Napoleon, both then appeared to enjoy one of those fleeting moments of pure felicity which are unique in a lifetime, and serve to fill up a lustrum of years. The emperor performed, with peculiar grace, every 102 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. action required of him during the ceremony ; but his manner of crowning Josephine was most remarkable : after receiving the small crown, surmounted by the cross, he had tirst to place it on his own head, and then to transfer it to that of the empress. When the moment arrived for placing the crown on the head of the woman whom popular superstition re- garded as his good genius, his manner was almost playful. He took great pains to arrange this little crown, which was placed over Josephine's tiara of diamonds ; he put it on, then took it off, and finally was of especial interest. The party crossed the Alps by Mont Cenis, and the road was so bad that the carriages had to be taken to pieces and carried over, while the travellers walked. This trip really led to the fine roads which now cross Mont Cenis. At Alessandria Napoleon halted, and on the field of Marengo ordered a review of the manoeuvres of the famous battle. At this NATOI.EON WITH THE IRON CROWN OF LOMBAKDY. Designed and engraved by Longhi, in 1812, for " Vite e Ritratti di illustri Italian*. " put it on again, as if to promise her she should wear it gracefully and lightly." The fate of France had no sooner been settled, as Napoleon believed, than it be- came necessary to decide on what should be done with Italy. The crown was offered to Joseph, who refused it. He did not want to renounce his claim to that of France, and finally Napoleon decided to take it himself. A new constitution was prepared for the country by the French Senate, and, when all was arranged, Na- poleon started on April ist for Italy. A great train accompanied him, and the trip review he even wore the coat and hat he had worn on that famous day four years before. By the time the imperial party was ready to enter Milan, on May 13, it had increased to a triumphant procession, and the entry was made amidst most enthusiastic dem- onstrations. On May 26 the coronation took place. The iron crown, used for so long, for the coronation of the Lombard kings, had been brought out for the occa- sion. When the point in the ceremony was reached where the crown was to be placed on Napoleon's head, he seized it, and with his own hands placed it on his head, repeat- ing in a loud voice the words inscribed on NAPOLEON. Engraved by Audouin, after Laurent. This portrait, " Josephine impe'ratrice des Franfais, reine d Italic," is sur- rounded by an elaborate frame of Imperial emblems. After the divorce, Josephine s portrait was erased from the plate, and that of Marie Louise inserted. the crown: "God gives it to me; beware month, engaged in settling the affairs of who touches it." Josephine was not the country. The order of the Crown of crowned Queen of Italy, but watched the Iron was created, the constitution settled, scene from a gallery above the altar. Prince Eugene was made viceroy, and Napoleon remained in Italy for another Genoa was joined to the Empire. NAPOLEON REVIEWING HIS GUARDS. Lithographed by Raffet. CHAPTER XII. CAMPAIGN OF 1805. CAMPAIGN OF 1806-1807. PEACE OF TILSIT. WAR WITH AUSTRIA. Austria looked with jealousy on this accession o.f power, and particularly on the change in the institutions of her neighbor. In assuming control of the Italian and Ger- manic States, Napoleon gave the people his code and his methods ; personal liberty, equality before the law, religious tolera- tion, took the place of the unjust and nar- row feudal institutions. These new ideas were quite as hateful to Austria as the dis- turbance in the balance of power, and more dangerous to her system. Russia and Prussia felt the same suspicion of Napo- leon as Austria did. All three powers were constantly incited to action against France by England, who offered unlimited gold if they would but combine with her. In the summer of 1805 Austria joined England and Russia in a coalition against France. Prussia was not yet willing to commit her- self. The great army which for so many months had been gathering around Bou- logne, preparing for the descent on Eng- land, waited anxiously for the arrival of the French fleet to cover its passage. But the fleet did not come ; and, though hop- ing until the last that his plan would still be carried out, Napoleon quietly and swiftly made ready to transfer the army of England into the Grand Army, and to turn its march against his continental enemies. Never was his great war rule, " Time is everything," more thoroughly carried out. "Austria will employ fine phrases in order to gain time," he wrote Talleyrand, " and to prevent me accomplishing anything this year ; and in April I shall find one hundred thousand Russians in Poland, fed by England, twenty thousand English at Malta, and fifteen thousand Russians at Corfu. I should then be in a critical position. My mind is made up." His orders flew from Boulogne to Paris, to the German States, to Italy, to his generals, to his naval commanders. By the 28th of THE CAPITULATION OF ULM. August the whole army had moved. A month later it had crossed the Rhine, and Napoleon was at its head. The force which he commanded was in every way an extraordinary one. Mar- mont's enthusiastic description was in no way an exaggeration : " This army, the most beautiful that was ever seen, was less redoubtable from the number of its soldiers than from their nature. Almost all of them had car- ried on war and had won victories. There still ex- isted among them something of the enthusiasm and exaltation of the Revolutionary campaigns ; but this en- thusiasm was systematized. From the supreme chief down the chiefs of the army corps, the division com- manders, the common officers and soldiers everybody was hardened to war. The eighteen months in splendid camps had produced a training, an ensemble, which has never existed since to the same degree, and a boundless confidence. This army was probably the best and the most redoubtable that modern times have seen." The force responded to the imperious genius of its commander with a beautiful precision which amazes and dazzles one who follows its march. So perfectly had all been ar- ranged, so exactly did every corps and officer respond, that nine days after the passage of the Rhine, the army was in Bavaria, several marches in the rear of the enemy. The weather was terrible, but nothing checked them. The emperor him- self set the example. Day and night he was on horseback in the midst of his troops ; once for a week he did not take off his boots. When they lagged, or the enemy harassed them, he would gather each regiment into a circle, explain to it the position of the enemy, the imminence of a great battle, and his confidence in his troops. These harangues some- times took place in driv- ing snow-storms, the soldiers standing up to their knees in icy slush. By October i3th, such was the extraordinary march they had made, the emperor was able to issue this address to the army : " Soldiers, a month ago we were encamped on the shores of the ocean, opposite England, when an im- pious league forced us to fly to the Rhine. Not a fortnight ago that river was passed ; and the Alps, the Neckar, the Danube, and the Lech, the cele- brated barriers of Germany, have not for a minute delayed our march. , . . The enemy, deceived by our manoeuvres and the rapidity of our movements, is entirely turned. . . . But for the army before you, we should be in London to-day, have avenged six centuries of insult, and have liberated the sea. " Remember to-morrow that you are fighting against the allies of England. . . . " NAPOLEON." Four days after this address came the capitulation of Ulm a "new Caudine Forks," as Marmont called it. It was, as THE EMPEROR. Bv Char'.et. Engraved by Cousin, after Lefevre. Lefevre probably painted this portrait early in the career of Napoleon. It was engraved by Cousin, a celebrated mezzotint engraver, many years ago, but when finished Napoleon "did not sell." It therefore was laid aside until 1893, when this print was made. Napoleon said, a victory won by legs, in- ninety colors, more than thirty generals, stead of by arms. The great fatigue and at a cost of but fifteen hundred men, two- the forced marches which the army had thirds of them but slightly wounded, undergone had gained them sixty thousand But there was no rest for the army. prisoners, one hundred and twenty guns, Before the middle of November it had so BEFORE AUSTERLJTZ. 107 surrounded Vienna that the emperor and his court had fled to Briinn, seventy or eighty miles north of Vienna, to meet the Russians, who, under Alexander I., were coming from Berlin. Thither Napoleon followed them, but the Austrians retreated eastward, joining the Russians at Olmiitz. The combined force of the allies was now some ninety thousand men. They had a strong reserve, and it looked as \i the Prus- sian army was about to join them. Napo- leon at Briinn had only some seventy or eighty thousand men, and was in the heart of the enemy's country. Alexander, flat- tered by his aides, and confident that he was able to defeat the French, resolved to leave his strong position at Olmiitz and seek battle with Napoleon. The position the French occupied can be understood if one draws a rough dia- gram of aright-angled triangle, Briinn being at the right angle formed by two roads, one running south to Vienna, by which Napoleon had come, and the other running eastward to Olmiitz. The hypothenuse of this angle, running from northeast to southwest, is formed by Napoleon's army. When the allies decided to leave Olmiitz their plan was to march southwest- ward, in face of Napo- leon's line, get between him and Vienna, and thus cut off what they sup- posed was his base of sup- plies (in this they were mistaken, for Napoleon had, unknown to them, changed his base from Vienna to Bohemia), sep- arate him from his Italian army, and drive him, routed, into Bohemia. THE BATTLE OF AUSTER- LITZ. On the 27th of Novem- ber the allies advanced, and their first encounter with a small French van- guard was successful. It gave them confidence, and they continued their march on the 28th, 2pth, and 3oth, gradually ex- tending a long line facing westward and parallel with Napoleon's line. The French em- peror, while this movement was going on, was rapidly calling up his reserves and strengthening his position. By the first day of December Napoleon saw clearly what the allies intended to do, and had formed his plan. The events of that day confirmed his ideas. By nine o'clock in the evening he was so certain of the plan of the coming battle that he rode the length of his line, explaining to his troops the tactics of the allies, and what he him- self proposed to do. Napoleon's appearance before the troops, his confident assurance of victory, called out a brilliant demonstration from the army. The divisions of infantry raised bundles of blazing straw on the ends of long poles, giving him an illumination as imposing as it was novel. It was a happy thought, for the day was the anniversary of his coronation. The emperor remained in bivouac all night. At four o'clock of the morning of THE EMPEROR AT THE BIVOUAC. After a picture by Philippoteatix. THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. THE KIGHT HONORABLE WILLIAM PITT. Engraved by Cardon, after Eldridge, 1801. Pitt, born May 28, 1759, was the second son of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. Before he was fifteen, sent to Cambridge, where he made a remarkable record in mathematics and the classics. He studied law in Lincoln's Inn, and at the age of twenty-one became member of Parliament. His first speech, in favor of economical reform, made a great impression. At twenty-three he was made a member of the cabinet as Chancellor of the Exchequer. At twenty-four he became Premier, with an opposition including Fox, Burke, Sheridan, and North. His courage and determination were such on the East India Company bill, that when Parliament was dissolved, and "the country appealed to, he was sup- ported as no minister in England had been for generations. He secured the passage of several important bills, and practically did away with the opposition. Whan the French Revolution came on, he at first indorsed it, but was revolted by its atrocities. He tried to avoid war with France, and was only driven into it by public opinion ; but his military administration was feeble. The king, George III., refusing to second his plans for Irish relief. Pitt resigned in 1801, after eighteen years of nearly absolute power. When the treaty of Amiens was broken in 1803, he appeared in Parliament again, in favor of war, and the next year was recalled to the premier- ship. He had great difficulty, however, with his cabinet, and Napoleon's train of victories alarmed him. At last he fell sick from his anxiety. Trafalgar aroused him, but Austerlitz struck him a blow from which he could not rally, and he died January 23, 1806. He was honored with a public funeral, and his remains were placed in Westminster Abbey. the 2d of Decem- ber he was in the saddle. When the gray fog lifted he saw the ene- my's divisions arranged exactly as he had divined. Three corps faced his right the southwest part of the hypothenuse. These corps had left a splendid position facing his centre, the heights of Pra- tzen. This advance of the enemy had left their centre weak and unpro- tected, and had separated the body of the army from its right, fac- i n g Napoleon's left. The enemy was in exactly the position Na- poleon wished for the attack he had planned. It was eight o'clock in the morning when the emperor galloped up his line, pro- claiming to the army that the enemy had ex- posed himself, and crying out : " Close the cam- paign with a clap of thunder." The generals rode to their positions, and at once the battle opened. Soult, who com- manded the French centre, at- tacked the allies' centre so unex- pectedly that it was driven into retreat. The Em- peror Alexander and his head- quarters were in "NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE."' IN 1806. Engraved by Lupton, after Robert Lefevre. Published in London in 1818. Original in the collection of the Prince Victor. " I prefer this to David's celebrated picture." G. G. H. MARIE PAULINE, PRINCESS BORGHESE. By Robert Lefevre. Versailles gallery. This picture is signed, " Robert Lefevre lecit, 1806." It was shown in the Salon of 1808, and obtained a brilliant success. this part of the army, and though the young czar did his best to rouse his forces, it was a hopeless task. The Russian cen- tre was defeated and the wings divided. At the same time the allies' left, where the bulk of their army was massed in a marshy country of which they knew little, "was engaged and held in check by Davoust, and their right was overcome by Lannes, Murat, and Bernadotte. As soon as the centre and right of the allies had been driven into retreat, Napoleon concentrated his forces on their left, the strongest part of his enemy. In a very short time the allies THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. were driven back into the canals and lakes of the country, and many men and nearly all their artillery lost. Before night the routed enemy had fallen back to Auster- litz. Of all Napoleon's battles Austerlitz was the one of which he was the proudest. It was here that he showed best the "divine side of war." The familiar note in which Napoleon an- Russians and thirty thousand Austrians. I have made forty thousand prisoners, taken forty flags, one hundred guns, and all the standards of the Russian Imperial Guard. . . . Although I have bivouacked in the open air for a week, my health is good. This evening I am in bed in the beautiful castle of Monsieur de Kaunitz, and have changed my shirt for the first time in eight days." The battle of Austerlitz obliged Austria to make peace (the treaty was signed at Presburg on December 26, 1805), compelled Russia to retire disabled from the field, transformed the haughty Prussian ultima- tum which had just been presented into humble sub- mission, and changed the rejoicings of England over the magnificent naval vic- tory of Trafalgar (October 2 ist) into despair. It even killed Pitt. It enabled Na- poleon, too, to make enor- mous strides in establish- ing a kingdom of the West. Naples was given to Jo- seph, the Bavarian Repub- lic was made a kingdom for Louis, and the states between the Lahn, the Rhine, and the Upper Danube were formed into a league, called the Con- federation of the Rhine, and Napoleon was made Protector. WAR WITH PRUSSIA AND RUSSIA. At the beginning of 1806 Napoleon was again in Paris. He had been absent but three months. Eight months of this year were spent in fruitless negotia- tions with England and in an irritating correspond- ence with Prussia. The latter country had many nounced to his brother Joseph the result of grievances against Napoleon, the sum of the battle, is a curious contrast to the ora- them all being that "French politics had JEAN I.OU1S ERNEST MEtSSONlER. 1815-18 Sketch by Meissonier himself. The inscription reads: "My dear Chenavard, may this sketch bear witness to our long- and good friendship. Meissonier, 1881." Meissonier was one of the most famous genre and historical painters of France. He painted a large number of pictures, the greatest of which are the four called the " Napoleon Cycle." torical bulletins which for some days flowed been the scourge of humanity for the last to Paris. His letter is dated Austerlitz, fifteen years," and that an " insatiable am- bition was still December 3, 1805 was still the ruling passion of France." By the end of September war " After manoeuvring for a few days I fought a declared and Naooleon whose oren- decisive battle yesterday. I defeated the combined lb . , 7 f A armies commanded by 'the Emperors of Russia and arations had been conducted secretly, it Germany. Their force consisted of eighty thousand being given out that he Was going to n6 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. Compiegne to hunt, suddenly joined his army. The first week of October the Grand Army advanced from southern Germany towards the valley of the Saale. This movement brought them on the flanks of the Prussians, who were scattered along the upper Saale. The unexpected appearanpe of the French army, which was larger and much better organized than the Prussian, caused the latter to retreat towards the Elbe. The retreating army was in two divisions; the first crossing the Saale to Jena, the second falling back towards the Un- strut. As soon as Napoleon understood these move- ments he de- spatched part of his force under Davoust and Bernadotte to cut off the re- treat of the second Prussian division, while he himself hur- ried on to Jena to force battle on the first. The Prussians .were encamped at the foot of a height known as the Landgraf en- berg. To com- mand this height was to command the Prussian forces. By a series of deter- mined and re- peated efforts Napoleon reached the position desired, and by the morning of the i-jth of October had his foes in his power. Advancing from HORACE VERNET. 1789-1863. Portrait by Witkofski in the gallery at Versailles. gaging Brunswick and his seventy thousand men with a force of twenty-seven thousand. In spite of the great difference in numbers the Prussians were unable to make any im- pression on the French ; and Brunswick falling, they began to retreat towards Jena, expecting to join the other division of the army, of whose route they were ignorant. The result was frightful. The two flying armies suddenly encountered each other, and, pursued by the French on either side, were driven in confusion towards the Elbe. THE ENTRY INTO BERLIN JENA, EYLAU, AND FRIEDLAND. On October 25th the French were at Berlin. Their entry was one of the great spectaclesof the campaign. One p articu 1 a rly touching inci- dent of it was the visit paid to Napoleon by the Protestant and Calvinist French clergy. There were at that time twelve thousand French refugees in Berlin, owing to the revoca- tion of the Edict of Nantes. They were re- ceived with kindness by Na- poleon, who told them they had good right to protection, and that their privileges and worship would be respected. Jena brought Napoleon something like the Landgrafenberg in three divisions, he one hundred and sixty million francs in turned the Prussian flanks at the same moment that he attacked their centre. The Prussians never fought better, per- haps, than at Jena. The movements of their cavalry awakened even Napoleon's admiration, but they were surrounded and outnumbered, and the army was speedily broken into pieces and driven into a re- treat. While Napoleon was fighting at Jena, to the right at Auerstadt, Davoust was en- money, an enormous number of prisoners, guns, and standards, the glory of the entry of Berlin, and a great number of interesting articles for the Napoleon Museum of Paris, among them the column from the field of Rosbach, the sword, the ribbon of the black eagle, and the general's sash of Frederick the Great, and the flags carried by his guards during the Seven Years' War. But it did not secure him peace. The King of Prussia threw himself into the arms of Rus- NAPOLEON AT JENA. 1806. After Horace Vernet. This picture of Napoleon is a fragment of a great canvas representing the battle of Jena, found in the Hall of Battles at Versailles. Vernet was commissioned by Louis Philippe to paint the great battles of France when he first conceived the idea of converting the chateau into an historical museum. This particular picture is one of a series, including the battles of Friedland, Jena, and Wagram. It appeared in the Salon of 1836. The moment chosen by Vernet for his picture, is that when the emperor, accompanied by Murat and Berthier, heard in the ranks of the imperial foot-guards the words : " En avant ! " " What is that ? " said he. " It can only be a beardless boy who thinks he knows what I ought to do. Let him wait until he has commanded in thirty pitched battles before he presumes to give me advice." It was, indeed, one of the conscripts, eager to show his courage. THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON NAPOLEON, EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH AND KING OF ITAI.V ("NAPOLEON, EMl'tiMn-n DBS FRAN^AIS, KOI I/ITAI.IE "). 1806. Engraved by Arnold, after Datiling. It was at Berlin, at the time of the entry of the French artny, that DShling saw the emperor and made his portrait in colors. Masson says that all the representations of Napoleon from 1806 to 1815 were copied after this design of DShling. sia, and Napoleon ad- vanced boldly into Po- land to meet his enemy. The Poles welcomed the French with joy. They hoped to find 'in Napoleon the liberator of their country, and they poured forth money and soldiers to reenforce him. "Our entry into Varso- via," wrote Napoleon, "was a triumph, and the sentiments that the Poles of all classes show since our arrival cannot be ex- pressed. Love of coun- try and the national senti- ment are not only entirely conserved in the heart of the people, but it has been intensified by misfortune. Their first passion, their first desire, is again to become a nation. The rich come from their chateaux, praying for the reestablishment of the nation, and offering their children, their fortunes, and their influence." Everything was done during the months the French remained in Po- land, to flatter and aid the army. The campaign against the Russians was carried on in Old Prussia, to the southeast of the Gulf of Dantzic. Its first great engagement was the battle of Eylau on Feb- ruary 8, 1807. This was the closest drawn battle Napoleon had ever fought. His loss was en- ormous, and he was saved only by a hair's-breadth from giving the enemy the field of battle. After Eylau the main army went into winter quarters to repair its losses, while Marshal Lefebvre be- sieged Dantzic, a siege which military critics de- clare to be, after Sebasto- pol, the most celebrated of modern times. Dant- zic capitulated in May. The simple date that Raffet has given for title to this composition, sums up the great military events : Austerlitz. Jena, Eylau, Fried land that preceded the treaty of Tilsit. In this picture the artist, with admirable sobriety of method, has succeeded in giving a true characterization of the triumphant attitude of the conqueror sitting erect on his battle-horse, which seems ready to spring forward to fresh victories. A. D. On June i4th the battle of Friedland was fought. This battle, the anniversary of Marengo, was won largely by Napoleon's taking advantage of a blunder of his op- ponent. The French and the Russian armies were on the opposite banks of the Alle. Benningsen, the Russian com- mander, was marching towards Konigsberg by the eastern bank. Napoleon was pur- suing by the western bank. The French forces, however, were scattered ; and Ben- ningsen, thinking that he could engage and easily rout a portion of the army by cross- ing the river at Friedland, suddenly led his army across to the western bank. Napo- leon utilized this unwise movement with splendid skill. Calling up his reenforce- ments he attacked the enemy solidly. As soon as the Russian centre was broken, defeat was inevitable, for the retreating army was driven into the river, and thou- sands lost. Many were pursued through the streets of Friedland by the French, and slaughtered there. The battle was hardly over when Napoleon wrote to Josephine : "FRIEDLAND, i$thjune, 1807. " MY FRIEND : I write you only a few words, for I am very tired. I have been bivouacking for several days. My children have worthily celebrated the an- niversary of Marengo. The battle of Friedland will be just as celebrated and as glorious for my peo- ple. The whole Russian army routed, eighty guns captured, thirty thousand men taken prisoners or killed, with twenty-five generals ; the Russian guard annihilated ; it is the worthy sister of Marengo, Aus- terlitz, and Jena. The bulletin will tell you the rest. My loss is not large. I successfully out-manoeuvred the enemy. " NAPOLEON." PEACE OF TILSIT. Friedland ended the war. Directly after the battle Napoleon went to Tilsit, which for the time was made neutral ground, and here he met the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia, and the map of Europe was made over. The relations between the royal parties seem to have been for the most part amia- ble. Napoleon became very fond of Alex- ander I. at Tilsit. "Were he a woman I think I should make love to him," he wrote Josephine once. Alexander, young and enthusiastic, had a deep admiration for Napoleon's genius, and the two became good comrades. The King of Prussia, overcome by his losses, was a sorrowful figure in their company. It was their habit at Tilsit to go out every day on horseback, but the king was awkward, always crowd- ing against Napoleon, beside whom he BATTLE OF FRIEDLAND, JUNE 14, 1807. By Horace Vernet. Versailles gallery. Vernet depicts the emperor on the battle-field, giving ordersto the general of division, Oudinot, for the pursuit of the enemy. rode, and making'his two companions wait for him to climb from the saddle when they returned. Their dinners together were dull, and the emperors, very much in the style of two careless, fun-loving youths, bored by a solemn elderly relative, were accustomed after dinner to make excuses to go home early ; but later they met at the apartments of one or the other, and often talked to- gether until midnight. Just before the negotiations were com- pleted, Queen Louise arrived, and tried to use her influence with Napoleon to obtain at least Magdeburg. Napoleon accused the queen to Las Cases of trying to win him at first by a scene of high tragedy, but when they came to meet at dinner, her policy was quite another. " The Queen of Prussia dined with me to-day," wrote Na- poleon to the empress on July 7th. " I had to defend myself against being obliged to make some further concessions to her husband ; . . . " and the next day, " The Queen of Prussia is really charming ; she is full of coquetterie towards me. But do not be jealous; I am an oilcloth, off which all that runs. It would cost me too dear to play \\\z galant." The intercessions of the queen really hurried on the treaty. When she learned that it had been signed, and her wishes not granted, she was indignant, wept bit- terly, and refused to go to the second dinner to which Napoleon had invited her. Alexander was obliged to go himself to decide her. After the dinner, when she withdrew, Napoleon accompanied her. On the staircase she stopped. "Can it be," she said, " that after I have had the happiness of seeing so near me the man of the age and of history, I am not to have the liberty and satisfaction of assuring him that ht has attached me for life? ..." " Madame, I am to be pitied," said the emperor gravely. " It is my evil star." By the treaty of Tilsit the face of the continent was transformed. Prussia lost half her territory. Dantzic was made a MEETING OF FREDERICK WILLIAM III., KING OF FKUSSIA, NAPOLEON, AND ALEXANDER I., EMPEROK OF RUSSIA, AT .... THE FIGURE ON THE LEFT IS FREDERICK WILLIAM ; THAT ON THE RIGHT IS ALEXANDER. Engraved by Gttgel, after a drawing by Wolff. The meeting occurred June 26, 1807, in the pavilion which had been erected for that purpose on the River Nieman. After Friedland the Russians crossed the Nieman ; the French camped on the banks opposite them. The first interview on the raft was between the Emperor Alexander and Napo- leon alone on June zsth. The two emperors, accompanied by their staffs, started from the opposite banks at the same time ; Napoleon arrived first, passed through the tent and met Alexander. The two embraced warmly in sight of the two armies, who cheered them loudly. A second interview took place the next day, to which the Emperor Alexander brought the King of Prussia. During the time that the sovereigns at Tilsit were negotiating, the two armies kept their positions, and friendly relations grew up between them. free town. Magdeburg went to France. Hesse-Cassel and the Prussian possessions west of the Elbe went to form the kingdom of Westphalia. The King of Saxony re- ceived the grand duchy of Warsaw. Finland and the Danubian principalities were to go to Alexander in exchange for certain Ionian islands and the Gulf of Cattaro in Dalmatia. Of far more importance than this change of boundaries was the private understand- ing which the emperors came to at Tilsit. They agreed that the Ottoman Empire was to remain as it was unless they saw fit to change its boundaries. Russia might oc- cupy the principalities as far as the Dan- ube. Peace was to be made, if possible, with England, and the two powers were to work together to bring it about. If they failed, Russia was to force Sweden to close her ports to Great Britain, and Napoleon was to do the same in Denmark, Portugal, and the States of the Pope. Nothing was to be done about Poland by Napoleon. According to popular belief, the secret treaty of Tilsit included plans much more startling, it being said that the two empe- rors pledged themselves to each other for nothing less than driving the Bourbons from Spain and the Braganzas from Portugal, and replacing them by Bonapartes ; for giv- ing Russia Turkey in Europe and as much of Asia a? she wanted ; for ending the temporal power of the Pope ; for placing France in Egypt ; for shutting the English from the Mediterranean ; and for under- taking several other similar enterprises. NAPOLEON RECEIVING QUEEN LOUISE OF PRUSSIA, JULV 6, 1807. By Gosse. Versailles gallery. On the arrival of the Queen of Prussia at KSnigsberg, the emperor descended to the street to meet the brave and beautiful sovereign, and received her at the foot of the steps. The imperial guard were under arms ; the emperor was accompanied by the Grand Duke of Berg, the Marshals Berthier and Ney, General Duroc, and the minister of foreign affairs, Talleyrand, who is represented in this picture standing on the steps. 126 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. CHAPTER XIII. EXTENSION OF NAPOLEON'S EMPIRE. FAMILY AFFAIRS. Italy, was a princess of KING OF KINGS. I have made him King of Naples ; that he will con- tinue to be Grand Elector, and that nothing will be , . a -T-, changed as regards his relations with France. But NAPOLEONS influence in Europe was now impr * ss upon him that the least hesitation, the at its zenith. He was literally "king of slightest wavering, will ruin him entirely. I have kings," as he was popularly called, and another person in my mind who will replace him the Bonaparte family was rapidly displac- should he refuse. . . . At present all feelings of ing the Bourbon.. Joseph had been made SS&3XJSZ ^"BCTk'S King of Naples in 1806. Eliza was Prm- attached to the name of Bonaparte, but to that of cessof Lucques and Piom- bino. Louis, married to Hortense, had been King of Holland since 1806. Pauline had been the Prin- cess Borghese since 1803 ; Caroline, the wife of Mu- rat, was Grand Duchess of Cleves and Berg; Jerome was King of Westphalia ; Eugene de Beauharnais, Viceroy of married to Bavaria. The members of Napo- leon's family were elevat- ed only on condition that they act strictly in accord- ance with his plans. They must marry so as to cement the ties necessary to his kingdom. The} 7 must arrange their time, form their friendships, spend their money, as it best served the interest of his great scheme of con- quest. The interior affairs of their kingdoms were in reality centralized in his hands as perfectly as those of France. He watched the private and public conduct of his kings and nobles, and criticised them with absolute frank- ness and extraordinary common sense. The ground on which he pro- tected them is well ex- plained in the following letter, written in January, 1806, to Count Miot de Melito : FREDERICK WILLIAM III., KING OF PRUSSIA. Engraved by Dickenson, after a portrait painted in 1798 by Lauer. Frederick William III., born August 3, 1770, was the eldest son of Frederick William II., was trained by his grand-uncle Frederick the Great, and succeeded to his father's throne in 1797. When the treaty of Lune"villc ended the war with France in 1801, he was " You are going to rejoin my -brother. You will tell him that obliged to give up his territory on the left bank of the Rhine. He remained at peace with Napoleon until frightened by the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806. The war which followed, ending in the treaty of Tilsit, drove him from Berlin, and took away half his kingdom. But he nevertheless continued his efforts to reorganize his state. Frederick joined Napoleon for the Russian cam- paign, but joined the coalition of 1813. After Waterloo, he continued to improve his kingdom, though he never gave it the liberal constitution he had promised. He died June 7, 1840. NAPOLEON AND HIS BROTHERS. 127 Napoleon. It is with my fingers and with my pen that I make children. To-day I can love only those whom I esteem. Joseph must forget all our ties of childhood. Let him make himself esteemed. Let him acquire glory. Let him have a leg broken in battle. Then I shall esteem him. Let him give up his old ideas. Let him not dread fatigue. Look at me : the campaign I have just terminated, the move- ment, the excitement, have made me stout. I believe that if all the kings of Europe were to coalesce against me, I should have a ridiculous paunch." Joseph, bent on being a great king, boasted now and then to Napoleon of his position in Naples. His brother never failed to silence him with the truth, if it was blunt and hard to digest. LOUISE, QUEEN OF PRUSSIA^. 1798. Engraved by Dickenson, after a portrait painted in 1798 by Lauer. Louise, Queen of Prussia, was born March 10. 1776, in Hanover. Her father was the Duke Charles of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and her mother a princess of Hesse-Darmstadt. In 1793 she met King Frederick William III. at Frankfort. He was so enamored of her beauty and her nobility of character that he made her his wife. Queen Louise's dignity and sweetness under the reverses her kingdom suffered in the war with France, won her the love and respect of her people, and have given her a place among the most lovable and admirable women of history. She died July 19, 1810, and was buried at Charlottenburg, 5 where a beautiful mausoleum by Rauch has been erected. In 1814 her husband instituted the Order of Louise in her honor. On March 10, 1876, the Prussians celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of her birth. ' ' When you talk about the fifty thousand enemies of the queen, you make me laugh. . . . You exaggerate the degree of hatred which the queen has left behind at Naples : you do not know mankind. There are not twenty persons who hate her as you suppose, and there are not twenty persons who would not surrender to one of her smiles. The strongest feeling of hatred on the part of a nation is that in- spired by another nation. Your fifty thousand men are the enemies of the French." With Jerome, Napoleon had been par- ticularly incensed because of his marriage with Miss Patterson. In 1804 he wrote of that affair : " . . . Jerome is wrong to think that he will be able to count upon any weak- ness on my part, for, not having the rights of a father, I cannot entertain for him the feeling of a father ; a father allows him- self to be blinded, and it pleases him to be blinded because he identifies his son with himself. . . . But what am I to Je- rome ? Sole instrument of my destiny, I owe nothing to my brothers. They have made an abundant harvest out of what I have accomplished in the way of glory ; but, for all that, they must not abandon the field and deprive me of the aid I have a right to expect from them. They will cease to be anything for me, directly they take a road op- posed to mine. If I exact so much from my brothers who have already rendered many services, if I have abandoned the one who, in mature age [Lucien], refused to follow my advice, what must not Jerome, who is still young, and who is known only for his neglect of duty, expect ? If he does noth- ing for me, I shall see in this the decree of destiny, which has decided that I shall do nothing for him. Jerome yielded later to his brother's wishes, and in 1807 was rewarded with the new kingdom of West- phalia. Napoleon kept close watch of him, how- ever, and his letters are full of admirable counsels. The following is particu- larly valuable, showing, as it does, that Napoleon believed a government would be popular and en- during only in proportion to the liberty and prosper- itv it allowed the citi- JOSEl'H ItONAPARTE IN HIS CORONATION ROBHS. I? Engraved by C. S. Pradier in 1813, after Gerard. " What the German peoples desire with impa- tience [he told Jerome], is that persons who are not of noble birth, and who have talents, shall have an equal right to your consideration and to public employment (with those who are of noble birth) ; that every sort of servitude and of intermediate obliga- tions between the sovereign and the lowest class of the people should be entirely abolished. The bene- fits of the Code Napoleon, the publicity of legal pro- cedure, the establishment of the jury system, will be the distinctive characteristics of your monarchy. . . I count more on the effect of these benefits for the extension and strengthening of your kingdom, than upon the result of the greatest victories. Your people ought to enjoy a liberty, an equality, a well- being, unknown to the German peoples. . . . What people would wish to return to the arbitrary government of Prussia, when it has tasted the bene- fits of a wise and liberal administration ? The peoples of Germany, France, Italy, Spain, desire equality, and demand that liberal ideas should pre- vail. . . . Be a constitutional king." Louis in Holland was never a king to Napoleon's mind. He especially disliked his quarrels with his wife. The two young people had been married for state reasons, MARIE JULIE CLARY, QUEEN OF NAPLES. 1777-1845. By Robert Leffevre. Versailles gallery. Julie Clary married Joseph Bonaparte, the ist of August, 1794. Her husband was afterwards King of Naples, then King of Spain. In the can- vas of Leffevre, she holds by the hand her eldest daughter, Zenaide Charlotte Julie, born in 1801, afterwards married to Charles, Prince de Canino, son of Lucien Bonaparte. and were very unhappy. In 1807 Napo- leon wrote Louis, apropos of his domestic relations, a letter which is a good example of scores of others he sent to one and another of his kings and princes about their private affairs. " You govern that country too much like a Capu- chin. The goodness of a king should be full of maj- esty. ... A king orders, and asks nothing from any one. . . . When people say of a king that he is good, his reign is a failure. . . . Your quar- rels with the queen are known to the public. You should exhibit at home that paternal and effeminate character you show in your manner of governing. . You treat a young wife as you would command a regiment. Distrust the people by whom you are surrounded ; they are nobles. . . . You have the best and most virtuous of wives, and you render her miserable. Allow her to dance as much as she likes ; it is in keeping with her age. I have a wife who is forty years of age ; from the field of battle I write to THE LIFE OP NAPOLEON. JOSEPH BONAPARTE. Engraved by S. W. Reynolds after a painting made in the United States, in 1831, by J. Goubaut. her to go to balls, and you wish a young woman of twenty to live in a cloister, or, like a nurse, to be always washing her children. . . . Render the mother of your children happy. You have only one way of doing so, by showing her esteem and confidence. Unfortunately you have a wife who is too virtuous : if you had a coquette, she would lead you by the nose. But you have a proud wife, who is offended and grieved at the mere idea that you can have a bad opinion of her. You should have had a wife like some of those whom I know in Paris. She would have played you false, and you would have been at her feet. " NAPOLEON." With his sisters he was quite as positive. While Josephine adapted herself with grace and tact to her great position, the Bonaparte sis- ters, especially Pauline, were con- stantly irritating somebody "by their vanity and jealousy. The following letter to Pauline shows how little Napoleon spared them when their performances came to his ears : "MADAME AND DEAR SISTER: I have learned with pain that you have not the good sense to conform to the manners and customs of the citv of Rome ; that vou show contempt for the inhabitants, and that your eyes are unceasingly turned towards Paris. Although occupied with vast affairs, I never- theless desire to make known my wishes, and I hope that you will conform to them. " Love your husband and his family, be amiable, accustom yourself to th~ usages of Rome, and put this in your head : that if you follow bad advice you will no longer be able to count upon me. You may be sure that you will find no support in Paris, and that I shall never receive you there without your husband. If you quarrel with him, it will be your fault, and France will be closed to you. You will sacrifice your happiness and my esteem. " BONAPARTE." This supervision of policy, rela- tions, and conduct extended to his generals. The case of General Ber- thier is one to the point. Chief of Napoleon's staff in Italy, he had fallen in' love at Milan with a Ma- dame Visconti, and had never been able to conquer his passion. In Egypt Napoleon called him "chief of the lovers' faction," that part of the army which, because of their ELISA BACCIOCHI, GRAND DUCHESS OF TUSCANY, ELDEST SISTER OF NAPO- LEON (1777-1820). Engraved by Morghen in 1814, after Counis. MARIE PAULINE BONAPARTE, PRINCESS BORGHESE. This graceful portrait of the most beautiful of Napoleon's sisters, is from the brush of Madame Henoit, and belongs to the Versailles collection. JOACHIM MI/RAT (1771-1615). Engraved by Ruotte, after Gros. Murat was born in 1771, in the department of Lot. He was destined for the Church, but abandoned the seminary for the army. When Barras called Napoleon to the defence of the convention, the :3th Vendemiaire, Murat was asked to aid, and for his services he was made an aide- de-camp of Napoleon in Italy. His valor at Montenotte, Ceva, Dego, and Mondovi, was rewarded by sending him to Paris with the first flags captured. In 1798 he went to Egypt. He aided in the i8th Bru- maire, and was rewarded with the command of the consular guard and the hand of Caroline Bonaparte. At Marengo he led the French cavalry, and was afterwards made governor of the Cisalpine Republic. In 18:14 he was made a marshal of France, and in 1805 grand admiral, with the title of prince. He commanded the cavalry of the Grand Army in the campaign of 1805. and after Austerlitz was made grand duke of Berg and Cleves. Murat led the cavalry at Jena, Eylau, and Friedland, and in 1808 was made general-in-chief of the French armies in Spain. Soon after he became King of Naples under the title of King Joachim Napo- leon. During the retreat from Moscow Napoleon offended him, and he resigned his command and began to intrigue with Austria. In January, 1814. the alliance with Austria was declared by Murat's seizing Benevento, while Austria promised him Ancona for thirty thousand men. The alliance was broken by Murat's declaration that he intended to restore the unity and independence of Italy, and he was defeated by the Austrians, May 2, 1815, at Tolentino. He escaped to France and offered his sword to Napoleon, who refused it. After Waterloo he was refused an asylum in England, and, with a few followers, he attempted p retake Naples, but was deserted, taken prisoner, and shot October 13, 1815. THE QUEEN OF NAPLES AND MARIE MUKAT. By Madame Vige'e-Lebrun. This canvas, executed in 1807, is in the museum of Versailles. Caroline of Naples is represented with her eldest child, Marie Laetitia Josephe Murat, after- wards Countess Pepoli. desire to see wives or sweethearts, were constantly revolting against the campaign, and threatening to desert. In 1804 Berthier had been made marshal, and in 1806 Napoleon wished to give him the princedom of Neufchatel ; but it was only on condition that he give up Madame de Visconti, and marry. " I exact only one condition, which is that you get married. Your passion has lasted long enough. It has become ridiculous ; and I have the right to hope that the man whom I have called my companion in arms, who will be placed alongside of me by poster- ity, will no longer abandon himself to a weakness without example. . . . You know that no one likes you better than I do, but you know also that the first condition of my friendship is that it must be made subordinate to my esteem." JEROME BONAPARTE. 1808. " Engraved by I. G. Mtiller, knight, and Frederich Muller, son, engravers to his majesty the King of WUrtemberg. After a design made at Cassel by Madame Kinson." Jerome Bonaparte, youngest brother of Napoleon, was born in Ajaccio, 1784 ; died near Paris in 1860. Entered the navy at sixteen, and in 1801 was sent on the expedition to Santo Domingo. On his return went to the United States, where, in 1003, he married Miss Elizabeth Patterson of Baltimore. Napoleon refused to recognize this marriage, ana when Jerome brought his wife to Europe in 1805. they were forbidden France. Jerome continued in the navy, and his wife went to England. In 1806 he left naval for military service, was recognized as a French prince, and made successor to the throne in event of Napoleon's leaving no male heirs. After Tilsit, Jerome was made King of Westphalia, a new kingdom having its capital at Cassel, and was married to Catherine, daughter of the King of WUrtemberg. The campaign of 1813 drove him to Paris. During the Hundred Days he sat in the chamber of peers. After the second restoration of Louis XVIII. Jerome lived in various parts of Europe, suffering at one time serious financial embarrassment, until, in 1847, he was allowed to return to Paris. After the Revolu- tion of 1848 he was made governor of the Invalides and marshal. In 1852 he was president of the imperial senate. Later the right of succession was given him and his son. NAPOLEON IN HIS STUDY. '35 Berthier fled to Josephine for help, weeping like a child; butshecould do nothing, and he married the woman chosen for him. Three months after the ceremony, the husbandof Madame de Visconti died, and Berthier, broken-hearted, wrote to the Prince Borghese : ' ' You know how often the emperor pressed me to obtain a divorce for Madame de Visconti. But a divorce was al- ways repugnant to the feelings in which I was educated, and therefore I waited. To-day Ma- dame de Visconti is free, and I might have been the happiest of men. But the emperor forced me into a marriage which hinders me from uniting myself totheonly woman I ever loved. Ah, my dear prince, all that the emperor has done and may yet do for me, will be no compen- sation for the eternal misfortune to which he has condemned me." THE EMPEROR THE FRENCH 1807. OF IN KING OF WESTPHALIA. Never was Napo- leon more powerful than at the end of the period we have been tracing so rapidly, never had he so looked the emperor. An observer who watched him through the Te Deum sung at Notre Dame in his honor, on his return from Tilsit, says : " His features, always calm and serious, recalled the cameos which represent the Roman emperors. He was small ; still his whole person, in this im- posing ceremony, was in harmony with the part he was playing. A sword glittering with precious stones was at his side, and the glittering diamond called the ' Regent ' formed its pommel. Its brilliancy did not let us forget that this sword was the sharpest and the most victorious that the world had seen since those of Alexander and Caesar." Certainly he never worked more prodi- giously. The campaigns of 1805-1807 By Kinson. Versailles gallery. This picture ought to be catalogued under the title, " Portrait of King Jerome and his wife, Fre'de'rigue Catherine Sophie Dorothee, Princess of Wiirtemberg." were, in spite of their rapid movement, indeed, because of it, terribly fatiguing for him ; that they were possible at all was due mainly to the fact that they had been made on paper so many times in his study. When he was consul the only room open- ing from his study was filled with enormous maps of all the countries of the world. This room was presided over by a com- petent cartographer. Frequently these maps were brought to the .study and spread upon the floor. Napoleon would get down upon them on all fours, and creep about, compass and red pencil in hand, comparing and measuring distances, and studying the configuration of the land. If he was in doubt about anything, he re- ferred it to his librarian, who was expected to give him the fullest details. MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCE JEROME BONAPARTE AND THE PRINCESS CATHERINE OF WURTEMBERG, AUGUST 22, 1807. By Regnault. This picture is in the Versailles gallery. The ceremony of contract, here represented by the painter, took place in the Galerie de Diane in the Tuileries. Their Majesties were seated on the throne, with the young couple in front of them. Regnault de Saint-Jean d*Angely, secretary of state to the imperial family, read the contract of mar- riage, which was signed by their Majesties. The religious ceremony was afterwards celebrated in the chapel of the Tuileries by the prince primate, on the 23d of August. Attached to his cabinet were skilful sian campaigns of 1805-1807, Napoleon translators, whose business was not only showed, as never before, his extraordinary to translate diplomatic correspondence, capacity for attending to everything. The but to gather from foreign sources full in- formation about the armies of his enemies. Me"neval declares that the emperor knew the condition of foreign armies as well as he did his own. The amount of infor- mation he had about other lands was largely due to his ability to ask questions. When he sent to an agent for a report, he rattled at him a volley of questions, always to the point ; andtheagent knew that it would never do to let one go unanswered. While carrying on the Austrian and Prus- ELIZA BONAPARTE. Drawn by the physionotrace, by Quenedey. The physionotrace was an instrument invented at the end of the eighteenth century, by the aid of which one could trace portraits mechanically. number of despatches he sent out was incred- ible. In the first three months of 1807, while he was in Poland, he wrote over seventeen hundred letters and despatches. It was not simply war, the making of king- doms, the direction of his new-made kings ; minor affairs of the greatest variety occu- pied him. While at Boulogne, tormented by the failure of the English invasion and the war against Austria, he ordered that horse races should be estab- lished "in those parts of the empire the most NAPOLEON'S CARE OF DETAILS. 137 remarkable for the horses they breed ; prizes shall be awarded to the fleetest horses." The very day after the battle of Friedland, he was sending orders to Paris about the form and site of a statue to the memory of the Bishop of Vannes. He criticised from Poland the quarrels of Parisian actresses, ordered canals, planned there for the terior affairs of France. This care of details went, as Pasquier says, to the " point of minuteness, or, to speak plainly, to that of charlatanism ; " but it certainly did produce a deep impression upon France. That he could establish himself five hundred leagues from Paris, in the heart of winter, in a coun- try encircled by his enemies, and yet be in EMPRESS JOSEPHINE. Fragment from the picture of the marriage of Jerome Bonaparte and the Princess Catherine. Bourse and the Odeon Theatre. The news- papers he watched as he did when in Paris, reprimanded this editor, suspended that, forbade the publication of news of disasters to the French navy, censured every item honorable to his enemies. To read the bul- letins issued from Jena to Friedland, one would believe that the writer had no busi- ness other than that of regulating the in- daily communication with his capital, could direct even its least important affairs as if he were present, could know what every per- son of influence, from the Secretary of State to the humblest newspaper man, was doing, caused a superstitious feeling to rise in France, and in all Europe, that the emp.eror of the French people was not only omnipo- tent, but omnipresent. '38 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. LOUIS BONAPAKTE. 1778-1846. King of Holland in 1806. Abdicated in 1810, taking the title of Comte de St. Leu. CHAPTER XIV. THE BERLIN DECREE. WAR IN THE PENINSULA. THE BO- NAPARTES ON THE SPANISH THRONE. THE CONTINENTAL BLOCKADE. WHEN Napoleon, in 1805, was obliged to abandon the descent on England and turn the magnificent army gathered at Boulogne against Austria, he by no means gave up the idea of one day humbling his ene- my. Persistently throughout the campaigns of 1805-1807 his de- spatches and addresses remind Frenchmen that vengeance is only deferred. In every way hestrivesto awaken indignation and hatred against England. The alliance which has compelled him to turn his armies against his neighbors on the Con- tinent, he characterizes as an "unjust league fomented by the hatred and gold of England." He tells the soldiers of the Grand Army that it is English gold which has transported the Rus- sian army from the extremities of the universe to fight them. He charges the horrors of Austerlitz upon the English. "May all the blood shed, may all these misfor- tunes, fall upon the perfidious islanders who have caused them ! May the cowardly oligarchies of London support the conse- quences of so many woes ! " From now on, all the treaties he makes are drawn up with a view to humbling "the eternal ene- mies of the Continent." Negotiations for peace went on, it is true, in 1806, between the two countries. Napoleon offered to return Hanover and Malta. He offered several things which belonged to other people, but England refused all of his com- binations ; and when, a few days El GENIE HORTENSE DE BEAUHARNAIS. 1783-1837. Daughter of Josephine, wife of Louis, King of Holland, and i of Napoleon III. Eneraved by Laugier, after Girode^. El'GENIE HOKTENSE, QUEEN OF HOLLAND. Group in marble, by Monsieur Eniile Chatrousse. Gallery at Versailles. The queen has at her side her third son, Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, afterwards emperor under the title of Napo- leon III. after Jena, he addressed his army, it was to tell them : "We shall not lay down our arms until we have obliged the English, those eternal enemies of our nation, to renounce their plan of troubling the Conti- nent and their tyranny of the seas." A month later November 21, 1806 he proclaimed the famous Decree 01 Berlin, his future policy towards Great Britain. As she had shut her enemies from the sea, he would shut her from the land. The "con- tinental blockade," as this struggle of land against sea was called, was only using England's own weapon of war ; but it was using it with a sweeping audacity, thor- oughly Napoleonic in conception and in the proposed execution. Henceforth, all communication was forbidden between the British Isles and France and her allies. Every Englishman found under French authority and that was about all Europe as the emperor estimated it was a prisoner of war. Every dollar's worth of English property found within Napoleon's bounda- 140 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. EL'GENE DE UEAUHARNAIS, NAPOLEON'S STEPSON. (" EUGENIC NAPOLEONS, PRINCE DI FRANCIA, VICE RE D'lTALIA, 1813.") Engraved by Longhi, after Gerard, Milan, 1813. Eugene de Dcauharnais, son of Josephine Tascher de la Pagerie and the Viscount Alexandre de Beauharnais, was born in Paris in 1781. The property of his father having been confiscated, Eugene was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker, but, fortune changing, he was em- ployed on the staff of General Hoche. After the marriage of Josephine and Bona- parte, the latter took his stepson with him into Italy, and sent him on a mission to Corfu. He accompanied General Bonaparte to Egypt, and v.-as wounded at Saint-Jean d'Acre. He rose steadily in military rank, and when the Empire was established was made prince, and in 1805 Archchancellor of State. When Napoleon took the iron crown, Eugene was made Viceroy of Italy. He governed his king- dom with wisdom and fidelity. In 1806 Eugene was married to a daughter of the King of Bavaria, and adopted by Napoleon, who declared that in case he had no direct heir he intended giving him the crown of Italy. When the Austrian war of 1809 broke out, an army invaded Italy, and Eugene was defeated in, a first battle, but, rallying, he gained a series of victories, ending with that of Raab, which Napoleon called the "granddaughter of Marengo." It was Eugene and his sister Hortense that Napoleon charged to prepare Josephine for the divorce, and the former explained to the Senate the reasons for the act. He took so distinguished apart in the Russian campaign that Napoleon said : l> Eugene is the only one who has not committed blunders in this war." In 1813 and 1814 he fought with great skill against the allies. The final overthrow of Napoleon took his kingdom from him. He retired then to the court of the King of Bavaria, his father-in-law, who made him Duke of Leuchtenberg and Prince of Eichstadt. He died in 1824 at Munich. ries, whether it belonged to rich trader or inoffensive tourist, was prize of war. If one remembers the ex- tent of the seaboard which Napoleon at that moment commanded, the full peril of this menace to English commerce is clear. From St. Petersburg to Trieste there was not a port, save those of Denmark and Por- tugal, which would not close at his bidding. At Tilsit he and Alexander had entered into an agree- ment to complete this sea- board, to close the Baltic, the Channel, the European Atlantic, and the Mediter- ranean to the English. This was nothing else than asking Continental Europe to destroy her commerce for their sakes. There were several seri- ous uncertainties in the scheme. What retaliation would England make? Could Napoleon and Alexander agree long enough to succeed in divid- ing the valuable portions of the continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa ? Would the nations cheerfully give up the English cottons and tweeds they had been buy- ing, the boots they had been wearing, the cutlery and dishes they had been using? Would they cheer- fully see their own prod- ucts lie uncalled for in their warehouses, for the sake of aiding a foreign monarch although the most brilliant and power- ful on earth to carry out a vast plan for crushing an enemy who was not their enemy ? It remained to be seen. In the meantime there was the small part of the coast line remaining inde- pendent to be joined to the portion already blockaded to the English. There was no delay in Napoleon's action. Denmark was BERNADOTTE. ABOUT 1798. Engraved by Fiesinger, after Guerin. Bernadotte (J. D. Jules) was born at Pau, in 1764 ; entered the Royal Marine at seventeen years of age, and was sergeant in 1789. In 1792 entered the Army of the North, where he served with honor. He entered the Army of Italy in 1797, and. although suspicious of Bonaparte's ambition, he served him valiantly, and was one of those sent to Paris with captured flags. Was an active supporter of the coup d^etat of the i8th Fructidor, and was ambassador at Vienna after the treaty cf Campo Formio. Bernadotte married the Desiree Clary, sister-in-law of Joseph Donaparte, \vhom Napoleon, in 1795, had thought of making his wife. In 1799 he served in the Rhenish armies. He disapproved of the i8th Brumaire, but after it accepted the command of the Army of the West. In 1804 he was made marshal, and later. Prince of Pontc-Corvo. In the Austrian war of 1805 Bernadotte played an important part, and again in the campaign of 1807. In 1810 the Swedish States proclaimed him prince royal and heir-presumptive of Sweden. He was received as a son by Charles XIII., and during the life of that monarch Bernadotte surrounded him by a really fiiial care. In 1812 he entered the coalition against Bonaparte. At first he tried to act as a mediator, but this failing, he led his army against the French, defeating Ney and Oudinot, and deciding the battle of Leipsic. But he took no part in the invasion of France. In 1818, on the death of Charles XIII.. he was proclaimed King of Norway and Sweden, and took the name of Charles Jean IV., though he is usually called Charles XIV. He held the throne for twenty- six years. His son Oscar succeeded him on his death in 1844. MARIE PAULINE BONAPARTE. Born at Ajaccio, October 20, 1780; died at Florence, June 9, 1825. She tirst married Gen- eral Leclerc, who died during the expedition of Saint Domingo, and afterwards Camillo Borghese. ordered to choose between war with Eng- land and war with France. Portugal was notified that if her ports were not closed in forty days the French and Spanish armies would invade her. England gave a drastic reply to Napoleon's measures. In August she appeared before Copen- hagen, seized the Danish fleet, and for three days bombarded the town. This un- justifiable attack on a nation with which she was at peace horrified Europe, and it supported * he emperor in pushing to the uttermost the Berlin Decree. He made no secret of his determination. In a diplo- matic audience at Fontainebleau, October 14, 1807, he declared : " Great Britain shall be destroyed. I have the means of doing it, and they shall be employed. I have three -hundred thousand men devoted to this object, and an ally who has three hundred thousand to support them. I will permit no nation to receive a minister from Great Britain until she shall have renounced her maritime usages and tyranny ; and I desire you, gentlemen, to convey this determination to your respective sovereigns." Such an alarming extent did the block- Drawn by John Trumbull. Signed "J. T., 1808." In the " Trumbull Gallery of Revolutionary Sketches," owned by Professor Edward Frossard of Brooklyn, New York. The face is entirely in bold pen-and-ink work, with uniform and background finished in sepia. Under the bust is a locket surrounded by a border of hair work. Set in the frame beneath this is a smaller locket containing a bit of unwoven hair. On the back of the frame is pasted a piece of paper bearing the inscription in ink, written in Trumbull's own hand : "Napoleon at 44 with Parents Hair his Hair in small case J. T." The statement of the inscription, " Napoleon at 44," does not agree with the date on the picture, 1808, since Napoleon was not forty-four until 1813. The error is undoubtedly in the inscription, and is of a sort into which anybody might fall. It is not unlikely that Trumbull drew a face studied from life, though the production may have been, probably was. from memory. On several occasions he spent some time in Paris, and on one occasion he dined with Talleyrand, and talked with Lucien Bonaparte, who sat beside him at table, "on the subject of his brother s wonderful success." David was his intimate friend. It is not at all unlikely, therefore, that Trumbull had opportunities to studv the living features of Napoleon ; and, such opportunities occurring, he was not the man to neglect them. But, however produced, the portrait is certainly one of peculiar interest and value. 144 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. N. C. OL'DINOT, DUC DE REGGIO. 1767-1847. Engraved by Foster, after Lefevre. Oudinot, Nicolas Charles, was born at Bar-le-duc, son of a. merchant. Left commerce for the army ; in 1791 he was made chief of bat- talion, and three years later general of brigade. The same year he received five wounds and was taken prisoner, re- maining captive until 1796. He next served under Moreau, and in 1799 was sent to the army of Helvetia, where he distinguished himself in the battle of Zurich. Oudinot was with Masse"na in the siege of Genoa (i8co), and in 180^ was commander of a division of the camp of Bruges. In 1805 he received the grand cross of the Legion of Honor. In the campaign of 1805 he greatly distinguished himself at the head of ten thousand grenadiers, called the grena- diers Oudinot. For his services in the campaign of i8c6- 1807 he was made count, and in 1808 governor of Erfurt, where Napoleon presented him to Alexander I. as the Bay- ard of the army. The baton of marshal and the title of Duke of Reggio were given him after Wagram. Oudinot was wounded early in the Russian campaign, but on hear- ing of the disasters returned to his command, and at the terrible passage of the Beresina he performed prodigies of valor. Throughout the campaign of 1813 and the invasion the next year he was active, and only laid down arms after Napoleon's abdication. He joined Louis XVIII., and re- fused to leave him during the hundred days. In 1823 he served in the Spanish campaign. He was made governor of the Invalides in 1842, a post he held until his death in 1847. ade threaten to take, that even our minis- ter to France, Mr. Armstrong, began to be nervous. His diplomatic acquaintances told him cynically, " You are much favored, but it won't last ; " and, in fact, it was not long before it was evident that the United States was not to be allowed to remain neutral. " Sinc-3 America suffers her vessels to be searched, she adopts the principle that the flag does not cover the goods. Since she recognizes the absurd block- ades laid by England, consents to having her vessels incessantly stopped, sent to England, and so turned aside from their course, why should the Americans not suffer the blockade laid by France ? Certainly France is no more blockaded by England than Eng- land by France. Why should Americans not equally suffer their vessels to be searched by French ships ? Certainly France recognizes that these measures are unjust, illegal, and subversive of national sovereignty; but it is the duty of nations to resort to force, and to declare themselves against things which dishonor them and disgrace their independence." WAR WITH PORTUGAL. The attempt to force Portugal to close her ports caused war. In all but one par- ticular she had obeyed Napoleon's orders : she had closed her ports, detained all Eng- lishmen in her borders, declared war ; but her king refused to confiscate the property of British subjects in Portugal. This eva- sion furnished Napoleon an excuse for refusing to believe in the sincerity of her pretensions. " Continue your march," he wrote to Junot, who had been ordered into the country a few days before (October 12, 1807). "I have reason to believe that MARIE ANNA LSA liUNAI'AKTE. Born at Ajaccio, January 3, 1777, Princess of Lucqucs Napoleon's notice to Mr. Armstrong was and of Piombino, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, wife of Count Clear and decisive : Bacciochi. Died at Trieste, August 7, 1820. MARSHAL NEY (" LE MARljCHAL NEY, DUG D ? ELCHINGEN, PRINCE DE LA MOSKOVVA, FAIR DE FRANCE "). Engraved by Tardieu, after Ge'rard. Ney (Michel) was born at Sarrelouis in 1769 ; entered the army at nineteen years of age. In 1792 Ney entered the Army of the North, where he soon attracted attention by his bravery and skill, winning the title of the Indefatigable. In 1794 he was made chief of brigade, and two years later general of brigade. He served in the Army of the Rhine and of the Danube until the peace of Luneville in 1801. Returning to Paris, Napoleon succeeded in attaching him to his fortunes, and sent him to Switzerland as minister plenipotentiary to propose that the Helvetian Republic be placed under the protectorate of France. When, in 1803, war was declared against England, Ney was recalled from Switzer- land, where he had succeeded in his negotiations, and sent to the north to command a corps of the Army of Invasion. In 1804 he was named marshal and given the grand cordon of the Legion of Honor. In the campaign of 1805 against Austria, Ney played a brilliant part, as well as in those of 1806 and 1807. His audacity, military skill, and bravery won him various titles from his soldiers, such as the " Brave of Braves," the " Red Lion "' (Ney's hair was red), and " Peter the Red." When Napoleon instituted his new nobility, after Tilsit, Ney was made Duke of Elchingen. During 1809 and i?io he served in Spain, but, quarreling with Massena, his commander-in-chief, he was obliged to return to France. In the Russian campaign no one distinguished himself more than Ney. For his services at the battle of Moskowa he was made Prince of Moskowa. When Louis XVIII. was restored, Ney joined the Bourbons, and was rewarded with high honors, but at court his wife was ridiculed by the ancient nobility, until, deeply wounded, he left Paris. He was in command at Besangon when Napoleon returned from Elba, and was ordered to take his former master prisoner. Ney started, promising to " bring back Bonaparte in an iron cage " ; but the enthusiasm over the imperial cause was so great that he made up his mind that the cause of the Bourbons was lost, and went over to Napoleon. He was convicted of treason, and shot in Paris," December 7, 1815. 146 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. there is an understanding with England, so as to give the British troops time to arrive from Copenhagen." Without waiting for the results of the invasion, he and the King of Spain divided up Portugal between them. If their ac- tion was premature, Portugal did nothing to gainsay them ; for when Junot arrived at Lisbon in December, he found the coun- try without a government, the royal family having fled in fright to Brazil. There was only one thing now to be done ; Junot must so establish himself as to hold the country against the English, who naturally would resent the injury done their ally. From St. Petersburg to Trieste, Na- poleon now held the seaboard. THE SPANISH THRONE GIV- EN TO A BO- NAPARTE. But he was not satisfied. Spain was be- tween him and Portugal. If he was going to rule Western Europe he ought to pos- sess her. There is no space here to trace the in- trigues with the weak and vi- cious factions of the Spanish court, which ended in Napo- leon's persuad- ing Charles IV. to c ed e h i s rights to the Spanish throne and to become his pensioner, and Ferdinand, the heir appar- ent, to abdicate ; and which placed Joseph Bonaparte, King of Naples, on the Spanish throne, and put GENERAL FOY. ABOUT 1820. Engraved by Lefevre, after Horace Vernet. Foy (Maximilian Sdbastien), born at Ham in 1775, entered the artillery school at fifteen, and assisted as lieutenant at the battle of Jammapes. Arrested for contra-revolutionary talk, Foy was imprisoned, but was released after the gth Thermidor. He afterwards served in the Army of the Rhine under Masse'na, and made the German campaign of 1800 under Moreau. He voted against the life consulate and the empire, and showed an opposition to the growth of imperialism which hurt his advancement. After the battle of Vimeiro, in 1808, he was named gen- eral of brigade, and later general of division. He fought in Spain until the evacuation of the country. Under the restoration Foy served as an inspector-general of artillery ; but he joined Napoleon on his return, fought at Waterloo, and went into retirement afterwards. In 1819 he was elected deputy, and almost at once he showed himself an orator of unusual power. He was a pure constitutionalist, and gave all h:s efforts to holding the Bourbons to the charter. He died in November, 1825. Murat, Charlotte Bonaparte's husband, in Joseph's place. From beginning to end the transfer of the Spanish crown from Bourbon to Bona- parte was dishonorable and unjustifiable. It is true that the government of Spain was corrupt. No greater mismanagement could be conceived, no more scandalous court. Unquestionably the country would have been far better off under Napoleonic institutions. But to despoil Spain was to be false to an ally which had served him for years with fidelity, and at an awful cost to herself. It is true that her service had been through fear, not -love. It is true that at one critical moment (when Napoleon was in Poland, in 1807) she had tried to escape ; but, neverthe- less, it remained a fact that for France Spain had lost colo- nies, sacrificed men and money, and had seen her fl e e t go down at Trafal- gar. In taking her throne, Na- poleon had none of the ex- cuses which had justified him in interfering in Italy, in Ger- many, in Hol- land, in Switzer- land. This was not a conquest of war, not a confiscation on account of the perfidy of an ally, not an at- tempt to answer the prayers of a people for a more liberal government. If Spain had submitted to the change, she would have been purchas- ing good gov-~ MARSHAL I.EFEBVRE. ABOUT 1796. Engraved in 1798 by Fiesinger, after Mengelberg. Lefebvre (Francois Joseph") was born at Ruffach in 1755, son of a miller, destined for the Church, but at eighteen he enrolled in the French guards. When the Revolution broke out he had just reached the grade of sergeant. In 1793 he was made general of brigade under Hoch2, and served in the armies of the Rhine with honor until wounded in 1798, when he returned to Paris, where he was named commander of one of the military divisions. On the iSth Brumaire. Lefebvre rendered important service, and in 1800 was named for the Senate by the First Consul. In 1804 he was made a marshal and a grand officer of the Legion of Honor. In 1806 Lefebvre commanded a division of the Grand Army, and at Jena led the Imperial foot-guard. In 1807 he directed the siege of Dantzic, which lasted fifty-one days. For the capture of this town he was made Duke of Dantzic. In 1808 Lefebvre served in Spain, gaining two battles. In the war of 1809 against the Austrians he led the Bavarian army, and in 1812 was commander-in-chief of the Imperial Guard, at whose head he remained during the retreat from Russia. Lefebvre was made a peer of France by the Restoration, and during the Hundred Days he sat in the Imperial Chamber. When Louis XVIII. returned he deposed him, but he was recalled in 1819. He died in 1820. The maisha, and his wife are altogether among the most interesting people in the Napoleonic court. Both of them were uneducated and completely impervious to culture, but of such sincerity of thought and speech, and such goodness of heart, that Napoleon valued them highly. The courtiers, however, ridiculed them incessantly, and repeated many of their blunders against etiquette and grammar. Madame Lefebvre, a kind of noble-hearted Mrs. Malaprop, has been made the heroine of several French plays. The latest of these is the " Madame Sans-Gene " of Victor Sardou, put on at the Vaudeville in Paris in the winter of 1893-94. Designed by Charlet, probably about 1834. The costume, save the boots, is the one Napo- leon commonly wore in-doors, as well as out. ernment at the price of national honor. But Spain did not submit. She, as well as all disinterested lookers-on in Europe, was revolted by the baseness of the deed. No one has ever explained better the feeling wjiich the intrigues over the Spanish throne caused than Napoleon himself : " I confess I embarked badly in the affair [he told Las Cases at St. Helena]. The immorality of it was too patent, the injustice far too cynical, and the whole thing too villanous ; hence I failed. The attempt is seen now only in its hideous nudity, stripped of all that is grand, of all the numerous benefits which I intended. Posterity would have extolled it, however, if I had succeeded, and rightly, perhaps, because of its great and happy results." It was the Spanish people themselves, not the ruling house, who resented the transfer from Bourbon to Bonaparte. No sooner was it noised through Spain that the Bourbons had really abdicated, and Joseph Bonaparte had been named king, than an insurrection was organized simultaneously all over the country. Some eighty-four thousand French troops were scattered through the peninsula, but they were powerless before the kind of warfare which now began. Every defile became a battle-ground, every rock hid a peasant, armed and waiting for French stragglers, messengers, supply parties. The remnant of the French fleet escaped from Trafalgar, A NEW NOBILITY. 149 and now at Cadiz, was forced to surrender. Twenty-five thousand French soldiers laid down their arms at Baylen, but the Span- iards refused to keep their capitulation treaties. The prisoners were tortured by the peasants in the most barbarous fashion, crucified, burned, sawed asunder. Those who escaped the popular vengeance were sent to the Island of Cabrera, where they lived in the most abject fashion. It was only in 1814 that the remnant of this army was released. King Joseph was obliged to flee to Vittoria a week after he reached his capital. The misfortunes in Spain were followed by greater ones in Portugal. Junot was defeated by an English army at Vimeiro in August, 1808, and capitulated on condi- tion that his army be taken back to France without being disarmed. CHAPTER XV. DISASTER IN SPAIN. ALEXANDER AND NAPOLEON IN COUNCIL. NAPOLEON AT MADRID. NAPOLEON PREPARES FOR SPAIN. bringing prosperity and order to France were rewarded in 1807 with splendid gifts NAPOLEON, amazed at this unexpected from the indemnities levied on the ene- popular uprising in Spain, and angry that mies. The marshals of the Grand Army the spell of invincibility under which his received from eighty thousand to two armies had fought, was broken, resolved hundred thousand dollars apiece ; twenty- to undertake the Penin- sular war himself. But before a campaign in Spain could be entered upon, it was necessary to know that all the inner and outer wheels of the great machine he had devised for dividing the world and crushing Eng- land were working per- fectly. Since the treaty of Tilsit he had done much at home for this machine. The finances were in splendid condition. Public works of great importance were going on all over the kingdom ; the court was luxurious and brilliant, and the money it scattered, en- couraged the commer- cial and manufacturing classes. Never had fetes been more brilliant than those which welcomed Napoleon back to Paris in 1807 ; never had the season at Fontainebleau been gayer or more mag- nificent than it was that year. All of those who had been instrumental i n CHARLET. 1792-1845. This portrait, a perfect likeness, is the work of Charlet himself. Charlet was about twenty- nine years old at the time of Waterloo, and had seen the emperor on several occasions, when he took pains to cover his note-book with sketches of Napoleon taken in every attitude. Bjt he never executed a portrait, properly so called, of the hero. Sometimes he enlarged his draw- ing in the studio, and accentuated the form of his model in a remarkable way in sepia, or occa- sionally even in color. I know two Napoleons on horseback, by Charlet, one of them an oil- painting, the other a colored lithograph, which are true portraits. But this kind of interpre- tation of the emperor's face is very rare in the work of Charlet, who was. above all, the painter of the simple soldier. In this he excels. In his numerous lithographs, drawings, and sepias, the emperor only appears by the way, and nearly always in rapid pencil sketch. A. D. five generals were given forty thousand dollars each; the civil function- aries were not forgotten ; thus Monsieur de Segur received forty thousand dollars as a sign of the emperor's gratification at the way he had ad- ministered etiquette to the new court. It was at this period that Napoleon founded a new nobility as a fur- ther means of rewarding those who had rendered brilliant services to France. This institution was designed, too, as a means of reconciling old and new France. It created the titles of prince, duke, count, baron, and knight ; and those receiving these titles were at the same time given domains in the conquered provinces, sufficient to permit them to establish themselves in good style. The drawing up of the rules which were to gov- ern this new order oc- cupied the gravest men of the country, Cam- NAPOLEON I. By Carle Vernet. After an unpublished water color in the collection of Monsieur Chris- tophle, ex-Minister of Public Works, Governor of the Credit-fonder of France. Carle Vernet, who often had occasion to see the emperor, evidently made this sketch from nature ; then, in the retirement of his studio, copied it in water colors and placed it in a fictitious composition. It may be remarked that the artist has represented his model in the familiar pose rendered by the German painter DShling, whose well-known portrait is reproduced on page 118. bace"res, Saint-Martin, d'Hauterive, Por- talis, Pasquier. Among other duties they had to prepare the armorial bearings. Na- poleon refused to allow the crown to go on the new escutcheons. He wished no one but himself to have a right to use that symbol. A substitute was found in the panache, the number of plumes showing the rank. Napoleon used the new favors at his com- mand freely, creating in all, after 1 807, forty- eight thousand knights, one thousand and ninety barons, three hundred and eighty- eight counts, thirty-one dukes, and three princes. All members of the old nobility who were supporting his government were given titles, but not those which they for- merly held. Naturally this often led to great dissatisfaction, the bearers of ancient names preferring a lower rank which had been their family's for centuries to one higher, but unhallowed by time and tra- dition. Thus Madame de Montmorency rebelled obstinately against being made a THE EMPERORS AT ERFURT. THE ERFURT MEETING. countess, she had been a baroness under the old regime, and, as the. Montmorencys claimed the honor of being called the first Christian barons, she felt justly that the old The essential point in carrying out the title was a far prouder one than any Napo-" Tilsit plan was, however, the fidelity of leon could give her. But a countess she Alexander; and Napoleon resolved, before had to remain. going into the Spanish war, to meet the In his efforts to win for himself the Emperor of Russia. This was the more services of all those whom blood and for- needful, because Austria had begun to tune had made his natural supporters, the show signs of hostility, emperor tried again to reconcile Lucien. The meeting opened in September, 1807, In November, 1807, Napoleon visited Italy, at Erfurt, in Saxony, and lasted a month, and at Mantua a secret interview took place Napoleon acted as host, and prepared a between the brothers. Lucien, in his splendid entertainment for his guests. The " Memoirs," gives a dramatic description of company he had gathered was most bril- the way in which Napoleon spread the liant. Beside the Russian and French kingdoms of half a world before him and emperors, with ambassadors and suites, offered him his choice. were the Kings of Saxony, Bavaria, and Wurtemberg, the Prince Primate, the Grand " He struck a great blow with his hand in the Duke and Grand Duchess of Baden, the middle of the immense map of Europe which was Dukes of Saxony, and the Princes of the extended on the table, by the side of which we were Confederation of the Rhine. standing. Ves, choose, he said ; you see I am not ,. talking in the air. All this is mine, or will soon Th e palaces where the emperors were belong to me ; I can dispose of it already. Do you entertained, were furnished with articles want Naples ? I will take it from Joseph, who, by the by, does not care for it ; he prefers Mortefontaine. Italy the most beautiful jewel in my im- perial crown ? Eugene is but viceroy, and, far from despising it, he hopes only that I shall give it to him, or, at least, leave it to him if he survives me ; he is likely to be disappointed in waiting, for I shall live ninety years. I must, for the perfect con- solidation of my empire. Besides, Eugene will not suit me in Italy after his mother is divorced. Spain ? Do you not see it falling into the hol- low of my hand, thanks to the blun- ders of my dear Bourbons, and to the follies of your friend, the Prince of Peace ? Would you not be well pleased to reign there, where you have been only ambassador ? Once for all, what do you want ? Speak ! What- ever you wish, or can wish, is yours, if your divorce precedes mine.' " Until midnight the two brothers wrestled with the questions between them. Neither would abandon his position ; and when Lucien finally went away, his face was wet with tears. To Meneval, who conducted him to his inn in the town, he said, in bidding him carry his farewell to the emperor, " It may be forever." It was not. Seven years later the. brothers met again, but the map of Europe was for- . r . 1 , , . *: T Carved by General Chau- ever rolled up for Napo- Rarnier collection of the Mar- quis de Girardin. STATUETTE IN WOOD OF THE EM- PEROR NAPOLEON I. from the Garde-Meuble of France. The leading actors of the Theatre Fran$ais gave the best French tragedies to a house where there was, as Napoleon had promised Talma, a " parterre full of kings." There was a hare hunt on the battle-field of Jena, to which even Prince William of Prussia was invited, and where the party breakfasted on the spot where Napoleon had biv- ouacked in 1806, the night be- fore the battle. There were balls where Alexander danced, "but not I," wrote the em- peror to Josephine ; " forty years are forty years." Goethe and Wieland were both pre- sented to Napoleon at Erfurt, and the emperor had long con- versations with them. In the midst of the gayeties Napoleon and Alexander found time to renew their Tilsit agree- ment. They were to make war and peace together. Alex- ander was to uphold Napoleon in giving Joseph the throne of Spain, and to keep the conti- nent tranquil during the Penin- sular war. Napoleon was to support Alexander in getting possession of Finland, Molda- via, and Wallachia. The two emperors were to write and 152 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. ALEXANDER I. OF RUSSIA. 1805. Alexander I. of Russia was born at St. Petersburg in 1777 ; as- cended the throne in 1801, after the murder of his father. His first acts were remarkably liberal. He recalled the banished, opened prisons, abolished the censorship, the torture, the public sale of serfs, founded schools, reformed the code, and did much to put Russia in the line of progress Western Europe was following. He entered into the first coalition against Napoleon in 1805, and suffered a defeat at Austeriitz in December of that year. The next year the battles of Eylau and Friedland drove him to make peace with Napoleon. The negotiations of Tilsit, where this peace was signed, were the beginning of a warm personal friendship between the two emperors, and Alexander con- sented to aid Napoleon in his vast scheme for conquering England. The fundamental part of this scheme, the continental blockade, at last bore too heavily on the Russians, and Napoleon's occupation of Oldenburg dissatisfied Alexander. The peace was broken in 1812, and Napoleon undertook the invasion of Russia. Alexander refused to come to any terms with his former friend, and in 1813 called Europe to arm itself against France. This coalition was fatal to Napoleon, who was driven to abdicate in 1814 : and Alexander, who had pleased the Parisians by his mild treatment of them, was the main instrument in the recall of the Bourbons. At the Congress of Vienna which fol- lowed, he succeeded in obtaining assent to his confiscation of Poland. After Waterloo Alexander returned with his troops to Paris, and con- sented to the rigorous measures taken against the country, but opposed its dismemberment. On leaving Paris he signed the Holy Alliance with Prussia and Austria, which had as its real object opposition to the liberal principles of the Revolution. Alexander fell under new influences afterwards English and Protestant. He closed the French theatres and opened Bible societies ; became, under Madame Krttdener's in- fluence, a devout follower of her mysticism, and received a deputation of Quakers, with whom he prayed and wept. Later he became severe and suspicious. He died in 1825. sign a letter inviting England to join them in peace negotiations. This was done promptly ; but when England insisted that repre- sentativesof thegovernment which was acting in Spain in the name of Ferdinand VII. should be admitted to the proposed meeting, the peace negotiations abruptly ended. Underthecircumstances Napoleon could not, of course, recognize that government. NAPOLEON IN SPAIN. The emperor was ready to con- duct the Spanish war. His first move was to send into the country a large body of veterans from Ger- many. Before this time the army had been made up of young re- cruits upon whom the Spanish looked with contempt. The men, inexperienced and demoralized by the kind of guerilla warfare which was waged against them, had be- come discouraged. The worst feature of their case was that they did not believe in the war. That brave story-teller Marbot relates frankly how he felt : " As a soldier I was bound to fight any one who attacked the French army, but I could not help recognizing in my inmost conscience that our cause was a bad one, and that the Spaniards were quite right in trying to drive out strangers who, after coming among them in the guise of friends, were wishing to dethrone their sovereign and take forcible possession of the king- dom. This war, therefore, seemed to me wicked ; but I was a soldier, and I must march or be charged with cowardice. The greater part of the army thought as I did, and, like me, obeyed orders all the same." The appearance of the veterans and the presence of the emperor at 9nce put a new face on the war ; the morale of the army was raised, and the respect of the Spaniards inspired. The emperor speedily made his way to Madrid, though he had to fight three battles to get there, and began at once a work of reorgani- zation. Decree followed decree. Feudal rights were abolished, the inquisition was ended, the number of convents was reduced, the cus- tom-houses between the various provinces were done away with, a political and military programme NAPOLEON TO THE SPANIARDS. '53 UNPUBLISHED PORTRAIT OF NAPOLEON. Executed on a bonbon-box of straw, by a Chinese artist. Collection of Monsieur le Roux. The fame of Napoleon's exploits, especially after the brilliant triumph of Austerlitz, reached even the extreme Orient ; and at that time the image of Napoleon was reproduced in many and various ways by Chinese and Japanese art- ists, who had as guide pictures of Napoleon, carried religiously across the sea as relics by the hands of Frenchmen. There even exists a Japanese album, ex- tremely rare, which I have had occasion to handle, and in which the principal facts of Napoleon's reign are depicted in twenty colored plates, in a style at once naive and picturesque. The portrait here reproduced was made, probably in 1806, by an artist of the Celes- tial Empire. It is interesting, of course, rather as a rare and curious document than as a work of art. A. D. was made out for King Joseph. Many bulletins were sent to the Spanish people. In all of them they are told that it is the English who are their enemies, not their allies ; that they come to the Peninsula not to help, but to inspire to false confidence, and to lead them astray. Napoleon's plan and pur- pose cannot be mistaken. " Spaniards [he proclaimed at Madrid], your destinies are in my hands. Reject the poison which the English have spread among you ; let your king be certain of your love ana your con- fidence, and you will be more powerful and hap- pier than ever. I have destroyed all that was opposed to your prosperity and greatness ; I have broken the fetters which weighed upon the people ; a liberal constitution gives you, instead of an absolute, a tempered and constitutional monarchy. It depends upon you that this con- stitution shall become law. But if all my efforts prove useless, and if you do not respond to my confidence, it will only remain for me to treat you as conquered provinces, and to find my brother another throne. I shall then place the crown of Spain on my own head, and I shall know how to make the wicked tremble ; for God has given me the power and the will necessary to surmount all obstacles." But a flame had been kindled in Spain which no number of even Na- poleonic bulletins could quench a fanatical frenzy inspired by the priests, a blind passion of patriot- ism. The Spaniards wanted their own, even if it was feudal and op- pressive. A constitution which they had been forced to accept, seemed to them odious and shameful, if liberal. The obstinacy and horror of their resistance was nowhere so tragic and so heroic as at the siege of Saragossa, going on at the time Napoleon, at Madrid, was issuing his decrees and proclamations. "JOSEPHINE, IMPERATRICE DBS FRANCAIS." Reproduction of the model of the marble statue exhib- ited in the Salon of 1857, and executed for the town of St. Pierre (Martinique), the native country of Josephine. This statue is by the sculptor Vital-Dubray. The plaster cast is in the Ver- sailles museum. NAPOLEON I., EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH AND KING OF ITALY. ("NAPOLEON 1 CT , EMPEREUR DBS FRANCOIS, ROI D'ITALIE.") ABOUT 1809. Engraved by Roger, after GueYin. Painted, probably, about 1809. Saragossa had been fortified when the in- surrection against King Joseph broke out. The town was surrounded by convents, which were turned into forts. Men, women, and children took up arms, and the priests, cross in hand, and dagger at the belt, led them. No word of surrender was tolerated within the walls. At the beginning Napo- leon regarded the defence of Saragossa as a small affair, and wished to try persuasion on the people. There was at Paris a well- known Aragon noble whom he urged to go to Saragossa and calm the popular excite- ment. The man accepted the mission. When he arrived in the town the people hurried forth to meet him, supposing he had come to aid in the resistance. At the first word o submission he spoke he was assailed by the mob, and for nearly a year lay in a dungeon. The peasants of the vicinity of Saragossa were quartered in the town, each family being given a house to defend. Nothing could drive them from their posts. They took an oath to resist until death, and re- garded the probable destruction of them- selves and their families with the indiffer- ence of stoics. The priests had so aroused their religious exaltation, and were able to sustain it at such a pitch, that they never wavered before the daily horrors they en- dured. THE SIEGE OF SARAGOSSA. '55 The French at first tried to drive them from their posts by sallies made into the town, but the inhabitants rained such a murderous fire upon them from towers, roofs, windows, even the cellars, that they were obliged to retire. Exasperated by this stubborn resistance they resolved to blow up the town, inch by inch. The siege was begun in the most terrible and destruc- tive manner, but the people were unmoved by the danger. " While a house was being mined, and the dull sound of the rammers warned them that death was at hand, not one left the house which he had sworn to defend, and we could hear them singing litanies. Then, at the. moment the walls flew into the air and fell back with a crash, crushing the greater part of them, those who had escaped would collect about the ruins, and sheltering themselves behind the slightest cover, would recommence their sharpshooting." Marshal Lannes commanded before Saragossa. Touched by the devotion and the heroism of the defenders, he proposed an honorable capitulation. The besieged scorned the proposition, and the awful pro- cess of undermining went on until the town was practically blown to pieces. For such resistance there was no end but extermination. For the first time in his career Napoleon had met sublime popular patriotism, a passion before which diplo- macy, flattery, love of gain, force, lose their power. It was for but a short time that the emperor could give his personal attention to the Spanish war. Certain wheels in his great machine were not running right. At its very centre, in Paris, there was friction among certain influential persons. The peace of the Continent, necessary to the Peninsular war, and which Alexander had guaranteed, was threatened. Under these circumstances it was impossible to remain in Spain. A CORNER OF THE NAPOLEON COLLECTION OF THE MARQUIS DE GIRARDIN. The souvenirs of Napoleon prints must be reckoned by thousands. Paintings, bronzes, snuff-boxes, miniatures, objects of industrial art, symbolic objects, arms, etc. all figure in the collection of the Marquis de Girardin in Paris. Many of the articles belonged originally to the Due de Gnete. father in-law of the Marquis de Girardin, who was Bonaparte's minister of finance from the i8th Rrumaire till the abdication at Fontainebleau, and also resumed office during the Hundred Days. He was one of the most faithful followers of the emperor, who loaded him with presents. These form the chief part of the collection of the Marquis de Girardin, to whom our sincere thanks are due for his kind permission to reproduce here one of the most picturesque corners of his veritable museum. A. D. EMl'EKOK NAPOLEON. Drawn by Vigneux. Engraved by Henry. Print belonging to the Count Primoli of Rome, and bearing the following interesting testimony written by the Prince Gabrielli himself, a relative of the emperor : " Only portrait of the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte that resembles him ; bought in Paris by the Prince Don Pietro Gabrielli in December, 1809." CHAPTER XVI. TALLEYRAND'S TREACHERY. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1809. WAGRAM. PLOTTING OF TALLEYRAND AND TOUCHED Two unscrupulous and crafty men, both of singular ability, caused the interior trouble which called Napoleon from Spain. These men were Talleyrand and Fouche. The latter we saw during the Consulate as Minister of Police. Since, he had been once dismissed because of his knavery, and restored, largely for the same quality. His cunning was too valuable to dispense with. The former, Talleyrand, made Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1799, had handled his negotiations with the extraordinary skill for which he was famous, until, in 1807, Napoleon's mistrust of his duplicity, and Talleyrand's own dislike of the details of his position, led to the portfolio being taken from him, and he being made Vice-Grand- Elector. He evidently expected, in mak- TALLEYRAND. Engraved by Desnoyers. after Gerard. Talleyrand-Perigord (Charles Maurice de) (1754-1838) was educated for the Church, and in 1788 was made Bishop of Autun. He was active in the Revolution, and being struck with Napoleon's talent in Italy, hastened to win his favor. He became Napoleon's most important adviser, but later turned against him, and became his most subtle enemy. After the surrender of Paris, it was Talleyrand who secured from Alexander the declara- tion that he would treat neither with Napoleon nor with any member of his family. He became Louis XVIII. 's Minister of Foreign Affairs. Soon after Waterloo he lost his position as Minister of Foreign Affairs, but the Revolution of 1830 restored him to favor, and he was sent to London as ambassador. In 1834 he left diplomatic life at his own request, and returned to Paris, where he died in 1838. ing this change, to remain as influential as ever with Napoleon. The knowledge that the emperor was dispensing with his services made him resentful, and his devotion to the imperial cause fluctuated according to the attention he received. Now, Napoleon's course in Spain had been undertaken at the advice of Talley- rand, largely, and he had repeated con- stantly, in the . early negotiations, that France ought not to allow a Bourbon to remain enthroned at her borders. Yet, as the affair went on, he began slyly to talk against the enterprise. At Erfurt, where Napoleon had been impolitic enough to take him, he initiated himself into Alex- ander's good graces, and prevented Napo- leon's policy towards Austria being carried out. When Napoleon returned to Spain, Talleyrand and Fouche", who up to this THE EVE OK THE MASTER. After Raflfet. time had been enemies, became friendly, and even appeared in public, arm in arm. If Talleyrand and Fouche had made up, said the Parisians, there was mischief brewing. Napoleon was not long in knowing of their reconciliation. He learned more, that the two crafty plotters had written Murat that in the event of "something happening," that is, of Napoleon's death or overthrow, they should organize a move- ment to call him to the head of affairs ; that, accordingly, he must hold himself ready. Napoleon returned to Paris immediately, removed Talleyrand from his position at court, and, at a gathering of high officials, treated him to one of those violent ha- rangues with which he was accustomed to flay those whom he would disgrace and dismiss. " You are a thief, a coward, a man without honor ; you do not believe in God ; you have all your life been a traitor to your duties ; you have deceived and betrayed everybody ; nothing is sacred to you ; you would sell your own father. I have loaded you down with gifts, and there is nothing you would not un- dertake against me. For the past ten months you have been shameless enough, because you supposed, rightly or wrongly, that my affairs in Spain were going astray, to say to all who would listen to you that you always blamed my undertakings there; whereas it was you yourself who first put it into my head, and who persistently urged it. And that man, that un- fortunate [he meant the Due d'Enghien], by whom was I advised of the place of his residence ? \Vho drove me to deal cruelly with him ? What, then, are you aiming at ? What do you wish for ? W 7 hat do you hope ? Do you dare to say ? You deserve that I should smash you like a wine-glass. I can do it, but I despise you too much to take the trouble." All of this was undoubtedly true, but, after having publicly said it, there was but one safe course for Napoleon to put Talleyrand where he could no longer con- tinue his plotting. He made the mistake, - however, of leaving him at large. WAR WITH AUSTRIA. The disturbance of the continental peace came from Austria. Encouraged by Na- poleon's absence in Spain, and the with- drawal of troops from Germany, and urged by England to attempt again to repair her losses, Austria had hastily armed herself, hoping to be able to reach the Rhine be- fore Napoleon could collect his forces and meet her. At this moment Napoleon could command about the same number of troops as the Austrians, but they were scattered in all directions, while the enemy's were BATTLES OF ASPERN AND ESSLING '59 already consolidated. The question be- came, then, whether he could get his troops together before the Austrians at- tacked. From every direction he hurried them across France and Germany towards Ratisbonne. On the i2th of April he heard in Paris that the Austrians had crossed the Inn. On the i7th the emperor was in his headquarters at Donauworth, his army well in hand. " Neither in ancient or modern times," says Jomini, " will one find any- thing which equals in celerity and ad- mirable precision the opening of this campaign." In the next ten days a series of combats broke the Austrian army, drove the Arch- duke Charles, with his main force, north of the Danube, and opened the road to Vienna to the French. On the i2th of May, one month from the day he left Paris, Napoleon wrote from Schonbrunn, "We are masters of Vienna." The city had been evacuated. Napoleon lay on the right bank of the Danube ; the Austrian army under the Archduke Charles was coming towards the city by the left bank ; it was to be a hand-to-hand struggle under the walls of Vienna. The emperor was uncertain of the archduke's plans, but he was determined that he should not have a chance to ree'n- force his army. The battle must be fought at once, and he prepared to go across the river to attack him. The place of cross- ing he chose was south of Vienna, where the large island Lobau divides the stream. Bridges had to be built for the passage, and it was with the greatest difficulty that the work was accomplished, for the river was high and the current swift, and anchors and boats were scarce. Again and again the boats broke apart. Nevertheless, about thirty thousand of the French got over, and took possession of the villages of Aspern and Essling, where they were at- tacked on May 2ist by some eighty thou- RETURN OF NAPOLEON TO THE ISLAND OF LOBAU, AFTER THE BATTLE OF ESSLING, MAY 23, I By Charles Meynier. Museum of Versailles. " As the waters of the Danube continued to rise, and the bridges had not been restored during the night, the emperor on the 23d led the army across the iterrow arm of the left bank, and took up a position on the island of In-der-Lobau, placing a guard at the ends of the bridge. The numerous wounded on the left bank were-brought across the little bridge ; even those who gave only the feeblest sign of life were carried to the island. . . . The greatest precautions were necessary, as our frail pontoons were often displaced by the impetuos- ity of the Danube. The whole of the general staff were employed in effecting the passage. Nothing was left on the battle-field." 7>*M Bulletin of the Grand Army. The emperor, having crossed the Danube, came upon a group of soldiers on the left bank having their wounds dressed. At the sight of him they broke away from the surgeon's hands, and, forgetting their wounds, cheered him in a transport of joy. i6o THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. sand Austnans. The battle which followed lasted all day, and the French sustained themselves heroically. That night ree'n- forcements were gotten over, so that the next day some fifty-five thousand men were on the French side. Napoleon fought with the greatest obstinacy, hoping that another division would soon succeed in getting over, and would enable him to overcome the supe- rior numbers of the Austrians. Already the battle was becoming a hand-to-hand fight, when the terrible news came that the bridge over the Danube had gone down. The Austrians had sent floating down the swollen river great mills, fire-boats, and masses of timber fastened together in such a way as to become battering-rams of frightful power when carried by the rapid stream. All hope of aid was gone, and, as the news spread, the army resigned itself to perish, but to perish sword in hand. The carnage which followed was horrible. Towards evening one of the bravest of the French marshals, Lannes, was fatally wounded. It seemed as if fortune had de- termined on the loss of the French, and Napoleon decided to retreat to the island of Lobau, where he felt sure that he could maintain his position, and secure supplies from the army on the right bank, until he had time to build bridges and unite his forces. Communications were -NAI'OLEON. Engraved by Ruotte, after Robert Lefevre. Probably painted about 1810. a S- c c 2 . 3 |S = "1-1 _rt rt c el *, V < s .. s; -s ^ ** v S CO O S o _ "o u S "o he a .5 Q OT X" a * ' tZ a* m > SJ bl 8 g S S'S'g 8 fl 9i"ll 5 .3 -o O o bO ^ co ' C o I -S " ," c o S O 1-S 5 e JOY OVER THE KING OF ROME. 171 much woe ; but her dread was soon dis- pelled, and she became very fond of her husband. Outside of the court the two led an amusingly simple life, riding together in- formally early in the morning, in a gay Bohemian way ; sitting together alone in the empress's little salon, she at her needle- work, he with a book. They even in- dulged now and then in quiet little larks of their own," as one day when Marie Louise attempted to make an omelet in her apart- ments. Just as she was completely en- grossed in her work, the emperor came in. The empress tried to conceal her culinary operations, but Napoleon detected the odor. " What is going on here ? There is a singular smell, as if something was being fried. What, you are making an omelet ! Bah ! you don't know how to do it. I will show you how it is done." And he set to work to instruct her. STANDARD OF THE CHASSEURS DE LA GARDE OF NAPOLEON I. The following is an exact description of this famous standard, for the reproduction of which we are indebted to Prince Victor Napoleon. The foundation of the standard is of green silk, which is embroidered all over with oak and laurel leaves in gold and silver. In the centre is a large hunting-horn in silver, encircling the letters E. F., in gold ; above, a scroll with the words : Chasseurs de la Garde. The tricolor scarf, fringed with gold, has at the ends, which are embroidered in gold and silver, the inscription : Vive FEmpereur, in letters of gold. They got on very well until it came to tossing it, an opera- tion Napoleon in- sisted on perform- ing himself, with the result that he landed it on the floor. BIRTH OF THE KING OF ROME. On March 20, 1811, the long-de- sired heir to the French throne was born. It had been arranged that the birth of the child shouldbeannounced to the people by cannon shot ; twen- ty-one if it were a princess, one hun- dred and one if a prince. The peo- p 1 e who thronged the quays and streets about the Tuileries waited with in- expressible anxiety as the cannon boomed forth : one two three. As twenty-one died away the city held its breath ; then came twenty- two. The thundering peals which followed it were drowned in the wildenthusiasmof the people. For days afterward, enervated by joy and the endless fetes given them, the French drank and sang to the King of Rome. In all these rejoicings none were so touching as at Navarre, where Josephine, on hearing the cannon, called together her friends and said, "We, too, must have a. fete. I shall give you a ball, and the whole city of Evreux must come and rejoice with us." Napoleon was the happiest of men, and he devoted himself to his son with pride. Reports of the boy's condition appear frequently in his letters ; he even allowed him to be taken without the em- press's knowledge to Josephine, who had begged to see him. NAPOLEON AND THE KING OF ROME. Bronze from the collec- tion of Prince Victor. This elegant figure is a faithful re- production of a medallion made by Andrieu, on the birth of the King of Rome. be u v 1) " .2 '"5 o -5 H o * s a . a u 3 e s ~ |5 ~ i 1 jS ^ e J | ^ Q gl |l| ^s- .50 > ||| "*J [/; ^ *s a t^ CHAPTER XVIII. TROUBLE WITH THE POPE. THE CONSCRIPTION. EVASIONS OF THE BLOCKADE. THE TILSIT AGREEMENT BROKEN. CAUSES OF DISCONTENT WITHIN FRANCE. "THIS child in concert with our Eugene will constitute our happiness and that of France," so Napoleon had written Jose- phine after the birth of the King of Rome, but it soon became evident that he was wrong. There were causes of uneasiness and discontent in France which had been op- erating for a long time, and which were on ly aggravated by the apparent solidity that an heir gave to the Napoleonic dynasty. First among these was religious disaf- fection. Towards the end of 1808, being doubtful of the Pope's loyalty, Napoleon had sent French troops to Rome ; the spring following, without any plausible excuse, he had annexed four Papal States to the kingdom of Italy ; and in 1809 the Pope had been made a prisoner at Savona. When the divorce was asked, it was not the Pope, but the clergy of Paris, who had granted it. When the religious marriage of Marie Louise and Napoleon came to be celebrated, thirteen cardinals refused to appear ; the " black cardinals " they were thereafter called, one of their punishments for non-appearance at the wedding being NAPOLEON, MARIE LOL'ISE, AND THE KING OF ROME. Artist unknown. THE KING OF ROME. l8ll. Engraved by Desnoyers, after Gerard. " His Majesty the King of Rome. Dedicated to her Majesty Imperial and Royal, Marie Louise." that they could no longer wear their red gowns. To the pious all this friction with the fathers of the Church was a de- plorable irritation. It was impossible to show contempt for the authority of Pope and cardinals and not wound one of the deepest sentiments of France, and one which ten years before Napoleon had braved most to satisfy. To the irritation against the emperor's church policy was added bitter resentment against the conscription, that tax of blood and muscle demanded of the country. Na- poleon had formulated and attempted to make tolerable the principle born of the Revolution, -which declared that every male citizen of age owed the state a service of blood in case it needed him. The wis- "NAPOLEON IN HIS CABINET." THE CHILD AT HIS SIDE IS HIS SON, THE KING OF ROME. The manuscript on the floor of the cabinet bears the date " 1811." Engraved by Weber, after Steuben. dom of his management of the conscrip- motherless must leave them ; aged and tion had prevented discontent until 1807 ; helpless parents no longer gave immunity, then the draft on life had begun to be Those who had bought their exemption by arbitrary and grievous. The laws of ex- heavy sacrifices were obliged to go. Per- emptions were discarded. The " only son sons whom the law made subject to con- of his mother" no longer remained at her scription in 1807, were called out in 1806 ; side. The father whose little children were those of 1808, in 1807. So far was this THE DUKE OF REICHSTADT. Engraved by W. Bromley, after Sir Thomas Lawrence. premature drafting pushed, that the armies were said to be made up of "boy soldiers," weak, unformed youths, fresh from school, who wilted in a sun like that of Spain, and dropped out in the march. At the rate at which men had been killed, however, there was no other way of keeping up the army. Between 1804 and 1811 one million seven hundred thousand men had perished in battle. What wonder that now the boys of France were pressed into service ! At the same time the country was overrun with the lame, the blind, the broken-down, who had come back from war to live on their friends or on charity. It was not only the funeral crape on almost every door which made Frenchmen hate the conscription, it was the crippled men whom they met at every corner. While within, the people fretted over the religious disturbances and the abuses of the conscription, without, the continental blockade was causing serious trouble be- tween Napoleon and the kings he ruled. In spite of all his efforts English merchan- dise penetrated everywhere. The fair at Rotterdam in 1807 was filled with English goods. They passed into Italy under false paint for the great Windsor gallery the portraits of all the heroes "du grand hasard de Waterloo.'''' A. D. seals. They came into France on pretence that they were for the empress. Napoleon remonstrated and threatened, but he could not check the traffic. The most serious trouble caused by this violation of the Ber- lin Decree was with Louis the King of Holland. In 1808 Napoleon complained to his brother that more than one hundred ships passed between his kingdom and England every month, and a year later he wrote in desperation, "Holland is an Eng- lish province." The relations of the brothers grew more and more bitter. Napoleon resented the half support Louis gave him, and as a pun- ishment he took away his provinces, filled his forts with French troops, threatened him with war if he did not break up the I 7 8 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. trade. So far did these hos- tilities go, that in the summer of 1810 King Louis abdicated in favor of his son and retired to Austria. Na- poleon tried his best to persuade him at least to return into French terri- tory, but he re- fused. This break was the sadder because Louis was the brother for whom Napoleon had really done most. Joseph was not happier than Louis. The Spanish war still went on, and no bet- ter than in 1808. Joseph, h u m- THE DUKE OF REICHSTADT. Engraved by Benedetti, after Daffinger. refusal to enter into French combinations, and pay tribute to carry on French wars, had suppressed his revenues as a French prince Bernadotte had been cre- ated Prince of Ponte-Corvo in 1806 had re- fused to com- municate with him, and when the King of Rome was born had sent back the Swedish decoration of- fered. Finally, in January, 1812, French troops invaded certain Swed- ish posses- sions, and the country con- cluded an alli- bled and unhappy, had even prayed to be ance with England and Russia, freed of the throne. With Russia, the " other half " of the The relations with Sweden were seriously machine, the ally upon whom the great strained. Since 1810 Berna- dotte had been by adoption the crown prince of that country. Although he had emphatically refused, in accepting the position, to agree never to take up arms against France, as Napoleon wished him -to do, he had later consented to the continental block- ade, and had declared war against England ; but this declaration both England and Sweden considered simply as a. fafon de parler. Napoleon, conscious that Bernadotte was not carry- ing out the blockade, and irritated by his persistent plan of Tilsit and Erfurt depended, there was such a bad state of feeling that, in i8n.it became certain that war would result. Causes had been accumu- lating upon each side since the Erfurt meeting. The continental system weighed heavily on the interests of Russia. The people constantly rebelled against it and evaded it in every way. The business depression from which they suffered they charged to Napoleon, and a strong party arose in the kingdom which used every method of showing the czar that PORTRAIT OF NAPOLEON ON A BILLIARD POCKET. Collection of Monsieur Paul le Roux. A formidable inventory might be made of the Napoleon images that appeared from 1814 to 1815. Not only are they innumerable, but they assume all kinds of forms. Napoleon became a symbol, a fetish, a household god. He took the form of ink-bottles, knives, flasks, candlesticks, cake moulds, bells, billiard pockets, tc. It would be impossible to enumerate here all the industrial objects invested with Napoleonic shapes by the naive fforts of the popular imagination. The list would be too long. The collections of certain fervent Bonapartists contain some thousands ; that of Monsieur Paul le Roux, among others, who has placed his rich collection at my disposal. A. D. NAPOLEON. Engraved in 1841 by Louis, after a painting made in 1837 by Delaroche, now in the Standish collection, and called the " Snuff-box." Probably the finest engraving ever made of a Napoleon portrait. the " unnatural alliance," as they called the agreement between Alexander and Na- poleon, was unpopular. The czar could not refuse to listen to this party. More, he feared that Napoleon was getting ready to restore Poland. He was offended by the haste with which his ally had dismissed the idea of marriage with his sister and had taken up Marie Louise. He complained of the changes of boundaries in Germany. NAPOLEON. l8l2. Facsimile of a drawing by Girodet-Trioson, made from life in the emperor's private chapel, March 8, 1812. (" Fac simile d'un Dessin de Girodet-Trioson, fait d'aprts nature i la chapelle de 1'empereur le 8 Mars, 1812.") Engraved by Maile. Published in London in 1827 by R. G. Jones. It is thought to give a more correct delineation of Napoleon than do the paintings by Leffcvre, David, and Isabey, who were the royal painters, and painted, under the instruction of Napo- leon, to make him look like the Caesars. There are other designs by Girodet. Of the one given above, Maile's engraving is the only copy known. Another contains three heads, one of which is a sleeping Napoleon. It was made only a month later, at the theatre of St. Cloud. Napoleon saw with irritation that English he had made of the Berlin and Milan goods were admitted into Russia. He Decrees, and to persecute neutral flags of resented the failure of Alexander to join all nations, even of those so far away from heartily in the wide-sweeping application the Continent as the United States. He THE ARMY OF TWENTY NATIONS. 181 NAPOLEON READING. By Girodet. From the collection of Monsieur Cheramy of Paris. remembered that Russia had not supported him loyally in 1809. He was suspicious, too, of the good understanding which seemed to be growing between Sweden, Russia, and England. During many months the two emperors remained in a half-hostile condition, but the strain finally became too great. War was inevitable, and Napoleon set about preparing for the struggle. During the latter months of 1811 and the first of 1812 his attention was given almost entirely to the military and diplomatic preparations necessary before beginning the Russian campaign. By the ist of May, 1812, he was ready to join his army, which he had centred at Dresden. Accompanied by Marie Louise he arrived at Dresden on the i6th of May, 1812, where he was greeted by the Emperor of Austria, the King of Prussia, and other sovereigns with whom he had formed alliances. The force Napoleon had brought to the field showed graphically the extension and the character of the France of 1812. The " army of twenty nations/' the Russians called the host which was preparing to meet them, and the expression was just, for in the ranks there were Span- ards, Neapolitans, Piedmontese, Slavs, Kroats, Bavarians, Dutch- men, Poles, Romans, and a dozen other nationalities, side by side with Frenchmen. Indeed, nearly one-half the force was said to be foreign. The Grand Army, as the active body was called, numbered, to quote the popular figures, six hundred and seventy-eight thou- sand men. It is sure that this is an exaggerated number, though certainly over half a million men entered Russia. With reserves, the whole force numbered one million one hundred thousand. The necessity for so large a body of reserves is explained by the length of the line of communi- cation Napoleon had to keep. From the Nieman to Paris the way must be open, supply sta- tion guarded, fortified towns equipped. It took nearly as many men to insure the rear of the Grand Army as it did to make up the army itself. With this imposing force at his command, Napoleon believed that he could compel Alexander to sup- port the continental blockade, for GIRODET-TRIOSON. 1767-1824. Portrait by himself. Girodet made several common- place official portraits of Napoleon, but his rough pencil sketches are of the greatest iconographic value. EMPEROR NAPOLEON. 1813. Engraved by Lefevre, after Steuben ; published December 26, 1826. come what might that system must suc- ceed. For it the reigning house had been driven from Portugal, the Pope despoiled and imprisoned, Louis gone into exile, Ber- nadotte driven into a new alliance. For it the Grand Army was led into Russia. It had become, as its inventor proclaimed, the fundamental law of the empire. Until he crossed the Nieman, Napoleon preserved the hope of being able to avoid war. Numerous letters to the Russian em- peror, almost pathetic in their overtures, exist. But Alexander never replied. He simply allowed his enemy to advance. The Grand Army was doomed to make the Russian campaign. ON TO MOSCOW. 183 CHAPTER XIX. THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. THE BURNING OF MOSCOW. A NEW ARMY. THE ADVANCE OF THE ARMY OF TWENTY NATIONS. IF one draws a triangle, its base stretch- ing along the Nieman from Tilsit to Grod- no, its apex on the Elbe, he will have a rough outline of the "army of twenty na- tions" as it lay in June, 1812. Napoleon, some two hundred and twenty-five thou- sand men around him, was at Kowno, hesi- tating to advance, reluctant to believe that Alexander would not make peace. When he finally moved, it was not with the precision and swiftness which had char- acterized his former campaigns. When he began to fight, it was against new odds. He found that his enemies had been study- ing the Spanish campaigns, and that they had adopted the tactics which had so nearly ruined his armies in the Peninsula : they re- fused to give him a general battle, retreat- ing constantly before him ; they harassed his separate corps with indecisive contests ; they wasted the country as they went. The people aided their soldiers as the Spaniards had done. "Tell us only the' moment, and we will set fire to our dwellings," said the peasants. By the i2th of August, Napoleon was at Smolensk, the key of Moscow. At a cost of twelve thousand men killed and wounded, he took the town, only to find, instead of the well-victualled shelter he hoped, a smoking ruin. The French army had suffered frightfully from sickness, from scarcity of supplies, and from useless fight- ing on the march from the Niemen to Smo- lensk. They had not had the stimulus of a great victory ; they began to feel that this steady retreat of the enemy was only a fatal trap into which they were falling. Every consideration forbade them to march into Russia so late in the year, yet on they went towards Moscow, over ruined fields and through empty villages. This terrible pur- suit lasted until September yth, when the Russians, to content their soldiers, who were complaining loudly because they were not allowed to engage the French, gave battle at Borodino, the battle of the Mos- kova as the French call it. THE BATTLE OF BORODINO. At two o'clock in the morning of this engagement, Napoleon issued one of his stirring bulletins : ATTENTION! THE EMPEROR HAS HIS EYE ON us. By Raffet. THE BRIDGE OVER THE KOLOTSCHA NEAR BORODINO, SEPTEMBER 17, l8l2. From a sketch made at the time by an officer of Napoleon's army. . . . "The bridge behind Borodino, lead- ing over the Kolotscha to Gorki, was, on September ijth, the scene of a terrible fight. This memorable battle began by the taking of Borodino. The One Hundred and Sixth Regiment of the Fourth Army Corps were charged with that enterprise, and, carried away by their success, instead of waiting to destroy the Kolotscha bridge, they dashed on at full gallop towards the heights above Gorki. Here, besides being hemmed in on all sides by the superior num- bers of the Russians, they had also to sustain a deadly fire from works thrown up near Gorki, which barred their passage. Forced back to the bridge with great loss, they would have been utterly destroyed, had it not been for the efforts of the Ninety-second Regiment, who hastened to their assistance. Although both during and after the battle, in order to render the bridge practicable, they had cleared away numbers of the dead bodies on it by throwing them into the river, there still remained only too many heaped up on the banks, affording a terrible evidence of the battle of Mojalsk that had just taken place." Extract from the Diary of an Eye-witness of the Russian Campaign. " Soldiers ! Here is the battle which you have so long desired ! Henceforth the victory depends upon you ; it is necessary for us. It will give you abun- dance, good winter quarters, and a speedy return to your country ! Behave as you did at Austerlitz, at Friedland, at Vitebsk, at Smolensk, and the most remote posterity will quote with pride your conduct on this day ; let it say of you : he was at the great battle under tfie walls of Moscow." The French gained the battle at Boro- dino, at a cost of some thirty thousand men, but they did not destroy the Russian army. Although the Russians lost fifty thousand men, they retreated in good order. Under the circumstances, a vic- tory which allowed the enemy to retire in order was of little use. It was Napoleon's fault, the critics said ; he was inactive. But it was not sluggishness which troubled Napoleon at Borodino. He had a new enemy a headache. On the day of the battle he suffered so that he was obliged to retire to a ravine to escape the icy wind. In this sheltered spot he paced up and down all day, giving his orders from the reports brought him, for he could see but a portion of the field. THE BURNING OF MOSCOW. Moscow was entered on the i5th of Sep- tember. Here the French found at last food and shelter, but only for a few hours. That night Moscow burst into flames, set on fire by the authorities, by whom it had been abandoned. It was three days before the fire was arrested. It would cost Rus- ON THE HIGH ROAD FROM MOJA1SKA TO KRYMSKo'lE. SEPTEMBER 18, 1812. From a sketch made at the time by an officer of Napoleon's army. . . . " It was not uncommon to find in the rooms rows of corpses lying on the floor in the same order they had occupied while yet alive ; while others who had escaped from the flames, but horribly mutilated, sought to prolong their miserable existence by some moments, in a manner pitiable to witness."- Extract from the Diary of an Eye-witness of the Russian Campaign^ BIVOUAC NEAR MIKALEWKA, NOVEMBER 7, 1812. From a sketch made at the time by an officer of Napoleon's army. BESIDE THE ROAD, NOT FAR FROM PNEWA, NOVEMBER 8, l8l2. From a sketch made at the time by an officer of Napoleon's army. . . . "At the first milestone, on the left, might be seen a group gathered round a melancholy fire, fed with broken wheels and bits of gun-carriages, by which they were trying to warm their benumbed limbs. Behind this group stand the orderlies, attentive to the smallest sign. Do you know the man in the simple gray overcoat, somewhat disguised by his hat of fur, who had led us like a bril- liant meteor to battle and to victory ? It is the emperor. Who among us might fathom that mighty soul and read what was passing in it as he gazed at that miserable army ? His enemies have insulted him and have sought to trample his glory in the dust. Yet their punishment would be too cruel, were their hearts wrung to-day as his was in that moment. He who beholds true grandeur, abandoned by fortune, forgets his own griefs and suffering-; and half recon- ciled to our hard fate we defiled past him in mournful silence." Extract from the Diary of an Eye-witness of the Russian Campaign. sia two hundred years of time, two hundred millions of money, to repair the loss which she had sustained, Napoleon wrote to France. Suffering, disorganization, pillage, fol- lowed the disaster. But Napoleon would not retreat. He hoped to make peace. Moscow was still smoking when he wrote a long description of the conflagration to Alexander. The closing paragraph ran : " I wage war against your Majesty without ani- mosity ; a note from you before or after the last battle would have stopped my march, and I should even have liked to have sacrificed the advantage of entering Moscow. If your Majesty retains some remains of your former sentiments, you will take this letter in good part. At all events, you will thank me for giving you an account of what is passing at Moscow." RETREAT FROM MOSCOW. " I will never sign a peace as long as a single foe remains on Russian ground," the Emperor Alexander had said when he heard that Napoleon had crossed the Nieman. He kept his word in spite of all Napoleon's overtures. The French position grew worse from day to -day. No food, no fresh supplies ; the cold increasing, the army dis- heartened, the number of Russians around Moscow growing larger. Nothing but a retreat could save the remnant of the French. It began on October ipth, one hundred and fifteen thousand men leaving Moscow. They were followed by forty thousand vehicles loaded with the sick and with what supplies they could get hold of. The route was over the fields devastated a month before. The Cossacks harassed them night and day, and the cruel Russian cold dropped from the skies, cutting them down like a storm of scythes. Before Smolensk was reached, thousands of the retreating army were dead. Napoleon had ordered that provisions and clothing should be collected at Smo- lensk. When he reached the city he found that his directions had not been obeyed. The army, exasperated beyond endurance by this disappointment, fell into complete THE MA LET CONSPIRACY. 187 and frightful disorganization, and the rest of the retreat was like the falling back of a conquered mob. There is no space here for the details of this terrible march and of the frightful pas- sage of the Beresina. The terror of the cold and starvation wrung cries from Napoleon himself. " Provisions, provisions, provisions," he wrote on November 2pth from the right bank of the Beresina. " Without them there is no knowing to what horrors this undisciplined mass will not proceed." And again : " The army is at its last extremity. It is impossible for it to do anything, even if it were a question of de- fending Paris." The army finally reached the Nieman. The last man over was Marshal Ney. " Who are you ? " he was asked. " The rear guard of the Grand Army," was the sombre reply of the noble old soldier. Some forty thousand men crossed the river, but of these there were many who could do nothing but crawl to the hos- pitals, asking for " the rooms where peo- ple die." It was true, as Desprez said, the Grand Army was dead. It was on this horrible retreat that Na- poleon received word that a curious thing had happened in Paris. A general and an abbe, both political prisoners, had escaped, and actually had succeeded in the prelimi- naries of a coup d'ttat overturning the empire, and substituting a provisional gov- ernment. They had carried out their scheme sim- ply by announcing that Napoleon was dead, and by reading a forged proclama- tion from the senate to the effect that the imperial government was at an end and a new one begun. The authorities to whom these conspirators had gone had with but little hesitation accepted their orders. They had secured twelve hundred soldiers, had locked up the prefect of police, and had taken possession of the Hotel de Ville. The foolhardy enterprise went, of course, only a little way, but far enough to show Paris that the day of easy revolution had not passed, and that an announcement of the death of Napoleon did not bring at once a cry of " Long liv.e the King of Rome ! " The news of the Malet con- spiracy was an astonishing revelation to Napoleon himself of the instability of French public sentiment. He saw that the support on which he had depended most to insure his institutions, that is, an heir to his throne, was set aside at the word of a worthless agitator. The impression made on his generals by the news was one of ON' THE ROAD BETWEEN BRAUNSBERG AND EI-BING, DECEMBER 21, l8l2. From a sketch made at the time by an officer of Napoleon's army. The figure with the sword under the arm is. Napoleon in the costume worn in the Russian campaign. i88 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. consternation and despair. The emperor read in their faces that they believed his good fortune was waning. He decided to go to Paris as soon as possible. On December 5th he left the army, and after a perilous journey of twelve days reached the French capital. gesting that since his good genius had failed him once, it might again. No one realized the gravity of the posi- tion as Napoleon himself, but he met his household, his ministers, the Council of State, the Senate, with an imperial self- confidence and a sang froid which are awe- HOSPITALITY FROM RUSSIAN WOMEN. From a sketch made at the time by an officer of Napoleon's army. EXPLAINING THE RETREAT FROM MOSCOW. It took as great courage to face France now as it had taken audacity to attempt the invasion of Russia. The grandest army the nation had ever sent out was lying behind him dead. His throne had tot- tered for an instant in sight of all France. Hereafter he could not believe himself invincible. Already his enemies were sug- inspiring under the circumstances. The horror of the situation of the army was not known in Paris on his arrival, but reports came in daily until the truth was clear to everybody. But Napoleon never lost countenance. The explanations nec- essary for him to give to the Senate, to his allies, and to his friends, had all the seren- ity and the plausibility of a victor a vic- tor who had suffered, to be sure, but not a s 5 rt o cu 1 05 .2 "3 JJ f the Bere- sina chilling them, the Senate voted an army of three hundred and fifty thousand men ; THE FOE IN 1813. 191 the allies were called upon ; even the marine was obliged to turn men over to the land force. But something besides men was neces- sary. An army means muskets and pow- der and sabres, clothes and boots and headgear, wagons and cannon and caisson ; and all these it was necessary to manu- facture afresh. The task was gigantic ; but before the middle of April it was com- pleted, and the emperor was ready to join his army. The force against which Napoleon went who commanded a Prussian division, went over to the enemy. It was a dishonorable action from a military point of view, but his explanation that he deserted as "a patriot acting for the welfare of his coun- try "touched Prussia; and though thaking disavowed the act, the people applauded it. Throughout the German states the feel- ing against Napoleon was bitter. A veri- table crusade had been undertaken against him by such men as Stein, and most of the youth of the country were united in the Tugendbund, or League of Virtue, which After a wash drawing by Charlet, in the collection of Madame Charlet. Hitherto unpublished. in 1813 was the most formidable, in many respects, he had ever encountered. Its strength was greater. It included Russia, England, Spain, Prussia, and Sweden, and the allies believed Austria would soon join them. An element of this force more powerful than its numbers was its spirit. The allied armies fought Napoleon in 1813 as they would fight an enemy of freedom. Central Europe had come to feel that fur- ther French interference was intolerable. The war had become a crusade. The ex- tent of this feeling is illustrated by an incident in the Prussian army. In the war of 1812 Prussia was an ally of the French, but at the end of the year General Yorck, had sworn to take arms for German free- dom. When Alexander followed the French across the Nieman, announcing that he came bringing "deliverance to Europe," and calling on the people to unite against the " common enemy," he found them quick to understand and respond. Thus, in 1813 Napoleon did not go against kings and armies, but against peo- ples. No one understood this better than he did himself, and he counselled his allies that it was not against the foreign enemy alone that they had to protect themselves. " There is one more dangerous to be feared the spirit of revolt and anarchy." AFTER RAKFET. CHAPTER XX. CAMPAIGN OF 1813. CAMPAIGN OF 1814. ABDICATION. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1813. THE campaign opened May 2, 1813, southwest of Leipsic, with, the battle of Liitzen. It was Napoleon's victory, though he could not follow it up, as he had no cavalry. The moral effect of Liitzen was excellent in the French army. Among the allies there was a return to the old dread of the " monster." By May 8th the French occupied Dresden ; from there they crossed the Elbe, and on the 2ist fought the battle of Bautzen, another incomplete victory for Napoleon. The next day, in an engage- ment with the Russian rear guard, Mar- shal Duroc, one of Napoleon's warmest and oldest friends, was killed. It was the second marshal lost since the campaign began, Bessieres having been killed at Liitzen. The French occupied Breslau on June ist, and three days later an armistice was signed, lasting until August loth. It was hoped that peace might be concluded dur- ing this armistice. At that moment Aus- tria held the key to the situation. The allies saw that they were defeated if they could not persuade her to join them. Na- poleon, his old confidence restored by a series of victories, hoped to keep his Aus- trian father-in-law quiet until he had crushed the Prussians and driven the Rus- sians across the Nieman. Austria saw her power, and determined to use it to regain territory lost in 1805 and 1809, and Met- ternich came to Dresden to see Napoleon. Austria would keep peace with France, he said, if Napoleon would restore Illyria and the Polish provinces, would send the Pope back to Rome, give up the protectorate of the Confederation of the Rhine, restore Naples and Spain. Napoleon's amazement and indignation were boundless. " How much has England given you for playing this role against me, Metternich?" he asked. A semblance of a congress was held at Prague soon after, but it was only a mock- NAPOLEON AND POPE PIUS VII. IN CONFERENCE AT FONTAINEBLEAU. Engraved by Robinson, after a painting made in 1836 by Wilkie. ery. Such was the exasperation and suf- fering of Central Europe, that peace could only be reached by large sacrifices on Na- poleon's part. These he refused to make. There is no doubt but that France and his allies begged him to compromise ; that his wisest counsellors advised him to do so. But he repulsed with irritation all such suggestions. " You bore me continually about the necessity of peace," he wrote Savary. " I know the situation of my empire better than you do ; no one is more interested in concluding peace than myself, but I shall not make a dishonor- able peace, or one that would see us at war again in six months. . . . These things do not concern you." By the middle of August the campaign 194 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. began. The French had in the field some three hundred and sixty thousand men. This force was surrounded by a circle of armies, Swedish, Russian, Prussian, and Austrian, in all some eight hundred thou- sand men. The leaders of this hostile force included, besides the natural enemies of France, Bernadotte, heir-apparent to the throne of Sweden, who had fought with Napoleon in Italy, and General Moreau, the hero of Hohenlinden. Moreau was on Alexander's staff. He had reached the army the night that the armistice expired, having sailed from the United States on the 2ist of June, at the invitation of the Rus- sian emperor, to aid in the campaign against France. He had been greeted by the allies with every mark of distinction. Another deserter on the allies' staff was the eminent military critic Jomini. In the ranks were stragglers from all the French corps, and the Saxons were threatening to leave the French in a body, and go over to the allies. The second campaign of 1813 opened brilliantly for Napoleon, for at Dresden he took twenty thousand prisoners, and cap- tured sixty cannon. The victory turned the anxiety of Paris to hopefulness, and their faith in Napoleon's star was further re- vived by the report that Moreau had fallen, both legs carried off by a French bullet. Moreau himself felt that fate was friendly to the emperor. " That rascal Bonaparte is always lucky," he wrote his wife, just after the amputation of his legs. But there was something stronger than luck at work : the allies were animated by a spirit of nationality, indomitable in its force, and they were following a plan which was sure to crush Napoleon in the long run. It was one laid out by Moreau ; a general battle was not to be risked, but the corps of the French were to be engaged one by one, until the parts of the army were dis- abled. This plan was carried out. In turn Vandamme,Oudinot, Macdonald, Ney, were defeated, and in October the remnants of the French fell back to Leipsic. Here the horde that surrounded them was sud- denly enlarged. The Bavarians had gone over to the allies. The three days' battle of Leipsic ex- hausted the French, and they were obliged to make a disastrous retreat to the Rhine, which they crossed November ist. Ten days later the emperor was in Paris. The situation of France at the end of 1813 was deplorable. The allies lay on the right bank of the Rhine. The battle of Vittoria had given the Spanish boundary to Wellington, and the English and Spanish armies were on the frontier. The allies which remained with the French were not to be trusted. "All Europe was marching with us a year ago," Napoleon said ; "to-day all Europe is marching against us." There was despair among his generals, alarm in Paris. Besides, there seemed no human means of gathering up a new army. Where were the men to come from ? France was bled to death. She could give no more. Her veins were empty. " This is the truth, the exact truth, and such is the secret and the explanation of all that has since occurred," says Pasquier. " With these successive levies of conscrip- tions, past, present, and to come ; with the Guards of Honor; with the brevet of sub- lieutenant forced on the young men apper- taining to the best families, after they had escaped the conscript lot, or had supplied substitutes in conformity with the pro- visions of the law, there did not remain a single family which was not in anxiety or in mourning." Yet hedged in as he was by enemies, threatened by anarchy, supported by a fainting people, Napoleon dallied over the peace the allies offered. The terms were not dishonorable. France was to retire, as the other nations, within her natural bound- aries, which they designated as the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees. But the em- peror could not believe that Europe, whom he had defeated so often, had power to con- fine him within such limits. He could not believe that such a peace would be stable, and he began preparations for resistance. Fresh levies of troops were made. The Spanish frontier he attempted to secure by making peace with Ferdinand, recognizing him as King of Spain. He tried to settle his trouble with the Pope. While he struggled to simplify the situa- tion, to arouse national spirit, and to gather reinforcements, hostile forces multiplied and closed in upon him. The allies crossed the Rhine. The corps tigislatif took advan- tage of his necessity to demand the resto- ration of certain rights which he had taken from them. In his anger at their audacity, the emperor alienated public sympathy by dissolving the body. " I stood in need of something to console me," he told them, " and you have sought to dishonor me. I was expecting that you would unite in mind and deed to drive out the foreigner ; you have bid him come. Indeed, had I lost two battles, it would not have done France any greater evil." To crown his evil day, Murat, Caroline's husband, now King of Naples, abandoned him. This betrayal Etched by Ruet, after Meissoaier. Original in Walters's gallery, Baltimore. Meissonier was fond of short titles, and very often in his historical works made choice of only a simple date. Among- such titles are, 1806, 1807, 1814, which might very well be replaced by. Battle of Jena, Friedland, and Campaign of France. This last subject he treated twice under different aspects. First, in the famous canvas, his great masterpiece, where we see a gloomy, silent Napo- leon, with face contracted by anguish, slowly riding at the head of his discouraged staff across the snowy plains of Champagne. This important work forms part of the collection of Monsieur Chauchard of Paris, who bought it for eight hundred thousand francs. The second picture is the one reproduced here, in which Napoleon is represented at the same period, but only at the outset of this terrible campaign the last act but one of the Napoleonic tragedy. The care- fully studied face shows as yet no expression of discouragement, but rather a determined hope of success. Napoleon wears the traditionary gray overcoat over the costume of the Chasseurs de la Garde, and rides his faithful little mare Marie, painted with a living, nervous effect that cannot be too much admired. Meissonier, inaccessible to the poetic seductions of symbolism, has nevertheless indicated here in a superb manner the gloomy future of the hero, by sur- rounding his luminous form with darkness, and casting on his brow the shadow of a stormy, threatening sky. A. D. -s-s 198 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. was the more bitter because his sister her- self was the cause of it. Fearful of losing her little glory as Queenof Naples, Caroline watched the course of events until she was certain that her brother was lost, and then urged Murat to conclude a peace with England and Austria. This accumulation of reverses, coming upon him as he tried to prepare for battle, drove Napoleon to approach the allies with proposals of peace. It was too late. The idea had taken root that France, with Napoleon at her head, would never remain in her natural limits ; that the only hope for Europe was to crush him completely. This hatred of Napoleon had become al- most fanatical, and made any terms of peace with him impossible. CAMPAIGN OF 1814. By the end of January, 1814, the em- peror was ready to renew the struggle. The day before he left Paris, he led the empress and the King of Rome to the court of the Tuileries, and presented them to the National Guard. He was leaving them what he held dearest in the world, he told them. The enemy were closing around ; they might reach Paris ; they might even destroy the city. While he fought without to shield France from this calamity, he prayed them to protect the priceless trust left within. The nobility and sincerity of the feeling that stirred the emperor were unquestionable ; tears flowed down the cheeks of the men to whom he spoke, and for a moment every heart was animated by the old emotion, and they took with eagerness the oath he asked. The next day he left Paris. The army he commanded did not number more than sixty thousand men. He led it against a force which, counting only those who had crossed the Rhine, numbered nearly six hundred thousand. In the campaign of two months which followed, Napoleon several times defeated the allies. In spite of the terrible disad- vantages under which he fought, he nearly drove them from the country. In every way the campaign was worthy of his genius. But the odds against him were too tre- mendous. The saddest phase of his situa- tion was that he was not seconded. The people, the generals, the legislative bodies, everybody not under his personal influence seemed paralyzed. Augereau, who was at Lyons, did absolutely nothing, and the following letter to him shows with what energy and indignation Napoleon tried to arouse his stupefied followers. " NOGENT, 2ist February, 1814. " . . . What ! six hours after having received the first troops coming from Spain you were not in the field ! Six hours' repose was sufficient. I won the action of Nangis with a brigade of dragoons coming from Spain, which, since it left Bayonne, had not unbridled its horses. The six battalions of the division of Nismes want clothes, equipment, and drilling, say you. What poor reasons you give me there, Augereau ! I have destroyed eighty thousand enemies with conscripts having nothing but knap- sacks ! The National Guards, say you, are pitiable. I have four thousand here, in round hats, without knapsacks, in wooden shoes, but with good muskets, and I get a great deal out of them. There is no money, you continue ; and where do you hope to draw money from ? You want wagons ; take them wherever you .can. You have no magazines ; this is too ridiculous. I order you, twelve hours after the reception of this letter, to take the field. If you are still Augereau of Castiglione, keep the command ; but if your sixty years weigh upon you, hand over the command to your senior general. The country is in danger, and can be saved by boldness and good will alone. " NAPOLEON." The terror and apathy of Paris exasper- ated him beyond measure. To his great disgust, the court and some of the coun- sellors had taken to public prayers for his safety. "I see that instead of sustaining the empress," he wrote Cambace'res, " you discourage her. Why do you lose your head like that ? What are these misereres and these prayers forty hours long at the chapel ? Have people in Paris gone mad ?" The most serious concern of Napoleon in this campaign was that the empress and the King of Rome should not be captured. He realized that the allies might reach Paris at any time, and repeatedly he in- structed Joseph, who had been appointed lieutenant-general in his absence, what to do if the city was threatened. " Never allow the empress or the King of Rome to fall into the hands of the enemy. . . . As far as I am concerned, I would rather see my son slain than brought up at Vienna as an Austrian prince ; and I have a sufficiently good opinion of the empress to feel persuaded that she thinks in the same way, as far as it is possible for a woman and a mother to do so. I never saw Andromaque represented without pitying Astyanax surviving his family, and without regarding it as a piece of good fortune that he did not survive his father." Throughout the two months there were negotiations for peace. They varied ac- cording to the success or failure of the emperor or the allies. Napoleon had reached a point where he would gladly have accepted the terms offered at the close of 1813. But those were withdrawn. France NAPOLEON AT FONTAINEBLEAU THE EVENING AFTER HIS ABDICATION, APRIL IX, 1814. Fran9ois, after Delaroche, 1845. 2OO THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. must come down to her limits in 1789. "What!" cried Napoleon, " leave France smaller than I found her? Never." The frightful combination of forces closed about him steadily, with the deadly precision of the chamber of torture, whose adjustable walls imperceptibly, but surely, draw together, day by day, until the victim is crushed. On the 3oth of March Paris capitulated. The day before, the Regent Marie Louise with the King of Rome and her suite had left the city for Blois. The allied sovereigns entered Paris on the ist of April. As they passed through the streets, they saw multiplying, as they ad- vanced, the white cockades which the grandes dames of the Faubourg St. Germain had been making in anticipation of the entrance of the foreigner, and the only cries which greeted them as they passed up the boulevards were, "Long live the Bourbons ! Long live the sovereigns ! Long live the Em- peror Alexander" NAPOLEON AT FONTAINEBLEAU. The allies were in Paris, but Napoleon was not crushed. Encamped at Fontaine- bleau, his army about him, the soldiers everywhere faithful to him, he had still a large chance of victory, and the allies looked with uneasiness to see what move he would make. It was due largely to the wit of Talleyrand that the standing ground which remained to the emperor was undermined. That wily diplomat, whose place it was to have gone with the empress to Blois, had succeeded in getting himself shut into Paris, AUIEUX DE FONTAINEBLEAU, APRIL 2O, 1814. In this beautiful canvas of Horace Vernet, now in the Versailles gallery, the personages depicted are all faithful portraits ; and here lies the chief merit of this historic composition. General Petit, commander of the Grenadiers de 'a Garde, overcome by emotion, clasps the emperor in his arms. Behind Napoleon stands the Due de Bassano ; then a compact group composed of Baron Fain, Generals Belliard, Corbineau, Ornano, and Kosakowski. To the right, in the corner of the picture, is another important group where figure the commissioners of the coalition General Roller (Austrian), Colonel Campbell (English), General Schouwaloff (Russian). Colonel Campbell, impressed by the touch- ing grandeur of the scene, raises his hat with a fine gesture of enthusiasm. General Bertrand (who looks round on Campbell's movement), General Drouot, and Colonel Gourgaud stand in the front row before the group of foreign- ers. Colonel Gourgaud occupies the foreground, in an attitude perhaps rather theatrical. Horace Vernet, in paint- ing the picture, was evidently inspired by the dramatic account given of the scene by Baron Fain, the emperor's private secretary. The passage that might serve as legend is as follows : " . . . Farewell, my children ! I would clasp you all to my heart ; let me at least kiss your flag ! " THE ABDICATION OF 1814. 2OI and, on the entry of the allies, had joined gigantic will waver under the shock of Alexander, whom he had persuaded to defeat, of treachery, and of abandonment, announce that the allied powers would not Uncertain of the fate of his wife and child, treat with Napoleon nor with any member himself and his family denounced by the of his family. This was eliminating the allies, his army scattered, he braved every- most difficult factor from the problem, thing until Marmont deserted him, and he By his fine tact Talleyrand brought over saw One after another of his trusted officers the legislative bodies to this view. join his enemies ; then for a moment he From the populace Alexander and Tal- gave up the fight and tried to end his leyrand feared nothing ; it was too ex- hausted to ask anything but peace. Their most serious difficulty was the army. All over the country the cry of the common soldiers was, " Let us go to the emperor." "The army," declared Alexander, " is always the army ; as long as it is not with you, gentlemen, you can boast of nothing. life. The poison he took had lost its full force, and he recovered from its effects. Even death would have none of him, he groaned. But this discouragement was brief. No sooner was it decided that his future home should be the island of Elba, and that its affairs should be under his control, than The army represents the French nation ; if he began to prepare for the journey to his it is not won over, what can you accomplish that will endure ?" Every influence of persuasion, of bribery, of intimidation, was used with soldiers and generals. They were told in phrases which could not but flatter them : " You are the most noble of the children of the country, and you cannot be- long to the man who has laid it waste. . . . You are no longer the soldiers of Napoleon ; the Senate and all France re- lease you from your oaths." The older officers on Napo- leon's staff at Fontainebleau were unsettled by adroit com- munications sent from Paris. They were made to believe that they were fighting against the will of the nation and of their comrades. When this disaffec- tion had become serious, one of Napoleon's oldest and most trusted associates, Marmont, suddenly deserted. He led the vanguard of the army. This treachery took away the last hope of the imperial cause, and on April n, 1814, Napoleon signed the act of abdication at Fontainebleau. The act ran : little kingdom with the same energy and zest which had characterized him as em- peror. On the 20th of April he left the palace of Fontainebleau. " The allied powers having pro- claimed that the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte is the only obstacle to the reestablishment of peace in Europe, the Emperor Napoleon, faithful to his oath, declares that he renounces, for himself and his heirs, the thrones of France and Italy, and that there is no personal sacrifice, even that of his'life, which he is not ready to make in the interest of France." For only a moment did the HAT WORN BY NAPOLEON DURING THE CAMPAIGN OF RUSSIA. During nearly the whole of the Russian campaign Napoleon wore a toque reaching down over the ears, made of Siberian sable. This pro- tected him better than his petit chateau against the icy wind of the steppes. However, he was often observed to forsake it and return to the already legendary headgear, especially on the occasion of victorious entries into captured towns. I have seen lately one of the hats worn by Napoleon at this period. The parchment document that accompanies it says : " This is the manner the hat came into my hands. At the time of that terrible campaign my wife was employed in the imperial laundry. She addressed herself by chance to M. Gervais, keeper of the emperor's wardrobe, and asked for some old hats to serve as iron- holders such as laundresses used then. He gave her two hats that had belonged to the emperor ; this one, which I have preserved, had been in use during the campaign. She gave the other to someone who had expressed a desire for it. This is the truth. [Signed] " J- DULUD." This hat, here reproduced for the first time, is the property of Mon- sieur Georges Thierry of Paris. A. D. ThE LJEE OF NAPOLEON. CHAPTER XXI. KULER OF THE ISLAND OF ELBA. RETURN TO PARIS. THE HUNDRED DAYS.- THE SECOND ABDICATION. A WEEK after bidding his Guard fare- well, Napoleon sent from Frejus his first address to the inhabitants of Elba-: "Circumstances having induced me to renounce the throne of France, sacrificing my rights to the interests of the country, I reserved for myself the sovereignty of the island of Elba, which has met with the consent of all the powers. I therefore send you General Drouot, so that you may hand over to him the said island, with the military stores and pro- visions, and the property which belongs to my im- perial domain. Be good enough to make known this new state of affairs to the inhabitants, and the choice which I have made of their island for my sojourn in consideration of the mildness of their manners and the excellence of their climate. I shall take the greatest interest in their welfare. " NAPOLEON." The Elbans received their new ruler with all the pomp which their means and experience permitted. The entire popu- lation celebrated his arrival as a fete. The new flag which the emperor had chosen white ground with red bar and three yellow bees was unfurled, and sa- luted by the forts of the nation and by the foreign vessels in port. The keys of the chief town of the island were pre- sented to him, a Te JDeum was celebrated. If these honors seemed poor and con- temptible to Napoleon in comparison with the splendor of the fetes to which he had become accustomed, he gave no sign, and played his part with the same serious- ness as he had when he received his crown. His life at Elba was immediately ar- ranged methodically, and he worked as hard and seemingly with as much interest as he had in Paris. The affairs of his new state were his chief concern, and he set about at once to familiarize himself with all their details. He travelled over the island in all directions, to acquaint him- self with its resources and needs. At one time he made the circuit of his domain, en- tering every port, and examining its con- dition and fortifications. Everywhere that he went he planned and began works which he pushed with energy. Fine roads were laid out ; rocks were levelled ; a palace and barracks were begun. From his ar- rival his influence was beneficial. There was a new atmosphere at Elba, the island- ers said. The budget of Elba was administered as rigidly as that of France had been, and the little army was drilled with as great care as the Guards themselves. After the daily review of his troops, he rode on horseback, and this promenade became a species of reception, the island- ers who wanted to consult him stopping him on his route. It is said that he invariably listened to their appeals. Elba was enlivened constantly during Napoleon's residence by tourists who went out of their way to see him. The major- ity of these curious persons were English- men ; with many of them he talked freely, receiving them at his house, and letting them carry off bits of stone or of brick from the premises as souvenirs. His stay was made more tolerable by the arrival of Madame mere and of the Princess Pauline and the coming of twenty-six mem- bers of the National Guard who had crossed France to join him. But his great desire that Marie Louise and the King of Rome should come to him was never gratified. It is told by one of his companions on the island, that he kept carefully throughout his stay a stock of fireworks which had fallen into his possession, planning to use them when his wife and boy should arrive, but, sadly enough, he never had an occa- sion-to celebrate that event. FROM ELBA TO PARIS. While to all appearances engrossed with the little affairs of Elba, Napoleon was, in fact, planning the most dramatic act of his life. On the 26th of February, 1815, the guard received an order to leave the island. With a force of eleven hundred men, the emperor passed the foreign ships guarding Elba, and on the afternoon of the ist of March landed at Cannes on the Gulf of Juan. At eleven o'clock that night he started towards Paris. He was trusting himself to the people and the army. If there never was an example of such auda- cious confidence, certainly there never was such a response. The people of the South received him joyfully, offering to sound the 204 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. tocsin and follow him en masse. But Napo- leon refused ; it was the soldiers upon whom he called. " We have not been conquered [he told the army]. Come and range yourselves under the standard of your chief ; his existence is composed of yours ; his interests, his honor, and his glory are yours. Victory will march at double-quick time. The eagle with the national colors will fly from steeple to steeple to the towers of Notre Dame. Then you will be able to show your scars with honor ; then you will be able to boast of what you have done ; you will be the liberators of the country. . . ." At Grenoble there was a show of resist- ance. Napoleon went directly to the sol- diers, followed by his guard. " Here I am ; you know me. If there is a soldier among you who wishes to kill his emperor, let him do it." " Long live the emperor ! " was the an- swer ; and in a twinkle the six thousand men had torn off their white cockades and replaced them by old and soiled tricolors. Thev drew them from the inside of their caps, where they had been concealing them since the exile of their hero. " It is the same that 1 wore at Austerlitz," said one as he passed the emperor. " This," said another, " I had at Marengo." From Grenoble the emperor marched to Lyons, where the soldiers and officers went over to him in regiments. The royalist leaders who had deigned to go to Lyons to exhort the army found themselves ignored; and Ney, who had been ordered from Be- saii9on to stop the emperor's advance, and who started out promising to " bring back Napoleon in an iron cage," surrendered his entire division. It was impossible to resist the force of popular opinion, he said. From Lyons the emperor, at the head of what was now the French army, passed by Dijon, Autun, Avallon, and Auxerre, to Fontainebleau, which he reached on March 1 9th. The same day Louis XVIII. fled from Paris. The change of sentiment in these few days was well illustrated in a French paper NAPOLEON'S RETURN FROM THE ISLAND OF ELBA, MARCH, 1815. Engraved by George Sanders, after Steuben. Soon after landing in France, Napoleon met a battalion sent from Grenoble to arrest his march. He approached within a few paces of the troop, and throwing up his surtout, exclaimed : " If there be amongst you a soldier who would kill his general, his emperor, let him do it now ! Here lam!" The cry "Vive 1'Empereur!" burst from every lip. Napoleon threw himself among them, and taking a veteran private, covered with chevrons and medals, by the whiskers, said, " Speak honestly, old moustache ; couldst thou have had the heart to kill thy emperor?" The man dropped his ramrod into his piece to show that it was uncharged, and answered, "Judge if I could have done thee much harm : all the rest are the same." One of the soldiers is showing the emperor the eagle he had preserved in his knapsack. s- > 5 E c 6 rt c .-> V o s Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher, Prince of Wahlstadt, was born in 1742, and died in 1819. He distinguished himself as a cavalry officer in the wars against the French, and was made major-general. In 1813 he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Prussian army, and defeated Marshal Macdonald, and, later, Marshal Marmont. He was made field marshal in 1813, and he led the Prussian army which, sixty thousand strong, invaded France in 1814. On the renewal of the war in 1815 he commanded the Prussian army, was defeated at Ligny, June i6th, but reached Waterloo in time to decide the victory. which, after Napoleon's return, published the following calendar gathered from the royalist press. February 25. " The exterminator has signed a treaty offensive and defensive. It is not known with whom." February 26. " The Corsican has left the island of Elba." March i. "Bonaparte has debarked at Cannes with eleven hundred men." March 7. " General Bonaparte has taken possession of Grenoble." March 10. " Napoleon has entered Ly- ons." March 19. " The emperor reached Fon- tainebleau to-day." March 19. " His Imperial Majesty is ex- pected at the Tuileries to-morrow, the anniversary of the birth of the King of Rome." Two days before the flight of the Bour- bons, the following notice appeared on the door of the Tuileries : " The emperor begs the king to send him no more soldiers ; he has enough. " What was the happiest period of your life as emperor ? " O'Meara asked Napoleon once at St. Helena. " The march from Cannes to Paris," he replied immediately. His happiness was short-lived. The THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. Engraved by Former in 1818, after Gerard, 1814. overpowering enthusiasm which had made that march possible could not endure. The bewildered factions which had been silenced or driven out by Napoleon's reap- pearance recovered from their stupor. The royalists, exasperated by their own flight, reorganized. Strong opposition developed among the liberals. It was only a short time before a reaction followed the delirium which Napoleon's return had caused in the nation. Disaffection, coldness, and plots succeeded. In face of this revulsion of feeling, the emperor himself underwent a change. The buoyant courage, the amazing audacity which had induced him to return from Elba, seemed to leave him. He became sad and preoccupied. No doubt much of this sadness was due to the refusal of Austria to restore his wife and child, and to the bitter knowledge that Marie Louise had succumbed to foreign influences and had promised never again to see her husband. If the allies had allowed the French to manage their affairs in their own way, it is PORTRAIT OF THE CZAK ALEXANDER 1. This portrait is from a sketch from life made by Carle Vernet in 1815, at Paris. After an unpublished water color forming part of the collection of Monsieur Albert Christophle, ex- Minister of Public Works, governor of the Credit-fonder of France. probable that Napoleon would have mas- tered the situation, difficult as it was. But this they did not do. In spite of his promise to observe the treaties made after his abdication, to accept the boundaries fixed, to abide by the Congress of Vienna, the coalition treated him with scorn, affect- ing to mistrust him. He was the disturber of the peace of the world, a public enemy; he must be put beyond the pale of society, and they took up arms, not against France, but against Napoleon. France, as it ap- peared, was not to be allowed to choose her own rulers. The position in which Napoleon found himself on the declaration of war was of exceeding difficulty, but he mastered the opposition with all his old genius and re- sources. Three months after the landing at Cannes he had an army of two hundred thousand men ready to march. He led it against at least five hundred thousand men. On June i5th, Napoleon's army met a portion of the enemy in Belgium, near Brussels, and on June :6th, iyth, and i8th were fought the battles of Ligny, Quatre Bras, and Waterloo, in the last of which he was completely defeated. The limits and nature of this sketch do not permit a de- scription of the engagement at Waterloo. The literature on the subject is perhaps richer than that on any other subject in military science. Thousands of books dis- cuss the battle, and each succeeding gen- eration takes it up as if nothing had been 210 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. written on it. But while Waterloo cannot claiming his son emperor under the title be discussed here, it is not out of place to of Napoleon II. notice that among the reasons for its loss are certain ones which interest us because they are personal to Napoleon. He whose great rule in war was, "Time is everything," EFFORTS TO REACH THE UNITED STATES. Leaving Paris, the fallen emperor went lost time at Waterloo. He who had looked to Malmaison, where Josephine had died after everything which he wanted well done, only thirteen months before. A few friends neglected to assure himself of such an im- joined him Queen Hortense, the Due de portant matter as the exact position of a por- tion of his enemy. He who once had been able to go a week without sleep, was ill. Again, if one will compare care- fully the Bonaparte of Gue"rin (page 55) with the Napoleon of David (page 167), he will un- derstand, at least partial- ly, why the battle of Waterloo was lost. The defeat was com- plete ; and when the em- peror saw it, he threw himself into the battle in search of death. As eagerly as he had sought victory at Arcola, Maren- go, Austerlitz, he sought death at Waterloo. " I ought tc have died at Waterloo,'' he said after- wards ; " but the misfor- tune is that when a man seeks death most he can- not find it. Men were killed around me, before, behind everywhere. But there was no bullet for me." He returned immediate- ly to Paris. There was still force for resistance in France. There were many to urge him to re- turn to the struggle, but such was the condition of public sentiment that he refused. The country was divided in its allegi- UEHiKE WATERLOO. After a lithograph by Charlet. ance to him ; the legislative body was frightened and quarrelling ; Talleyrand and Fouche were plotting. Besides, the allies proclaimed to the nation that it was against Napoleon alone that they waged war. Under these circumstances Napoleon felt that loyalty to the best interest of France required his abdica- tion ; and he signed the act anew, pro- Rovigo, Bertrand, Las Cases, and Me"ne- val. He remained there only a few days. The allies were approaching Paris, and the environs were in danger. Napoleon offered his services to the provisional government, which had taken his place, as leader in the campaign against the invader, promising to retire as soon as the enemy was repulsed, but he was refused. The government feared PLANS FOR REACHING AMERICA. 211 him, in fact, more than it did the allies, and urged him to leave France as quickly as possible. In his disaster he turned to America as a refuge, and gave his family rendezvous there. Various plans were suggested for getting to the United States. Among the offers of aid to carry out his desire which were made to Napoleon, Las Cases speaks of one coming from an American in Paris, who wrote : " While you were at the head of a nation you could perform any miracle, you might conceive any hopes ; but now you can do nothing more in Europe. Fly to the United States ! I know the hearts of the leading men and the sentiments of the people of America. You will there find a second country and every source of consolation." Mr. S. V. S. Wilder, an American shipping merchant who lived in France during the time of Napoleon's power, and who had been much impressed by the changes brought about in society and politics under his rule, offered to help him to escape. He proposed that the emperor disguise himself as a valet for whom he had a passport. On board the ship the emperor was to conceal himself in a hogshead until the danger-line was crossed. This hogshead was to have a false compartment in it. From the end in view, water was to drip incessantly. Mr. Wilder proposed to take Napoleon to his own home in Bolton, Massachusetts, when they arrived in America. It is said that the emperor seriously considered this scheme, but finally declined, because he would leave his friends behind him, and for them Mr. Wilder could not possibly provide. Napo- leon explained one day to Las Cases at St. Helena what he intended to do if he had reached America. He would have collected all his relatives around him, and thus would have formed the nucleus of a na- tional union, a second France. Such were the sums of money he had given them that he thought they might have realized at least forty millions of francs. Before the conclusion of a year, the events of Europe would have drawn to him a hundred mil- lions of francs and sixty thousand individ- uals, most of them possessing wealth, talent, and information. "America [he said] was, in all respects, our proper asylum. It is an immense continent, possess- ing the advantage of a peculiar system of freedom. If a man is troubled with melancholy, he may get into a coach and drive a thousand leagues, enjoying all the way the pleasures of a common traveller. In America you may be on a footing of equality with everyone ; you may, if you please, mingle with the crowd with- out inconvenience, retaining your own manners, your own language, your own religion." On June 29th, a week after, his return to Paris from Waterloo, Napoleon left Mal- maison for Rochefort, hoping to reach a vessel which would carry him to the United States ; but the coast was so guarded by the English that there was no escape. MALMAISON. (See note on page 40.) THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON CHAPTER XXII. NAPOLEON'S SURRENDER TO ENGLAND. SENT TO ST. HELENA. LIFE IN EXILE. DEATH OF NAPOLEON. ENGLAND S DECISION. WHEN it became evident that it was im- possible to escape to the United States, Napoleon considered two courses to call upon the country and renew the conflict, or seek an asylum in England. The for- mer was not only to perpetuate the foreign war, it was to plunge France into civil war ; for a large part of the country had come to the conclusion of the enemy that as long as Napoleon was at large, peace was impossible. Rather than involve France in such a disaster, the emperor resolved at last to give himself up to the English, and sent the following note to the regent : " ROYAL HIGHNESS: Exposed to the factions which divide my country and to the hostility of the greatest powers of Europe, I have closed my political career. I have come, like Themistocles, to seek the hospitality of the British nation. I place myself un- der the protection of their laws, which I claim from your Royal Highness as the most powerful, the most constant, and the most generous of my enemies. " NAPOLEON." On the i5th of July he embarked on the English ship, the " Bellerophon," and a. week later he was in Plymouth. Napoleon's surrender to the English was made, as he says, with full confi- dence in their hospitality. Certainly hos- pitality was the last thing to expect of England under the circumstances, and there was something theatrical in the de- mand for it. The " Bellerophon " was no- sooner in the harbor of Plymouth than it became evident that he was regarded 1 not as a guest, but as a prisoner. Armed vessels surrounded the ship he was on ; extraordinary messages were hurried to- and fro ; sinister rumors ran among the crew. The Tower of London, a desert isle, the ends of the earth, were talked of as the hospitality England was pre- paring. But if there was something theatrical, even humorous, in the idea of expecting a friendly welcome from England, there was every reason to suppose that she would NAPOLEON EMBARKING ON THE "BELLEROPHON/ Designed and engraved by Baugeau. NAPOLEON AT PLYMOUTH. In 1815, while Eastlake was employed painting portraits in his native town (Plymouth), Napoleon arrived thereon board the " Bellerophon," and the young artist took advantage of every glimpse he could obtain of the ex-emperor to make studies of him, by the aid of which he made a life-size picture of Napoleon standing in the gangway of the ship, attended by his officers. receive him with dignity and considera- tion. Napoleon had been an enemy worthy of English metal. He had been defeated only after years of struggle. Now that he was at her feet, her own self-respect demanded that she treat him as became his genius and his position. To leave him at large was, of course, out of the ques- tion ; but surely he could have been made a royal prisoner and been made to feel that if he was detained it was because of his might. HOUSE INHABITED BY NAPOLEON AT ST. HELENA BEFORE HE OCCUPIED " LONGWOOD From a recent photograph. The British government no sooner real- ized that it had its hands on Napoleon than it was seized with a species of panic. All sense of dignity, all notions of what was due a foe who had surrendered, were drowned in hysterical resentment. The English people as a whole did not share the government's terror. The general feel- ing seems to have been similar to that which Charles Lamb expressed to Southey : " After all, Bonaparte is a fine fellow, 'as my barber says, and I should not mind LONGWOOD, NAPOLEON'S HOUSE AT ST. HELENA. Etching by Chienon. 2l6 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. standing bare-head- ed at his table to do him service in his fall. They should have given him Hampton Court or Kensington, with a tether extending forty miles round London." But the govern- ment could see nothing but danger in keeping such a force as Napoleon within its limits. It evidently took Lamb's whimsical suggestion, that if Napoleon were at Hampton the people might some day eject the Brunswick in his favor, in pro- found seriousness. On July 30th it sent a communica- tion to General Bonaparte the English henceforth refused him the title of em- peror, though permitting him that of gen- eral, not reflecting, probably, that if one was spurious the other was, since both had been conferred by the same authority notify- ing him that as it was necessary that he should not be allowed to disturb the re- pose of England any longer, the British government had chosen the island of St. Helena as his future residence, and that CHAIR USED BY NAPOLEON AT ST. HELENA three persons with a surgeon would be allowed to accom- pany him. A week later he was trans- fer red from the " Bellerophon " to the " Northumber- land," and was en route tor St. Helena, where he arrived in October, 1815. The manner in which the British carried out their de- cision was irritating and unworthy. They seemed to feel that guarding a prisoner meant hu- miliating him, and offensive and un- necessary restric- tions were made which wounded and enraged Napo- leon. The effect of this treatment on his char- acter is one of the most interesting studies in connection with the man, and, on the whole, it leaves one with increased re- spect and admiration for him. He received the announcement of his exile in indigna- tion. He was not a prisoner, he was the guest of England, he said. It was an out- rage against the laws of hospitality to send him into exile, and he would never submit voluntarily. When he became con- LONGWOOD. From a recent photograph. OCCUPATION AT ST. HELENA. 217 vinced that the British were in- flexible in their decision, he thought of sui- cide, and even discussed it with Las Cases. It was the most convenient solu- tion of his dilem- ma. It would injure no one, and his friends would not be forced then to leave their fami- lies. It was the easier because he had no scruples which opposed it. The idea was finally given up. A man ought to ' STRAW HAT '.YORK BY NAPOLEON AT ST. HELENA. From the collection of Prince Victor Napoleon. live out his des- tiny, he said, and he decided that his should be ful- filled. The most seri- ous concern Na- poleon felt in facing his new life was that he would have no occupation. He saw at once that St. Helena would not be an Elba. But he resolutely made occupa- tions. He.sought conversation, studied English, played games, be- gan to dictate his memoirs. It is to this admir- THE EIGHT El'OCHb OF THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. This original series of hats presented in different significant positions is from the pencil of Steuben, one of the most fertile painters of the First Empire, and symbolizes the eight principal epochs in Napoleon's career. 1. Vendemiaire. 2. Consulate. 3. Empire. 4. Austerlitz. 5. Wagram. 6. Moscow. 7. Waterloo. 8. St. Helena. NAPOLEON AT ST. HELENA. Dictating to young Las Cases the notes which were used in compiling the " Memorial.' After a steel engraving in the collection of the Cabinet des Estampes at Paris. able determination to find something to do, that we owe his clear, logical commen- taries, his essays on Caesar, Turenne, and Frederick, his sketch of the Republic, and the vast amount of information in the journals of his devoted comrades, O'Meara, Las Cases, Montholon. But no amount of forced occupation could hide the desolation of his position. The island of St. Helena is a mass of jagged, gloomy rocks ; the nearest land is six hundred miles away. Isolated and in- accessible as it is, the English placed Napoleon on its most sombre and remote part a place called Longwood, at the summit of a mountain, and to the wind- ward. The houses at Longwood were damp and unhealthy. There was no shade. Water had to be carried some three miles. The governor, Sir Hudson Lowe, was a tactless man, with a propensity for bully- ing those whom he ruled. He was haunted by the idea that Napoleon was trying to escape, and he adopted a policy which was more like that of a jailer than of an officer. In his first interview with the emperor he so antagonized him that Napoleon soon refused to see him. Napoleon's antipathy was almost superstitious. " I never saw such a horrid countenance." he told LIFE AT ST. HELENA. 219 O'Meara. " He sat on a chair opposite to my sofa, and on the little table between us there was a cup of coffee. His physiog- nomy made such an unfavorable impression upon me that I thought his evil eye had poisoned the coffee, and I ordered Mar- chand to throw it out of the window. I could not have swallowed it for the world." Aggravated by Napoleon's refusal to see him, Sir Hudson Lowe became more an- noying and petty in his regulations. All free communication between Longwood and the inhabitants of the island was cut off. The newspapers sent Napoleon were mutilated ; certain books were refused ; his letters were opened. A bust of his son brought to the island by a sailor was with- held for weeks. There was incessant hag- gling over the expenses of his establish- ment. His friends were subjected to constant annoyance. All news of Marie Louise and of his son was kept from him. It is scarcely to be wondered at that Napoleon was often peevish and obstinate under this treatment, or that frequently, when he allowed himself to discuss the governor's policy with the members of his suite, his temper rose, as Montholon said, " to thirty-six degrees of fury." His situ- ation was made more miserable by his ill- health. His promenades were so guarded by sentinels and restricted to such limits that he finally refused to take exercise, and after that his disease made rapid marches. His fretfulness, his unreasonable deter- mination to house himself, his childish re- sentment at Sir Hudson Lowe's conduct, have led to the idea that Napoleon spent his time at St. Helena in fuming and com- plaining. But if one will take into consid- eration the work that the fallen emperor did in his exile, he will have a quite different impression of this period of his life. He SKETCHES OF NAPOLEON AT VARIOUS EPOCHS. By Charlet. NAPOLEON AT ST. HELENA. By Delaroche. lived at St. Helena, from October, 1815, to May, 1821. In this period of five and a half years he wrote or dictated enough matter to fill the four good-sized volumes which complete the bulky correspondence published by the order of Napoleon III., and he furnished the great collection of conversations embodied in the memorials published by his companions. This means a great amount of thinking and planning ; for if one will go over these dictations and writings to see how they were made, he will see that they are not slovenly in arrangement or loose in style. On the contrary, they are concise, logical, and frequently vivid. They are full of errors, it is true, but that is due to the fact that Napoleon had not at hand any official documents for making history. He de- pended almost entirely on his memory. The books and maps he had, he used dili- gently, but his supply was limited and un- satisfactory. It must be remembered, too, that this work was done under great physical diffi- culties. He was suffering keenly much of the time after he reached the island. Even for a well man, working under favorable cir- cumstances, the literary output of Napoleon at St. Helena would be creditable. For one in his circumstances it was extraordinary. A look at it is the best possible refutation of the common notion that he spent his time at St. Helena fuming at Sir Hudson Lowe and "stewing himself in hot water," to use the expression of the governor. PREPARATIONS FOR DEATH. DEATH IN MAY, 1821. Before the end of 1820 it was certain that he could not live long. In December of that year the death of his sister Eliza was announced to him. "You see, Eliza has just shown me the way. Death, which had forgotten my family, has begun to strike it. My turn cannot be far off." Nor was it. On May 5, 1821. he died. His preparations for death were methodi- cal and complete. During the last fort- night of April all his strength was spent in dictating to Montholon his last wishes. He even dictated, ten days before the end, the note which he wished sent to Sir Hud- son Lowe to announce his death. The articles he had in his possession at Long- wood he had wrapped up and ticketed with the names of the persons to whom he wished to leave them. His will remem- NAPOLEON'S LAST DAY. From a sculpture by Vela. This superb statue was exhibited in Paris at the Exhibition Univer- selle of 1867 (Italian section), and obtained the gold medal. It was purchased by the French Govern- ment, and is now at Versailles. NAPOLEON AS HE LAY IN DEATH. ("NAPOLEON UT IN MORTE RECt'MBIT.") Dedicated, "with permission, to the Countess Bertrand, by her obliged and most obedient servant, William Rubidge. Taken at St. Helena in presence of Countess Bertrand, Count Montholon, etc." Engraved by H. Meyer, London, after W. Rubidge, and published August, 18-21. bered numbers of those whom he had loved or who had served him. Even the Chinese laborers then employed about the place were remembered. " Do not let them be forgotten. Let them have a few score of napoleons." The will included a final word on certain questions on which he felt posterity ought distinctly to understand his position. He died, he said, in the apostolical Roman re- ligion. Hedeclared that he had always been pleased with Marie Louise, whom he be- NAl-OLEON LYING DEAU. " From the original drawing of Captain Crockatt, taken the morning after Napoleon's decease." Published July 18, 1821, in London. WAX CAST OF THE FACE OF NAPOLEON, MADE AT ST. HELENA IN 1821, BY DR. ARNOTT. sought to watch over his son. To this son, whose name recurs repeatedly in the will, he gave a motto All for the French peo- ple. He died prematurely, he said, assassi- nated by the English oligarchy. The unfor- tunate results of the invasion of France he attributed to the treason of Marmont, Augereau, Talleyrand, and Lafayette. He defended the death of the Due d'Enghien. " Under similar circumstance I should act in the same way." This will is sufficient evidence that he died as he had lived, courageously and proudly, and inspired by a profound conviction of the justice of his own cause. In 1822 the French courts declared the will void. They buried him in a valley beside a spring he loved, and though no monument but a willow marked the spot, perhaps no other grave in history is so well known. Certainly the magnificent mausoleum which marks his present resting place in Paris has never touched the imagination and the heart as did the humble willow-shaded mound in St. Helena. NAPOLEON S CHARACTER. The peace of the world was insured. Napoleon was dead. But though he was dead, the echo of his deeds was so loud in the ears of France and England that they tried every device to turn it into dis- cord or to drown it by another and a newer sound. The ignoble attempt was never entirely successful, and the day will come when personal and partisan considerations will cease to influence judgments on this mighty man. For he was a mighty man. One may be convinced that the funda- mental principles of his life were despotic ; that he used the noble ideas of personal liberty, of equality, and of fraternity, as a tyrant ; that the whole tendency of his civil and military system was to concen- trate power in a single pair of hands, never to distribute it where it belonged, among the people ; one may feel that he frequently sacrificed personal dignity to a theatrical desire to impose on the crowd as a hero of classic proportions, a god from Olympus ; DEATH MASK OF NAPOLEON, MADE BY DR. ANTOMMARCHI AT ST. HELENA, 1821. Calatnatta, 1834. Calamatta produced the mask from the cast taken by Dr. Antommarchi, the physician of x>leon at St. Helena, in 1834, grouping around it portraits (chiefly from Ingres's drawings) of Madame Napoleon Dudevant and others. one may groan over the blood he spilt. But he cannot refuse to acknowledge that no man ever comprehended more clearly the splendid science of war ; he cannot fail to bow to the genius which conceived and executed the Italian campaign, which fought the classic battles of Austerlitz, Jena, and Wagram. These deeds are great epics. They move in noble, measured lines, and stir us by their might and perfection. It is only a genius of the most magnificent order which could handle men and materials as Napoleon did. He is even more imposing as a states- NAPOLEON'S SWAY. man. When one confronts the France of 1 799, corrupt, crushed, hopeless, false to the great ideas she had wasted herself for, and watches Napoleon firmly and steadily bring order into this chaos, give the country work and bread, build up her broken walls and homes, put money into her pocket and re- store her credit, bind up her wounds and call back her scat- tered children, set her again to painting pictures and reading books, to smiling and singing, he has a Napoleon greater than the warrior. Nor were these civil deeds transient. France to-day is largely what Napoleon made her, and the most liberal insti- tutions of continental Europe bear his impress. It is only a mind of noble proportions which can grasp the needs of a people, and a hand of mighty force which can supply them. But he was greater as a man than as a warrior or statesman ; greater in that rare and subtile personal quality which made men love him. Men went down on their knees and wept at sight of him when he came home from Elba rough men whose hearts were untrained, and who loved naturally and spontane- ously the thing which was lovable. It was only selfish, warped, abnormal natures, which had been stifled by eti- quette and diplomacy and self- interest, who abandoned him. Where nature lived in a heart, Napoleon's sway was absolute. It was not strange. He was in everything a natural man ; his imagination, his will, his intellect, his heart, were native, untrained. They appealed to unworldly men in all their rude, often brutal, strength and sweetness. If they awed them, they won them. This native force of Napo- leon explains, at least partially, his hold on men ; it explains, too, the contrasts of his char- acter. Never was there a life lived so full of lights and shades, of majors and minors. It was 226 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. a kaleidoscope, changing at every moment. Beside the most practical and common- place qualities are the most idealistic. No man ever did more drudgery, ever followed details more slavishly ; yet who ever dared so divinely, ever played such hazardous games of chance ? No man ever planned more for his fellows, yet who ever broke so many hearts ? No man ever made prac- tical realities of so many of liberty's dreams, yet it was by despotism that he gave liberal and beneficent laws. No man was more gentle, none more severe. Never was there a more chivalrous lover until he was disillusioned ; a more affectionate husband, even when faith had left him; yet no man ever trampled more rudely on womanly delicacy and reserve. He was valorous as a god in danger, loved it, played with it ; yet he would turn pale at a broken mirror, cross himself if he stumbled, fancy the coffee poisoned at which an enemy had looked. He was the greatest genius of his time, perhaps of all time, yet he lacked the crown of greatness that high wisdom born of reflection and introspection which knows its own powers and limitations, and never abuses them ; that fine sense of pro- portion which holds the rights of others in the same solemn reverence which it de- mands for its own. CHAPTER XXIII. THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. REMOVAL OF NAPOLEON'S REMAINS FROM ST. HELENA TO THE BANKS OF THE SEINE IN 1840. It is my wish that my ashes may repose on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people, whom I have loved so well. TESTAMENT OF NAPOLEON, 2d Clause. He wants not this ; but France shall feel the want Of this last consolation, though so scant ; Her honor, fame, and faith demand his bones, To rear above a pyramid of thrones ; Or carried onward, in the battle's van, To form, like Guesclin's dust, her talisman. But be it as it is, the time may come, His name shall beat the alarm like Ziska's drum. BYRON, in The Age of Bronze. ON May 12, 1840, Louis Philippe being king of the French people, the Chamber of Deputies was busy with a discussion on sugar tariffs. It had been dragging some- what, and the members were showing signs of restlessness. Suddenly the Count de Re'musat, then Minister of the Interior, ap- peared, and asked a hearing for a commu- nication from the government. "Gentlemen," he said, "the king has ordered his Royal H'ighness Monseigneur the Prince de Joinville* to go with his frigate to the island of St. Helena, there to collect the remains of the Emperor Napo- leon." A tremor ran over the House. The an- nouncement was utterly unexpected. Na- poleon to come back ! The body seemed electrified, and the voice of the minister was drowneM for a moment in applause. When he went on, it was to say : " We have come to ask for an appropri- * The Prince de Joinville was the third son of Louis Philippe. ation which shall enable us to receive the remains in a fitting manner, and to raise an enduring tomb to Napoleon." " Tres bien ! Tres Men ! " cried the House. " The government, anxious to discharge a great national duty, asked England for the precious treasure which fortune had put into her hands. " The thought of France was welcomed as soon as expressed. Listen to the reply of our magnanimous ally: " ' The government of her Majesty hopes that the promptness of her response will be considered in France as a proof of her desire to efface the last traces of those national animosities which armed France and England against each other in the life of the emperor. The government of her Majesty dares to hope that if such sentiments still exist in certain quarters, they will be buried in the tomb where the remains of Napoleon are to be deposited.' " The reading of this generous and digni- fied communication caused a profound sen- sation, and cries of "Bravo ! bravo ! " re- s sf! I CU u Q. 4) u 4> O. 1) -O C >" u g J3 D J5 n-H fit| r g ji *O *^> CJ ~ >> - "o H " x "2 3 * S O.J= u fl ff *. 5 O rt **-t c |5l| u i> . .c r; U2-! .0 o -r g a rt ;;. g U U-f H!?d *T rt D -a >,- o. be x: S 1 -g 5!1 O O u. o u js 5 a > 5 5 * T .2 .s r .3 e ~ *-* r- ) "5 = >- g S 2 J! J a g s - - u S 5 .' .2 x -a I I ^ .2 5 i !5 * - S.|.b C U cj . 2 S | 5 * M - ? g u g 5 ^5 & e '5 -2 -5 g 3 " 'i - 9 V J tf S M 1C -.3 - ^ rt -c o ' ^c^ g *? o ^ 'i i = 'S -c "C c C- a y = C c = ^ -IS H !H ~> - 1 ^ c? tJ o S 9- c - 8 & I ^ a | |n x O "^ *J y) ^ - & a H -a = ~ n 228 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. echoed through the hall. The minister, so well received, grew eloquent. " England is right, gentlemen ; the noble way in which restitution has been made will knit the bonds which unite us. It will wipe out all traces of a sorrowful past. The time has come when the two nations should remember only their glory. The frigate freighted with the mortal remains of Napoleon will return to the mouth of the Seine. They will be placed in the In- valides. A solemn celebration and grand religious and military ceremonies will con- secrate the tomb which must guard them forever. " It is important, gentlemen, that this august sepulchre should not remain ex- posed in a public place, in the midst of a noisy and inappreciative populace. It should be in a silent and sacred spot, where all those who honor glory and genius, grandeur and misfortune, can visit it and meditate. " He was emperor and king. He was the legitimate sovereign of our country. He is entitled to burial at Saint-Denis. But the ordi- nary royal sep- ulchre is not enough for Napoleon. He should reign and command forever in the spot where the country's sol- diers repose, and where those who are called to defend it will seek their inspi- ration. His sword will be placed on his tomb. "Art will raise beneath the dome of the temple conse- crated to the god of battles, a tomb worthy, if that be possi- ble, of the name which shall be engraved upon it. This monu- ment must have a simple beauty, grand outlines, and that ap- pearance of eternal strength which defit the action of time. Napoleon must have a monument lasting as his memory. . . . " Hereafter France, and France alone, will possess all that remains of Napoleon. His tomb, like his fame, will belong to no one but his country. The monarchy of 1830 is the only and the legitimate heir of the past of which France is so proud. It is the duty of this monarchy, which was the first to rally all the forces and to con- ciliate all the aspirations of the French Revolution, fearlessly to raise and honor the statue and the tomb of the popular hero. There is one thing, one only, which does not fear comparison with glory that is liberty." Throughout this speech, every word of which was an astonishment to the Cham- ber, sincere and deep emotion prevailed. At intervals enthusiastic applause burst forth. For a moment all party distinctions were forgotten. The whole House was under the sway of that strange and power- ful emotion which Napoleon, as no other leader who ever lived, was able to inspire. When the minister fol- lowed his speech by the draft of a law for a special credit of one million francs^ a member, be- side himself with excite- ment, moved that rules be laid aside and the law voted without the legal prelimi- n a r i e s . The president re- fused to put so irregular a mo- tion, but the House would not be quiet. The deputies- left their places, formed in groups in the hemicycle, sur- rounded the minister, con- gratulating him with fervor. They walked up- and down, ges- NAPOLEON'S TOMB AT ST. HELENA. From a recent photograph. THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. ticulating and shouting. It was fully half an hour before the president was able to bring them to order, and then they were in anything but a working mood. "The president must close the session," cried an agitated member ; " the law which has just been proposed has caused too great emotion for iis to return now to dis- cussing sugar." But the president replied very properly, and a little sententiously, that the Cham- ber owed its time to the country's business, and that it must give it. And, in spite of their excitement, the members had to go back to their sugar. THE AUTHOR OF THE "GRANDE PENSEE." But how had it come about that the French government had dared burst upon the country with so astounding a communi- cation? There were many explanations offered. A curious story which went abroad took the credit from the king and gave it to O'Connell, the Irish agitator. As the story went, O'Connell had warned Lord Palmerston that he proposed to pre- sent a bill in the Commons for returning Napoleon's remains to France. " Take care," said Lord Palmerston. " Instead of pleasing the French govern- ment, you may embarrass it seriously." " That is not the question," answered O'Connell. " The question for me is what I ought to do. Now, my duty is to propose to the Commons to return the emperor's bones. England's duty is to welcome the motion. I shall make my propositions, then, without disturbing myself about whom it will flatter or wound." " So be it," said Lord Palmerston. " Only give me fifteen days." " Very well," answered O'Connell. Immediately Lord Palmerston wrote to Monsieur Thiers, then at the head of the French Ministry, that he was about to be forced to tell the country that England had never refused to return the remains of Na- poleon to France, because France had never asked that they be returned. As the story goes, Monsieur Thiers advised Louis Phi- lippe to forestall O'Connell, and thus it came about that Napoleon's remains were returned to France. The grande pensfa, as the idea was im- mediately called, seems, however, to have originated with Monsieur Thiers, who saw in it a means of reawakening interest in Louis Philippe. He believed that the very audacity of the act would create admiration and applause. Then, too, it was in har- mony with the claim of the regime ; that is, that the government of 1830 united all that was best in all the past governments of France, and so was stronger than any one of them. The mania of both king and minister for collecting and restoring made them think favorably of the idea. Already Louis Philippe had inaugurated galleries at Versailles, and hung them with miles of canvas, celebrating the victories of all his predecessors. In the gallery of portraits he had placed Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI. beside Madame Roland, Charlotte Corday, Robespierre, and Napoleon and his marshals. He had already replaced the statue of Napoleon on the top of the Column Vendome. He had restored cathedrals, churches, and chateaux, put up statues and monuments, and all this he had done with studied indifference to the politics of the individuals honored. Yet while so many little important per- sonages were being exalted, the remains of the greatest leader France had ever known, were lying in a far-away island. Louis Philippe felt that no monument he could build to the heroes of. the past would equal restoring Napoleon's remains. The matter was simpler, because it was almost certain that England would not block the path. The entente cordials, whose base had been laid by Talleyrand nearly ten years earlier, had become a compara- tively solid peace, and either nation was willing to go out of the way, if necessary, to do the other a neighborly kindness. France was so full of good will that she was even willing to ask a favor. Her con- fidence was well placed. Two days after Guizot, then the French minister to Eng- land, had explained the project to Lord Palmerston, and made his request, he had his reply. The remains of the emperor " were at the disposition of the French. Of the " em- peror," notice ! After twenty-five years England recalled the act of her ministers in 1815, and recognized that France made Napoleon emperor as well as general. EFFECT ON THE COUNTRY. The announcement that Napoleon's re- mains were to be brought back, produced the same effect upon the country at large that it had upon the Chamber a moment of acute emotion, of all-forgetting enthu- siasm. But in the Chamber and the country the feeling was short-lived. The 232 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. political aspects of the bold movement were too conspicuous. A chorus of criti- cisms and forebodings arose. It was more of Monsieur Thiers' clap-trap, said those opposed to the English policy of the gov- ernment. What particularly angered this party, was the words " magnanimous ally " in the minister's address. The Bonapartes feigned to despise the proposed ceremony. It was insufficient for the greatness of their hero. One mil- lion francs could not possibly produce the display the object demanded. Another point of theirs was more serious. The emperor was the legitimate sovereign of the country, they said, quoting from the minister's speech to the Chamber, and they added: "His title was founded on the senatus consultum of the year 12, which, by an equal number of suffrages, secured the succession to his brother Joseph. It was then unquestionably Joseph Bonaparte who was proclaimed emperor of the French by the Minister of the Interior, and amid the applause of the deputies." Scoffers said that Louis Philippe must have discovered that his soft mantle of popularity was about worn out, if he was going to make one of the old gray redin- gote of a man whom he had called a mon- ster. The Legitimists denied that Napo- leon was a legitimate sovereign with a right to sleep at Saint-Denis like a Bour- bon or a Valois. The Orleanists were wounded by the hopes they saw inspired in the Bonapartists by this declaration. The Republicans resented the honor done to the man whom they held up as the greatest of all despots. There was a conviction among many that the restoration was premature, and probably would bring on the country an agitation which would endanger the sta- bility of the throne. It was tempting the Bonaparte pretensions certainly, and per- haps arousing a tremendous popular sen- timent to support tHem. While the press and government, the clubs and cafes, discussed the political side of the question, the populace quietly re- vived the Napoleon legend. Within two days after the government had announced its intentions, commerce had begun to take advantage of the financial possibilities in the approaching ceremony. New editions of the " Lives" of Napoleon which Vernet and Raffet had illustrated, were advertised. Dumas' "Life" and Thiers' "Consulate and Empire" were announced. Memoirs of the period, like those of the Duchesse d'Abrantes and of Marmont, were revived. As on the announcement of Napoleon's death in 1821, there was an inundation of pamphlets in verse and prose ; of portraits and war compositions, lithographs, en- gravings, and wood-cuts ; of thousands of little objects such as the French know so well how to make. The shops and street carts were heaped with every conceivable article a la Napoleon. The legend grew as the people gazed. TO ST. HELENA AND BACK. On July yth the " Belle Poule," the vessel which was to conduct the Prince de Join- ville, the commander of the expedition, to St. Helena, sailed from Toulon accom- panied by the " Favorite." In the suite of the Prince were several old friends of Napoleon : the Baron las Cases, General Gourgaud, Count Bertrand, and four of his former servants. All of these persons had been with him at St. Helena. The Prince de Joinville had not received his orders to go on the expedition with great pleasure. Two of his brothers had just been sent to Africa to fight, and he envied them their opportunities for adven- tures and glory ; and, besides, he was sick of a most plebeian complaint, the measles. " One day as I lay in high fever," he says in his " Memoirs," " I saw my father appear, followed by Monsieur de Remusat, then Minister of the Interior. This unusual visit filled me-with astonishment, and my surprise increased when my father said, 'Joinville, you are to go out to St. Helena and bring back Napoleon's coffin.' If I had not been in bed already I should have fallen down flat, and at first blush I felt no wise flattered when I compared the warlike campaign my brothers were on with the undertaker's job I was being sent to perform in the other hemisphere. But I served my country, and I had no right to discuss my orders." If the young prince was privately a little ashamed of his task, publicly he adapted himself admirably to the occasion. A voyage of sixty-six days brought the " Belle Poule," on October 8th, to St. Hel- ena, where she was welcomed by the Eng- lish with every honor. Indeed, throughout the affair the attitude of the English was dignified and generous. They showed plainly their desire to satisfy and flatter the pride and sentiment of the French. It had been decided that the exhumation of the body and its transfer to the French should take place on the twenty-fifth anni- versary of the arrival of Napoleon at the 234 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. island. The disinterment was begun at mid- night on October i5th,the English conduct- ing the work, and a number of the French, including those of the party who had been with Napoleon at his death, being present. The work was one of extraordinary diffi- culty, for the same remarkable precautions against escape were taken in Napoleon's death as had been in his life. The grave in the Valley of Napoleon, as the place had come to be called, was sur- rounded by an iron railing set in a heavy stone curb. Over the grave was a cover- ing of six-inch stone which admitted to a vault eleven feet deep, eight feet long, and four feet eight inches broad. The vault was apparently filled with earth, but digging down some seven feet a layer of Roman cement was found ; this broken, laid bare a layer of rough-hewn stone ten inches thick, and fastened. together by iron clamps. It took four and one-half hours to remove this layer. The stone up, the slab forming the lid of the interior sarcophagus was ex- posed, enclosed in a border of Roman cement strongly attached to the walls of the vault. So stoutly had all these various coverings been sealed with cement and bound by iron bands, that it took the large party of laborers ten hours to reach the coffin. As soon as exposed the coffin was puri- fied, sprinkled with holy water, consecrated by a De Profundis, and then raised with the greatest care, and carried into a tent which had been prepared for it. After the re- ligious ceremonies, the inner coffins were opened. " The outermost coffin was slightly injured," says an eye-witness; "then came one of lead, which was in good condition, and enclosed two others one of tin and one of wood. The last coffin was lined inside with white satin, which, having be- come detached by the effect of time, had fallen upon the body and enveloped it like a winding-sheet, and had become slightly attached to it. " It is difficult to describe with what anx- iety and emotion those who were present waited for the moment which was to expose to them all that was left of the Emperor Napoleon. Notwithstanding the singular state of preservation of the tomb and cof- fins, we could scarcely hope to find any- thing but some misshapen remains of the least perishable part of the costume to evi- dence the identity of the body. But when Dr. Guillard raised the sheet of satin, an indescribable feeling of surprise and affec- tion was expressed by the spectators, many of whom burst into tears. The emperor himself was before their eyes ! The feat- ures of the face, though changed, were per- fectly recognizable ; the hands extremely beautiful ; his well-known costume had suf- fered but little, and the colors were easily distinguished. The attitude itself was full of ease, and but for the fragments of satin lining which covered, as with fine gauze, several parts of the uniform, we might have believed we still saw Napoleon lying on his bed of state." A solemn procession was now formed, and the coffin borne over the rugged hills of St. Helena to the quay. " We. were all deeply impressed," says the Prince de Join- ville, " when the coffin was seen coming slowly down the mountain side to the fir- ing of cannon, escorted by British infantry with arms reversed, the band playing, to the dull rolling accompaniment of the drums, that splendid funeral march which English people call the Dead March in Saul." At the head of the quay, the Prince de Joinville, attended by the officers of the French vessels, was waiting to receive the remains of the emperor. In the midst of the most solemn military funeral rites the French embarked with their precious charge. " The scene at that moment was very fine," continues the prince. " A mag- nificent sunset had been succeeded by a twilight of the deepest calm. The British authorities and the troops stood motionless on the beach, while our ship's guns fired a royal salute. I stood in the stern of my long-boat, over which floated a magnificent tricolor flag, worked by the ladies of St. Helena. Beside me were the generals and superior officers. The pick of my topmen, all in white, with crape on their arms, and bareheaded like ourselves, rowed the boat in silence, and with the most admirable precision. We advanced with majestic slowness, escorted by the boats bearing the staff. It was very touching, and a deep national sentiment seemed to hover over the whole scene." But no sooner did the coffin reach the French cutter than mourning was changed to triumph. Flags were unfurled, masts squared, drums set a-beating, and salvos poured from forts and vessels. The em- peror had come back to his own ! Three days later the " Belle Poule " was en route for France. One incident alone marked her return. A passing vessel brought the news that war had been de- clared between France and England. The Prince de Joinville was only twenty-two, a hot-headed youth, and the news of war 236 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. immediately convinced him that England had her fleet out watching for him, ready to carry off Napoleon again. He rose to the height of his fears. The elegant fur- nishings of the saloons of his vessel were torn out and thrown overboard to make room to put in batteries ; the men were made ready for fighting, and everybody on board was compelled to take an oath to sink the vessel before allowing the remains to be taken. This done, the " Belle Poule " went her way peacefully to Cherbourg, where she arrived on November 3oth, forty-three days after leaving St. Helena. The town of Cherbourg owes much to Napoleon her splendid harbors, and great tracts of land rescued from the sea and she honored the return of his remains with -every pomp. Even the poor of the town were made to rejoice by lavish gifts in the emperor's honor ; and one of the chief squares one he had redeemed from the sea became the Place Napoleon. The vessels lay eight days at Cherbourg, for the arrival had been a fortnight earlier than was anticipated, and nothingwas ready for the celebration in Paris ; but the time was none too long for the thousands who flocked in interminable processions to the vessels. When the vessels left for Havre, Cherbourg was so excited that she did what must have seemed to the nervous inhabit- ants an extravagance, even in Napoleon's honor. She fired a thousand guns ! FROM CHERBOURG TO PARIS. The passage of the flotilla from Cher- bourg to Paris took seven days. At almost every town and hamlet elaborate demonstrations were made. At Havre and Rouen they were especially magnifi- cent. A striking feature of the river cortege was the ceremonies at the various bridges under which the vessels passed. The most elaborate of these was at Rouen, where the central arch of the suspension bridge had been formed into an immense arch of tri- umph. The decorations were the exclusive work of wounded legionary officers and soldiers of the Empire. When the vessel bearing the coffin passed under, the vet- erans showered down upon it wreaths of flowers and branches of laurel. These elaborate and grandiose ceremo- nies were not, however, the really touch- ing feature of the passage. The hill-sides and river-banks were crowded with people from all the surrounding country, who sometimes even pressed into the river in order better to see the vessels. Those on the flotilla saw aged peasants firing salutes with ancient muskets, old men kneeling with uncovered heads on the sod, and others, their heads in their hands weeping these men were veterans of the Empire paying homage to the passage of their hero. It was on the afternoon 'of December i4th, just as the sun was setting radi- antly behind Mt. Valerian, that the flotilla reached Courbevoie, a few miles from Paris, where Napoleon's body was first to touch French soil. The bridge at Courbevoie, the islands of Neuilly, the hills which rise from the Seine, were crowded, far as the eye could reach, with a throng drawn from the entire country around. The flotilla as it approached was a bril- liant sight. At the head was the " Do- rade," a cross at her prow, and, behind, the coffin. It was dressed in purple velvet, surrounded by flags and garlands of oak and cypress, surmounted by a canopy of black velvet ornamented with silver and masses of floating black plumes. Between cross and coffin stood the Prince de Join- ville in full uniform, and behind him Gen- erals Bertrand and Gourgaud and the Abbe" Coquereau, almoner of the expedition. The vessels following the " Dorade " bore the crews of the " Belle Poule " and the " Favorite " and the military bands. A magnificent funeral boat, on whose deck there was a temple of bronzed wood, hung with splendid draperies of purple and gold, brought up the official procession. Behind followed numberless craft of all descriptions. Majestic funeral marches and salvos of artillery accompanied the ad- vance. At Courbevoie the flotilla anchored. Notwithstanding the intense cold, thou- sands of people camped all night on the hill-sides and shores, their bivouac fires illuminating the landscape. DECEMBER 15, 1840. Only those who have seen Paris on the day of a great fete or ceremony can picture to themselves the i5th of December, 1840. The day was intensely cold, eight degrees below the freezing point, but at five o'clock in the morning, when the drums began beat- ing, and the guns booming, the populace poured forth, taking up their/ positions along the line of the expected procession. This line was fully three miles in length, '38 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. and ran from Courbevoie to the Arc de Triomphe by way of Neuilly, thence down the Champs Elysees, across the Place and Bridge de la Concorde, and along the quai to the Esplanade des Invalides. From one end to the other it was packed on either side a hundred deep, before nine o'clock. The journals of the day compute the num- ber of visitors expected in Paris as about half a million. Inside and outside of the Hotel des Invalides alone, thirty-six thou- sand places were given to the Minister of the Interior, and that did not cover one- tenth of the requests he received. It is certain that nearly a million persons saw the entry of Napoleon's remains. The people hung from the trees, crowded the roofs, stood on ladders of every description, filled the windows, and literally swarmed over the walks and grass plots. A brisk business went on in elevated positions. A ladder rung cost five francs ($1.00); the man who had a cart across which he had laid boards, rented standing-room at from five to ten francs. As for windows and balconies they sold for fabulous prices, in spite of the fact that the placard fenetres et balcons a louer appeared in almost every house from Neuilly to the Invalides, even in many a magnificent hotel of the Champs Elysees. Fifty francs ($10.00) was the price of the meanest window ; a good one cost one hundred francs ($20.00); three thou- sand francs ($600.00) were paid for good balconies. One speculator rented a va- cant house for the day for five thousand francs ($1,000.00), and made money on his investment. The crowd made every preparation to keep warm ; some of them carried foot- stoves filled with live coals, others little hand-warmers. At intervals along the procession great masses of the spectators danced to keep up their circulation. Vend- ers of all sorts of articles did a thriving business. Every article was, of course, Napoleonized ; one even bough \. gauffrettes and Madeleines cut out in the shape of Napoleons. There were badges of every form imperial eagles, bees, crowns, even ihtfetit chapeau. Many pamphlets in prose and verse had a great sale, especially those of Casimir Delavigne, Victor Hugo, and Barthe"lemy ; though all these stately odes were far outstripped by one song, thousands upon thousands of copies of which were sold. It ran : " Premier capitaine du monde Depuis le sie"ge de Toulon, Tant sur la terre que sur 1'onde Tout redoutait Napoleon. Du Nil au nord de la Tamise ! Devant lui 1'ennemi fuyait, Avant de combattre, il tremblait Voyant sa redingote grise." * The cortege which had brought this crowd together was magnificent in the ex- treme. A brilliant military display formed the first portion : gendarmerie, municipal guards, officers, infantry, cavalry, artillery, cadets from the important schools, national guards. But this had little effect on the crowd. The genuine interest began when Marengo, Napoleon's famous battle-horse, appeared it was not Marengo, but it looked like him, which for spectacular pur- poses was just as well ; and the saddle and bridle were genuine the defile now became exciting. The commission of St. Helena appeared in carriages, then the Marshals of France, the Prince de Joinville, the crews of the vessels which had been to St. Helena, finally the funeral car, a magnificent crea- tion over thirty feet high, its design and ornaments symbolic. Sixteen black horses in splendid trappings drew the car, whose funeral pall was held by a marshal and an admiral of France, by the Due de Reggio and General Bertrand. The passing of the car was everywhere greeted with sincere emotion, profound reverence. Even the opposition recognized the gen- uineness of the feeling ; many of them owned to sharing it for one moment of self-forgetfulness, and they began to ask themselves, as Lamartine had asked the Chamber six months before, what they had been thinking to allow the French heart and imagination to be so fired ? Even cynical Englishmen who looked on with stern or contemptuous countenances, said to themselves meditatively that night, as they sat by their fire resting, " Something good must have been in this man, some- thing loving and kindly, that has kept his name so cherished in the popular memory and gained him such lasting reverence and affection." Following the car came those who had been intimately associated with the em- peror in his life his aides-de-camp and civil and military officers. Many of them had been with him in famous battles ; some were at Fontainebleau in 1814, others at Malmaison in 1815. The veterans of the * The greatest captain, all agree, Since the siege of Toulon ; On the earth as on the sea, All yielded to Napoleon. His enemies fled, full of dismay, Beyond the Thames from off the Nile, Before the fight, trembling the while If they but saw his redingote gray. 240 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. Imperial Guard followed ; behind them a deputation from Ajaccio. From Courbevoie to the Hotel des Inva- lides, one walked through a hedge of elab- orate decorations of bees, eagles, crowns, N's; of bucklers, banners, and wreaths bear- ing the names of famous victories ; of urns blazing with incense ; of rostral columns ; masts bearing trophies of arms and clus- ters of flags ; flaming tripods ; allegorical statues ; triumphal arches ; great banks of seats draped in imperial purple and packed with spectators, and phalanges of soldiers. On the top of the Arc de Triomphe was an imposing apotheosis of Napoleon. Each side of the Pont de la Concorde, was adorned with huge statues. On the Espla- nade des Invalides the car passed between an avenue of thirty-two statues of great French kings, heroes, and heroines Charles Martel, Charlemagne, Clovis, Bay- ard, Jean d'Arc, Latour d'Auvergne, Ney. The chivalry and valor of France wel- comed Napoleon home. Oddly enough, this hedge of statues ended in one of Napoleon himself ; the incongruity of the arrangement struck even the gamins. " Tiens," cried one urchin, " voila comrne 1'empereur fait la queue a lui-meme." (" Hello, see there how the emperor brings up his own procession.") The procession passed quietly from one end to the other of the route, to the great relief of the authorities. Difficulty was an- ticipated from several sources : from the Anglophobes, the Revolutionists, the Le- gitimists, the Bonapartists, and the great mass of dissatisfied, who, no matter what form of rule they are under, are always against the government. The greatest fear seems to have been on the part of the English. Thackeray, who was in town at the time, gives an amusing picture of his own nervousness on the morning of the " Did the French nation, or did they not, intend to offer up some of us English over the imperial grave ? And were the games to be concluded by a massacre ? It was said in the newspapers that Lord Granville had despatched circulars to all the Eng- lish residents in Paris, begging them to keep their homes. The French journals announced this news, and warned us charitably of the fate intended for us. Had Lord Granville written ? Certainly not to me. Or had he written to all except me? And was I the victim the doomed one? to be seized directly I showed my face in the Champs Elyse'es, and torn in pieces by French patriotism to the frantic chorus of the Marseillaise? Depend on it, Madame, that high and low in this city on Tuesday were not altogether at their ease, and that the bravest felt no small tremor. And be sure of this, that as his Majesty Louis Philippe took his nightcap off his royal head that morning, he prayed heartily that he might at night put it on in safety." Fortunately Thackeray's courage con- quered, and so we have the entertaining "Second Funeral of Napoleon," by " Mi- chael Angelo Titmarsh." In spite of all forebodings, the hostile displays were nothing more than occa- sional cries of "A has les Anglais" a few at- tempts to promenade the tricolor flag and drown Le Premier Capitaine du Monde by the Marseillaise, and a strong indignation when it was learned that the representa- tives of the allies had refused to be pres- ent at the final ceremony. Most of the observers of the funeral attributed the good order of the crowd to the cold. A correspondent of the "Na- tional Intelligence" of that date says : " If this business had fallen in the month of June or July, with all its excitements, spontaneous and elabo- rate, I should have deemed a sanguinary struggle between the government and the mob certain or highly probable. The present military array might answer for an approaching army of Cossacks. Forty or fifty thousand troops remain in the barracks with- in and camps without, besides the regular soldiery and National Guards in the field, ready to act against the domestic enemy. " Providentially the cold increased to the utmost keenness ; the genial currents of the insurrectionary and revolutionary soul were frozen." The climax ot the pageant was the temple of the Invalides. The spacious church was draped in the most magnificent and lavish fashion, and adorned with a perfect bewilderment of imperial emblems. The light was shut out by hangings of violet velvet ; tripods blazing with colored flames, and thousands upon thousands of waxen candles in brilliant candelabra lighted the temple. Under the dome, in the place of the altar, stood the catafalque which was to receive the coffin. From early in the morning the galleries, choir, and tribunes of the Invalides were packed by a distinguished company. There were the Chambers of Deputies and Lords neither of which had been represented in the cortege the judicial and educa- tional bodies, the officers of army and navy, the ambassadors and representatives of foreign governments, the king, and the court. But none of these dignitaries were of more than passing interest that day. The centre of attention, until the coffin entered, was the few old soldiers of the Empire to be seen in the company ; most prominent of these was Marshal Moncey, the decrepit governor of the Invalides. HOTEL DBS INVALIDES THE CATAFALQUE ON WHICH THE COKHN KESTS IS THE FUNERAL MA It was two o'clock in the afternoon when the Archbishop of Paris, preceded by a splendid cross-bearer, and followed by sixteen incense boys and long rows of white-clad priests, left the church to meet the procession. They returned soon. Following them were the Prince de Join- ville and a select few from the grand cortege without; in their midst, Napoleon's coffin. As it passed, the great assemblage was swayed by an extraordinary emotion. There is no one of those who have de- scribed the day who does not speak of the sudden, intense agitation which thrilled the company, whether he refers to it half- NAPOLEON'S TOMB IN THE CHURCH OF THE HOTEL DBS INVALIDES AS IT APPEARS AT THE PRESENT DAY. humorously as Thackeray, who told how "everybody's heart was thumping as hard as possible," or cries with Victor Hugo : " Sire: En ce moment-la, vouz aurez pour royaume, Tous les fronts, tous les coeurs qui battront sous le ciel, Les nations feront asseoir votre fantome, Au trone universe!. " * *Sire, in that moment your kingdom will be on every brow, in every heart which beats under heaven. The nations will seat your phantom on a universal throne. The king descended from his throne and advanced to meet the cortege. " Sire," said the Prince de Joinville, " I present to you the body of Napoleon, which, in ac- cordance with your commands, I have brought back to France." " I receive it in the name of France," replied Louis Philippe. Such at least is what the "Moniteur" affirms was said, but the " Moniteur " is an official journal whose business is, not to tell what really happened, but what would NAPOLEON'S PRESENT TOMB. 243 have happened if the government had had its way. The Prince de Joinville gives a different version: " The king received the body at the entrance to the nave, and there rather a comical scene took place. It appears that a little speech which I was to have delivered when I met my father, and also the answer he was to give me, had been drawn up in council, only the author- ities had omitted to inform me concerning it. So when I arrived I simply saluted with my sword, and then stood aside. I saw, indeed, that this silent salute, followed by retreat, had thrown something out ; but my father, after a moment's hesitation, improvised some appropriate sentence, and the matter was arranged in the ' Moniteur.' " Beside the king stood an officer, bearing a cushion ; on it lay the sword of Austerlitz. Marshal Soult handed it to the king, who, turning to Bertrand, said: " General, I commission you to place the emperor's glorious sword on the bier." And Bertrand, trembling with emotion, laid the sword reverently on his idol's coffin. The great company watched the scene in deepest silence. The only sound which broke the stillness was the half- stifled sobs of the gray-haired soldiers of the Invalides, who stood in places of honor near the catafalque. The king and the procession returned to their places, and then followed a majestic funeral mass. The Requiem of Mozart, as rendered that day by all the great singers of Paris, is one of the historic musical per- formances of France. The archbishop then sprinkled the coffin with holy water, the king taking the brush from him for the same sacred duty. The funeral was over. Napoleon lay at last " on the banks of the Seine, among the people whom he had so loved." AFTER THE FUNERAL. For eight days after the ceremony the church remained open to the public, and in spite of the terrible cold thousands stood from morning until night waiting patiently their turn to enter. After hours of waiting, they frequently were sent away, only to come back earlier the next day. In this company were numbers of veterans of the imperial army who had made the jour- ney to Paris from distant parts of the king- dom. In the delegation from Belgium were many who had walked part of the way, not being able to pay full coach fare. Banquets and dinners followed the funeral. At one of these, a "sacred toast to the immortal memory" was drunk kneel- ing. In a dozen theatres of Paris the translation of the remains was dramatized. At the Porte Saint-Martin, the actor who took the part of Sir Hudson Lowe had a season of terror, he being in constant danger of violence from the wrought-up audience. The advertising columns of the news- papers of the day blazed for weeks with announcements of Napoleonized articles ; the holiday gifts prepared for the booths of the boulevards and squares, and for the magnificent shops of the Palais Royal and the fashionable streets, whatever their nature to eat, to wear, to look at were made up as memorials. Paris seemed to be Napoleon-mad. In the February following the funeral, the coffin of Napoleon was transferred from the catafalque in the centre of the church to a chapelle ardente in the basement at one side. The chapel was richly draped in silk and gold, and hung with trophies. On the coffin lay the imperial crown, the emperor's sword, and the hat which he had worn at Eylau, and which he had given to Gros when he ordered the battle of Eylau painted. Over the coffin waved the flags taken at Austerlitz. Here Napoleon's body lay until the mausoleum was finished. This magnificent structure was designed by Visconti, the eminent architect, who had also planned the entire decorations of the i5th of De- cember. Visconti utterly ignored the ap- propriations in executing the monument, ordering what he wanted, regardless of its cost. For the marble from which Pradier made the twelve colossal figures around the tomb, he sent to Carrara ; the porphyry which was used to inclose the coffin, he obtained in Finland. In this magnificent sepulchre Napoleon still sleeps. Duroc and Bertrand lie on either side of the entrance to the cham- ber, guarding him in death as in life ; and to the right and left of the entrance to the church are the tombs of his brothers Jerome and Joseph. On the stones about him are inscribed the names he made glori- ous ; over him are draped scores of tro- phies ; attending him are the veterans of the Invalides. " Qu'il dorme en paix sous cette voute ! C'est un casque bien fait, sans doute, Pour cette tete de geant." * * " Let him rest in peace beneath this dome. It is a hel- met made for a giant's head." TABLE OF THE CHARLES BONAPARTE. (1746-1785-) MARRIED From this \ i. Joseph (1768-1844), married 2 d. NAPOLEON I. (1769- 1 _ 3d. Lucien (1775-1840), mar- 4th. Marie Anne Elisa (1777- in 1794 to Marie Julie 1821), married : ried : 1820), married to Felix Clary. (i) Marie Josephine Rose (i) in 1794, Christine Eleo- Bacciochi in 1797. Tascher de la Pagerie in nore Boyer. From this marriage : 1796. (2) in 1802, Madame Jouber- From this marriage : (i) Ze"nalde Charlotte (iSoi- (2) Marie Louise, Archduch- thon. (i) Charles Jerome Baccio- 1854), married in 1832 to ess of Austria, in 1810. From first marriage : chi (1810-1830). her cousin, Charles Bona- parte, Prince de Canino. Adopted the first wife's two children : (i) Charlotte, married in 1815 to Prince Mario Gabri- (2) Napoleone Elisa, married to Count Camerata. 'a) Charlotte (1802-1839), elli. married in 1831 Napoleon Louis, her cousin, second (i) Eugene (1781-1824), who married the Princess Au- (2) Christine Egypta. mar- ried in 1818 to Count son of Louis. gusta Amelia, daughter Avred Posse, a Swede, of the King of Bavaria. and in 1824 to Lord Dud- From this marriage : ley Coutts Stuart. From second marriage : (a) Maximilian Joseph, Duke of Leuchtenberg, (i) Charles Lucien Jules Lau- rent, Prince of Canino, who married in 1839 a daughter of the Czar married to elder daugh- ter of Joseph Bonaparte. (6) Josephine, married in 1823 to Oscar Berna- (Charles Lucien hadeight children : Joseph, who * . dotte, since King of Sweden under the died young ; Lucien, a cardinal in 1868 ; Xapo- name of Charles XIV. leon, served in French (c) Euge'nie Hortense, mar- ried in 1826 to Prince army ; Julie, married to the Marquis de Boccagi- Frederick of Hohen- ovine ; Charlotte, who zollern Hechingen. became the Countess of Primoli ; Augusta, after- (rf) Ame'lie Augusta, mar- ried in 1829 to Dom Pe- dro, Emperor of Brazil. (e) Auguste Charles, mar- wards the Princess Ga- brielli ; Marie, married to Count Campello ; Ba- thilde, married to Count ried in 1835 to Donna Maria, Queen of Portu- Cambace'res.) (a) Lsetitia, married to Sir gal. (/) The"odeline Lou ise, Thomas Wyse. (3) Paul, killed in 1826. married in 1841 to Wil- liam, Count of WUr- (4) Jeanne, died in 1828. (5) Louis Lucien, known as temberg. (a) Euge'nie Hortense (1783- 1827), married to Louis Bonaparte. (See Louis.) Prince Lucien, and dis- tinguished as a writer. (6) Pierre Napoleon, known as Prince Pierre, married From second marriage : to a sempstress, and re- fused to give her up. Fran9ois Charles Joseph (NA- The oldest son of Prince POLEON II.), King of Pierre is the Prince Ro- Rome, afterwards Duke land Bonaparte. He of Reichstadt (1811-1832). would now be the chief of the House of Bona- parte, if Lucien had not been cut off from the succession. (7) Antoine. (8) Marie, married to the Viscount Valentini. (9) Constance, who took the veil. BONAPARTE FAMILY. MARIE L^TITIA RAMOLINO. (1750-1836.) IN 1765. marriage : 5th. Louis (1778-1846), mar- ried in 1802 to Euge'nie Hortense de Beauhar- nais, daughter of Jose- phine. From this marriage : (1) Napoleon Charles, heir- presumptive to the throne of Holland, died in 1807. (2) Charles Napoleon Louis, married his cousin Char- lotte, daughter of Joseph; died in 1831. (3) Charles Louis Napoleon, Emperor of the French in 1852, under the title of NAPOLEON III., mar- ried in 1853 to Euge'nie de Montijo de Guzman, Countess of Teba. From this marriage : Napoleon Eugene Louis Jean Joseph, Prince Imperial, born in 1856, killed ia Zululand in 1879. (1780- 6th. Marie Pauline 1825), married : (1) in 1801 to General Leclerc. (2) in 1803 to Prince Camilla Borghese. No children. 7th. Caroline Marie Annon- ciade (1782-1839), married Joachim Murat in 1800. From this marriage : (1) Napoleon Achille Charles Louis Murat (1801-1847), went to Florida, where he married a grandniece of George Washington. (2) Laetitia Josephe, married to the Marquis of Pepoli. (3) Lucien Charles Joseph Francois Napoleon Mu- rat, married an Ameri- can, a Miss Fraser, in 1827. From this mar- riage there were five chil- dren. (4) Louise Julie Caroline, married Count Rospoli. 8th. Jerome (1784-1860), mar- ried : (1) in 1803 to Miss Eliza Pat- terson of Baltimore ; and (2) in 1807 to the Princess Catherine of Wttrtem- berg. From first marriage : Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte- Patterson (1805-1870) mar- ried in 1829 to Miss Suzanne Gay. Two chil- dren were born from this marriage : (1) Jerome Napoleon Bona- parte (1832-1893). (2) Charles Bonaparte, at present a resident of Bal- timore. From second marriage ; (1) Jerome Napoleon Charles, who died in 1847. (2) Mathilde Laetitia Wilhel- mine, married in 1840 to a Russian, Prince Demi- doff, but separated from him ; known as the Prin- cess Mathilde. (3) Napoleon Joseph Charles Paul, called Prince Napo- leon, also known as Plon- Plon, married in 1859 tne Princess Clotilde, daugh- ter of King Victor Em- manuel of Italy. On the ieath of the Prince Im- perial, in 1879. became chief of the Bonapartist ^arty. Died in 1891. Prince Napoleon had three children : (a) Napoleon Victor Jer- ome Frederick, born in 1862, called Prince Victor, and the present Head of the House of Bonaparte. tf) Napoleon Louis Joseph Jerome. (r) Marie Laetitia Eugenie Catherine Adelaide. CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. AGE. DATE. EVENT. 9- 9- 15- 16. 16. 16. 17- 17- 17- 18. 18. 18-19. 19. 19-20. 1769. Aug. 15. Napoleon Bonaparte born at Ajaccio, in Corsica. Fourth child of Charles Bonaparte and of Lse- titia, nee Ramolino. 1778. Dec. 15. Napoleon embarks for France with his father, his brother Joseph, and his uncle Fesch. 1779. Jan. i. Napoleon enters the College of Autun. 1779. April 25. Napoleon enters the Royal Military School of Brienne. 1784. Oct. 23. Napoleon enters the Royal Military School of Paris. 1785. Sept. I. Napoleon appointed Second Lieutenant in the Artillery Regiment de la Fere. 1785. Oct. 29. Napoleon leaves the Mili- tary School of Paris. 1785. Nov. 5 to Aug. ii, 1786. Napoleon at Valence with his regiment. 1786. Aug. 15 to Sept. 20. Napoleon at Lyons with regiment. 1786. Oct. 17 to Feb. i, 1787. Napoleon at Douai with regiment. 1787. Feb. i to Oct. 14. Napoleon on leave to Corsica. 1787. Oct. 15 to Dec. 24. Napoleon quits Corsica, arrives in Paris, obtains fresh leave. AGE. DATE. EVENT. 23. 1792. Sept. 14 to June 11, 1793. Napoleon in Corsica engaged in revolutionary attempts ; having declared against Paoli, he and his family have to quit Corsica. 23. 1793. June 13 to July 14. Napoleon with his company at Nice. 24. 1793. Oct. 9 to Dec. 19. Napoleon placed in command of part of artillery of army of Carteaux before Toulon, 1 9th Oct.; Toulon taken igth Dec. 24. 1793. Dec. 22. Napoleon nominated pro- visionally General of Brigade ; ap- proved later ; receives commission, i6th Feb., 1794. 24. 1793. Dec. 26 to April i, 1794. Napoleon appointed inspector of the coast from the Rhone to the Var, on inspection duty. 24. 1794. April i to Aug. 5. Napoleon with army of Italy ; at Genoa I5th-2ist July. 24-25. 1794. Aug. 6 to Aug. 20, 1794. Napoleon in arrest after fall of Robespierre. 25. 1794. Sept. 1410 March 29, 1795. Napoleon commanding artillery of an intended maritime expedition to Corsica. 2 5- *795- March 27 to May 10. Napoleon or- dered from the south to join the army in La Vendee to command its artillery ; arrives in Paris, loth May. 1787. Dec. 25 to May, 1788. Napoleon pro- 25-26. 1795. ceeds to Corsica and returns early in May. 1788. May to April 4, 1789. Napoleon at Auxonne with regiment. 1789. April 5 to April 30. Napoleon at Seurre in command of a detachment. 1789. May i to Sept. 15. Napoleon at Aux- onne with regiment. 20-21. 1789. Sept. i6to June i, 1791. Napoleon in Corsica. 71-22. 1791. June 2 to Aug. 29. Napoleon joins the Fourth Regiment of Artillery at Valence as First Lieutenant. 22. 1791. Aug. 30. Napoleon starts for Corsica on leave for three months ; quits Corsica May 2, 1792, for France, where he has been dismissed for ab- sence without leave. 23. 1792. Aug. 30. Napoleon reinstated. June 13. Napoleon ordered to join Hoche's army at Brest, to command a brigade of infantry ; remains in Paris ; 2ist Aug. , attached toComite de Salut Public as one of four ad- visers ; 1 5th Sept., struck off list of employed generals for disobedience of orders in not proceeding to the west. 26. 1795. Oct. 5 (i3th Vendemiaire, Jour des Sections). Napoleon defends the Convention from the revolt of the Sections. 26. 1795. Oct. 16. Napoleon appointed provis- ionally General of Division. 26. 1795. Oct. 26. Napoleon appointed General of Division and Commander of the Army of the Interior (i.e., of Paris). 26. 1796. March 2. Napoleon appointed Com- mander-in-Chief of the Army of Italy ; gth March, marries Josephine Tascher de la Pagerie. CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 247 AGE. DATE. EVENT. 26. 1796. .March n, leaves Paris for Italy. 26. 1796. First Italian campaign of Napoleon against Austrians under Beaulieu, and Sardinians under Colli. Battle of Montenotte, I2th April ; Mille- simo, I4th April ; Dego, I4th and 1 5th April ; Mondovi, 22d April ; Armistice of Cherasco with Sardin- ians, 28th April ; Battle of Lodi, icth May ; Austrians beaten out of Lom- bardy, and Mantua besieged. 26. 1796. July and Aug. First attempt of Aus- trians to relieve Mantua ; battle of Lonato, 3ist July ; Lonato and Cas- tiglione, 3d Aug. ; and, again, Cas- tiglione, 5th and 6th Aug. ; Wurmser beaten off, and Mantua again in- vested. 27. 1796. Sept. Second attempt of Austrians to relieve Mantua ; battle of Calliano, 4th Sept. ; Primolano, 7th Sept. ; Bassano, 8th Sept.; St. Georges, 1 5th Sept.; Wurmser driven into Mantua and invested there. 27. 1796. Nov. Third attempt of Austrians to relieve Mantua ; battles of Caldiero, nth Nov., and Arcola, 15th, i6th, and I7th Nov.; Alvinzi driven off. 27. 1797. Jan. Fourth attempt to relieve Man- tua ; battles of Rivoli, I4th Jan., and Favorita, i6th Jan.; Alvinzi again driven off. 27. 1797. Feb. 2. Wurmser surrenders Mantua with eighteen thousand men. 27. 1797. March 10. Napoleon commences his advance on the Archduke Charles ; beats him at the Tagliamento, i6th March ; i8th April, provisional treaty of Leoben with Austria. 28. 1797. Oct. 17. Treaty of Campo Formio between France and Austria to re- place that of Leoben ; Venice par- titioned, and itself now falls to Aus- tria. 28. 1798. Egyptian expedition. Napoleon sails from Toulon, igth May ; takes Malta, 1 2th June ; lands near Alex- andria, ist July ; Alexandria taken, 2d July ; battle of the Pyramids, 2ist July ; Cairo entered, 23d July. 28. 1798. Aug. i. Battle of the Nile. 29. 1799. March 3. Napoleon starts for Syria ; 7th March, takes Jaffa ; i8th March, invests St. Jean d'Acre ; i6th April, battle of Mount Tabor ; 22d May, siege of Acre raised ; Napoleon reaches Cairo, I4th June. 29. 1799. July 25. Battle of Aboukir ; Turks defeated. 30. 1799. Aug. 22. Napoleon sails from Egypt ; lands at Frejus, 6th Oct. 30. 1799. Nov. 9 and 10 (i8th and igth Bru- maire). Napoleon seizes power. 30. 1799. Dec. 25. Napoleon, First Consul ; Cambaceres, Second ' Consul ; Le- brun, Third Consul. AGE. DATE. EVENT. 30. 1800. May and June. Marengo campaign. I4th June, battle of Marengo; armis- tice signed by Napoleon with Melas, 1 5th June. 31. 1800. Dec. 24 (3d Nivose). Attempt to as- sassinate Napoleon by infernal ma- chine. 31. 1801. Feb. 9. Treaty of Luneville between France and Germany. 31. 1801. July 15. Concordat with Rome. 32. 1801. Oct. I. Preliminaries of peace be- tween France and England signed at L'ondon. 32. 1802. Jan. 26. Napoleon Vice-President of Italian Republic. March 27. Treaty of Amiens. May 19. Legion of Honor instituted ; carried out, I4th July, 1814. Aug. 4. Napoleon First Consul for life. May. War between France and Eng- land. March 5. Civil Code (later, Code Na- poleon) decreed. March 21. Due d'Enghien shot at Vincennes. May 18. Napoleon, Empereur des Franfais ; crowned, 2d Dec. Ulm campaign. 25th Sept., Napoleon crosses the Rhine ; I4th Oct. , bat- tle of Elchingen ; 2oth Oct., Mack surrenders Ulm. Oct. 21. Battle of Trafalgar. Dec. 2. Russians and Austrians de- feated at Austerlitz. Dec. 26. Treaty of Presburg. July i. Confederation of the Rhine formed ; Napoleon protector. 37. 1806. Jena campaign with Prussia. Battles of Jena and of Auerstadt, I4th Oct. ; Berlin occupied, 25th Oct. Nov. 21. Berlin decrees issued. 32. 1802. 32. 1802. 32. 1802. 33- 1803. 33- 1803. 34- 1804. 34-35- 1804. 36. 1805. 36. 36. 36. 36. 37. 37- 37- 38. 1805. 1805. 1805. 1806. 1806. 1807. 1807. 1807. Feb. 8. Battle of Eylau with Rus- sians, indecisive ; I4th June, battle of Friedland, decisive. July 7. Treaty of Tilsit. Oct. 27. Secret treaty of Fontaine- bleau between France and Spain for the partition of Portugal. 38. 1808. March. French gradually occupy Spain ; Joseph Bonaparte trans- ferred from Naples to Spain ; re- placed at Naples by Murat. 39. 1808. Sept. 27 to Oct. 14. Conferences at Erfurt between Napoleon, Alexan- der, and German sovereigns. 39. 1808. Nov. and Dec. Napoleon beats the Spanish armies ; enters Madrid ; marches against Moore, but sud- denly returns to France to prepare for Austrian campaign. 24 8 CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. AGE. DATE. EVENT. 39. 1809. Campaign of Wagram. Austrians ad- vance, loth April ; Napoleon occu- pies Vienna, I3th May ; beaten back at Essling, 22d May ; finally crosses Danube, 4th July, and defeats Aus- trians at Wagram, 6th July. 40. 1809. Oct. 14. Treaty of Schonbrunn or of Vienna. 40. 1809. Dec. 15-16. Josephine divorced. 40. 1810. April I and 2. Marriage of Napo- leon, aged 40, with Marie Louise, aged 1 8 years 3 months. 41. 1810. Dec. 13. Hanseatic towns and all northern coast of Germany annexed to French Empire. 41. 1811. 42-43. 1812. 43. 1812. 43. 1812. March 20. The King of Rome, son of Napoleon, born. June 23. War with Russia ; Napo- leon crosses the Niemen : yth Sept., battle of Moskwa or Borodino ; Na- poleon enters Moscow, isth Sept.; commences his retreat, igth Oct. Oct. 22-23. Conspiration of General Malet at Paris. Nov. 26-28. Passage of the Bere- sina ; 5th Dec., Napoleon leaves his army ; arrives at Paris, i8th Dec. 43-44. 1813. Leipsic campaign. 2d May, Napo- leon defeats Russians and Prussians at Ltitzen ; and again, on 2Oth-2ist May, at Bautzen ; 26th June, inter- view of Napoleon- and Metternich at Dresden ; roth Aug., midnight, Aus- tria joins the allies ; 26th-2yth Aug. , Napoleon defeats allies at Dresden, but Vandamme is routed at Kulm on 3Oth Aug., and on i6th-igth Oct., Napoleon is beaten at Leipsic. 44. 1814. Allies advance into France ; 2gthjan., battle of Brienne ; ist Feb., battle of La Rothiere. 44. 1814. Feb. 5 to March 18. Conferences of Chatillon (sur Seine). 44. 1814. Feb. n. Battle of Montmirail ; I4th Feb., of Vauchamps ; i8th Feb., of Montereau. AGE. 44- 44. DATE. EVENT. 44- 44- 45- 45- 45- 45-46. 51 yrs, 8 mos. 1814. March 7. Battle of Craon ; gth-ioth March, Laon ; 2Oth March, Arcis sur 1'Aube. 1814. March 21. Napoleon commences his march to throw himself on the com- munications of the allies ; 25th March, allies commence their march on Paris ; battle of La Fere Champe- noise, Marmont and M order beaten ; 28th March, Napoleon turns back at St. Dizier to folknv allies ; 2gth March, empress and court leave Paris. 1814. March 30. Paris capitulates ; allied sovereigns enter on ist April. 1814. April 2. Senate declares the dethrone- ment of Napoleon, who abdicates, conditionally, on 4th April, in favor of his son, and unconditionally on 6th April ; Marmont's corps marches into the enemy's lines on 5th April ; on nth April, Napoleon signs the treaty giving him Elba for life ;_ 2Oth April, Napoleon takes leave of the Guard at Fontainebleau ; 3d May, Louis XVIII. enters Paris ; 4th May, Napoleon lands in Elba. 1814. Oct. 3. Congress of Vienna meets for settlement of Europe ; actually opens 3d Nov. 1815. Feb. 26. Napoleon quits Elba ; lands near Cannes, ist March ; igth March, Louis XVIII. leaves Paris ; 2oth March, Napoleon enters Paris. 1815. June 1 6. Battle of Ligny and Quatre Bras ; i8th June, battle of Water- loo. 1815. June 29. Napoleon leaves Malmaison for Rochefort ; surrenders to Eng- lish, 1 5th July ; sails for St. Helena, 8th Aug. ; arrives at St. Helena, 1 5th Oct. ? 1821. May 5. Napoleon dies, 5.45 P.M.; buried, 8th May. 1840. Oct. 15. Body of Napoleon disen- tombed; embarked in the "Belle Poule," commanded by the Prince de Joinville, son of Louis Philippe, on i6th Oct. ; placed in the Inva- lides, 1 5th Dec., 1840. THE END. BISMARCK IN 1894. From a photograph by Karl Hahn, Munict (See Page 25.) HUMAN DOCUMENTS PORTRAITS AND BIOGRAPHIES OF EMINENT MEN ARTICLES BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, HERBERT SPENCER, PROFESSOR DRUMMOND, EDWARD EVER- ETT HALE, H. H. BOYESEN, GEN. HORACE PORTER, HAMLIN GARLAND, ROBERT BARR AND OTHERS WITH 275 ILLUSTRATIONS NEW YORK THE S. S. McCLURE CO. 141-155 E. 25TH STREET 1896 COPYRIGHT. 1893, BY S, S. McCLURE, LIMITED COPYRIGHT, 1894, BY S. S. McCLURE, LIMITED COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY S S. McCLURE, LIMITED COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY THE S. S. McCLURE CO. INTRODUCTION. BY SARAH ORNE TO give to the world a collection of the successive portraits of a man is to tell his affairs openly, and so betray intimate personalities. We are often found quarrel- ling with the tone of the public press, be- cause it yields to what is called the public demand to be told both the private affairs of noteworthy persons and the trivial details and circumstances of those who are insignifi- cant. Some one has said that a sincere man willingly answers any questions, however personal, that are asked out of interest, but instantly resents those that have their im- pulse in curiosity ; and that one's instinct always detects the difference. This I take to be a wise rule of conduct ; but beyond lies the wider subject of our right to possess ourselves of personal information, although we have a vague remembrance, even in these days, of the belief of old-fashioned and decorous people, that subjects, not per- sons, are fitting material for conversation. But there is an honest interest, which is as noble a thing as curiosity is contempti- ble ; and it is in recognition of this, that Lowell writes in the largest way in his " Essay on Rousseau and the Sentimental- ists." " Yet our love of minute biographical de- tails," he says, " our desire to make our- selves spies upon the men of the past, seems so much of an instinct in us, that we must look for the spring of it in human nature, and that somewhat deeper than mere curi- osity or love of gossip." And more em- phatically in another paragraph : " The moment he undertakes to establish . . . a rule of conduct, we ask at once how far are his own life and deed in accordance with what he preaches ? " This I believe to be at the bottom of even our insatiate modern eagerness to know the best and the worst of our contemporaries ; it is simply to find out how far their behavior squares with their words and position. We seldom stop to get the best point of view, either in friendly talk or in a sober effort, to notice the growth of character, or, in the widest way, to comprehend the traits and influence of -a man whose life in any way affects our own. Now and then, in an old picture gallery, one comes upon the grouped portraits of a great soldier, or man of letters, or some fine lady whose character still lifts itself into view above the dead level of feminine con- formity which prevailed in her time. The blurred pastel, the cracked and dingy can- vas, the delicate brightness of a miniature which bears touching signs of wear from these we piece together a whole life's his- tory. Here are the impersonal baby face ; the domineering glance of the schoolboy, lord of his dog and gun ; the wan-visaged student who was just beginning to confront the serried ranks of those successes which conspired to hinder him from his duty and the fulfilment of his dreams ; here is the mature man, with grave .reticence of look and a proud sense, of achievement ; and at last the older and vaguer face, blurred and pitifully conscious of fast waning powers. As they hang in a row they seem to bear mute witness to all the successes and failures of a life. This very day, perhaps, you chanced to open a drawer and take in your hand, for amusement's sake, some old family da- guerreotypes. It is easy enough to laugh at the stiff positions and droll costumes ; but suddenly you find an old likeness of yourself, and walk away with it, self-con- sciously, to the window, with a pretence of seeking a better light on the quick-reflect- ing, faintly impressed plate. Your earlier, half-forgotten self confronts you seriously ; the youth whose hopes you have disap- pointed, or whose dreams you have turned into realities. You search the young face ; perhaps you even look deep into the eyes of your own babyhood to discover your dawning consciousness ; to answer back to yourself, as it were, from the known and discovered countries of that baby's future. There is a fascination in reading character backwards. You may or may not be able easily to revive early thoughts and impres- sions, but with an early portrait in your hand they do revive again in spite of you ; they seem to be living in the pictured face to applaud or condemn you. In these old pictures exist our former selves. They VI INTRODUCTION. wear a mystical expression. They are still ourselves, but with unfathomable eyes star- ing back to us out of the strange remoteness of our outgrown youth. " Surely I have known before Phantoms of the shapes ye be Haunters of another shore 'Leaguered by another sea." It is somehow far simpler and less start- ling to examine a series of portraits of some other face and figure than one's own. Per- haps it is most interesting to take those of some person whom the whole world knows, and whose traits and experiences are some- what 'comprehended. You say to yourself, " This was Nelson before ever he fought one of his great sea battles ; this was Wash- ington, with only the faintest trace of his soldiering and the leisurely undemanding aspect of a country gentleman ! " Human Documents the phrase is Daudet's, and tells its own story, with no need of addi- tional attempts of suggestiveness. It would seem to be such an inevitable subject for sermon writing, that no one need be unfamiliar with warnings, lest our weakness and wickedness leave traces upon the countenance awful, ineffaceable hiero- glyphics, that belong to the one universal primitive language of mankind. Who can- not read faces? The merest savage, who comprehends no written language, glances at you to know if he may expect friendli- ness or enmity, with a quicker intelligence than your own. The lines that are written slowly and certainly by the pen of character, the deep mark that sorrow once left, or the light sign-manual of an unfading joy, there they are and will remain ; it is at length the aspect of the spiritual body itself, and be- longs to the unfolding and existence of life. We have never formulated a science like palmistry on the larger scale that this char- acter-reading from the face would need ; but to say that we make our own faces, and, having made them, have made pieces of immortality, is to say what seems trite enough. A child turns with quick impa- tience and incredulity from the dull admo- nitions of his teachers, about goodness and good looks. To say, " Be good and you will be beautiful," is like giving him a stone for a \antern. Beauty seems an accident rather than an achievement, and a cause instead of an effect ; but when childhood has passed, one of the things we are sure to have learned, is to read the sign-language of faces, and to take the messages they bring. Recognition of these things is sure to come to us more and more by living ; there is no such thing as turning our faces into unbetraying masks. A series of por- traits is a veritable Human Document, and the merest glance may discover the prog- ress of the man, the dwindled or developed personality, the history of a character. These sentences are written merely as suggestions, and from the point of view of morals ; there is also the point of view of heredity, and the curious resemblance be- tween those who belong to certain pro- fessions. Just what it is that makes us almost certain to recognize a doctor or a priest at first glance is too subtle a question for discussion here. Some one has said that we usually arrive, in time, at the oppo- site extreme to those preferences and opin- ions which we hold in early life. The man who breaks away from conventionalities, ends by returning to them, or out of narrow prejudices and restrictions grows towards a late and serene liberty. These changes show themselves in the face with amazing clearness, and it would seem also, that even individuality sways us only for a time ; that if we live far into the autumnal period of life we lose much of our individuality of looks, and become more emphatically mem- bers of the family from which we spring. A man like Charles the First was already less himself than he was a Stuart ; we should not fail in instances of this sort, nor seek far afield. The return to the type compels us steadily ; at last it has its way. Very old persons, and those who are dangerously ill, are often noticed to be curiously like their nearest of kin, and to have almost visibly ceased to be themselves. All time has been getting our lives ready to be lived, to be shaped as far as may be by our own wills, and furthered by that con- scious freedom that gives us to be ourselves. You may read all these in any Human Doc- umentthe look of race, the look of family, the look that is set like a seal by a man's occupation, the look of the spirit's free or hindered life, and success or failure in the pursuit of goodness they are all plain to see. If we could read one human face aright, the history not only of the man, but of humanity itself, is written there. NOTE. The above paper originally introduced series of portraits publisbed in McCn/RE's MAGAZINE. As these por- traits form a large part of the contents of the present volume, the paper may very aptly introduce it too, although the author, in writing, did not have in contemplation the biographical studies with which the portraits are here combined. EDITOR. TABLE OF CONTENTS. A DAY WITH GLADSTONE. H. W. Massingham .3 PORTRAITS OF GLADSTONE 12 PORTRAITS OF BISMARCK ........... 25 PERSONAL TRAITS OF GENERAL GRANT. General Horace Porter 37 PORTRAITS OF GENERAL GRANT . . . . . . ''' 45 SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF GENERAL SHERMAN. S. H. M. Byers . 61 PROFESSOR JOHN TYNDALL. Heibett Spencer ... .... 73 MR. DANA OF " THE SUN." Edward P. Mitchell 81 PORTRAIIS OF CHARLES A. DANA 105 MY FIRST BOOK "TREASURE ISLAND." Robert Louis Stevenson . . . in PORTRAITS OF ROBERT Louis STEVENSON . . . . . . . 122 AN AFTERNOON WITH OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. Edward Everett Hale . 127 PORTRAITS OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES . . . . . . . . 136 HOWELLS AND BOYESEN. A Conversation. Recorded by Professor Boyesen . 140 PORTRAITS OF W. D. HOWELLS . ... ...... 148 PORTRAITS OF PROFESSOR H. H. BOYESEN 150 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY. A Conversation with Hamlin Garland. Recorded by Mr. Garland ......... ... 152 A MORNING WITH BRET HARTE. Henry J. W. Dam 165 viii TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE THE AUTHOR OF " TRILBY." Robert H. Sherard . . . . . . .178 A. CONAN DOYLE AND ROBERT BARR. A Conversation. Recorded by Mr. Barr 189 EUGENE FIELD AND HAMLIN GARLAND. A Conversation. Recorded by Mr. Garland .............. 201 PORTRAITS OF EUGENE FIELD . . . . ... . . . 210 PORTRAITS OF DWIGHT LYMAN MOODY ........ 212 MR. MOODY: SOME IMPRESSIONS AND FACTS. Professor Henry Drummond .' 213 PORTRAITS OF PROFESSOR HENRY DRUMMOND ....... 232 PORTRAITS OF GEORGE W. CABLE ....... , . 235 PORTRAITS OF ALPHONSE DAUDET .... y| .... 237 ALPHONSE DAUDET AT HOME. Robert H. Sherard . . . . . 239 The articles and pictures in this volume are reproduced, for the most part, from numbers of McCLURE r s MAGAZINE between June, 1893, and May, 1895. MR. GLADSTONE IN 1891. AGE Si. Mi. Gladstone is standing in the Gothic porchway of Sir Arthur- Hayter's house at Tintagel, Cornwall. From a photograph by Frederick Argall, Truro, Cornwall. HUMAN DOCUMENTS. A DAY WITH GLADSTONE. FROM THE MORNING AT HAWARDEN TO THE EVENING AT THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. BY H. W. MASSINGHAM OF THE "LONDON CHRONICLE." I AM often asked what is the secret of Mr. Gladstone's ex- traordinary length of days and of the perfection of his un- rily varied life is accompanied by a certain rigidity of personal habit I have never seen surpassed. The only change old age has witnessed has been that the House of Com- mons work has been curtailed, and that Mr. Gladstone has not of late vears been seen varying health. It may be partly at- tributed to the re- markable longevity of the Gladstone family, a hardy Scottish stock with fewer weak shoots and branches than perhaps any of the ruling families of England. But it has depended mainly on Mr. Gladstone himself and on the undeviating regularity of his habits. Most English states- men have been either free livers or with a touch of the bon vivant in them. Pitt and Fox were men of the first character ; Melbourne, Palmerston,and Lord Beaconsfield were of the last. But Mr. Glad- stone is a man who has been guilty of no excesses, save perhaps in work. He rises at the same hour every day, uses the same fairly generous, but always carefully regulated, diet, goes to bed about the same hour, pursues the same round of work and intellectual and social pleasure. An extraordina- This paper, written when Mr. Gladstone, still Prime Minister of England, was in the very hottest of the battle for Home Rule for Ireland, describes the round of his daily life at what is the most significant and dramatic moment of all his long career. EDITOR. MRS. W. E. GLADSTONE. From a photograph by Barraud, London. HUMAN DOCUMENTS. in the House after the dinner hour, which lasts from eight till ten, except on nights when crucial divisions are expected. With the approach of winter and its accompany- ing chills, to which he is extremely sus- ceptible, he seeks the blue skies and dry air of the Mediterranean coasts and of his beloved Italy. With this exception his life goes on in its pleasant monotony. At Hawarden, of course, it is simpler and more private than in London. In town to- day Mr. Gladstone avoids all large parties and great crushes and gather- ings where he may be expected to be either mobbed or bored or detained beyond his usual bed-time. HIS PERSONALITY. Personally Mr. Gladstone is an example of the most winning, the most delicate, and the most minute courtesy. He is a gentleman of the elder English school, and his man- ners are grand and urbane, always stately, never condescending, and genuinely modest. He affects even the dress of the old school, and I have seen him in the morning wear- ing an old black evening coat such as Professor Jowett still affects. The humblest passer-by in Piccadil- ly, raising his hat to Mr. Gladstone, is sure to get a sweeping salute in return. This courtliness is all the more remarkable because it accom- panies and adorns a very strong tem- per, a will of iron, and a habit of being regarded for the greater part of his lifetime as a personal force of unequalled magnitude. Yet the most foolish, and perhaps one may add the most impertinent, of Mr. Gladstone's dinner-table questioners is sure of an elaborate reply, delivered with the air of a student in deferential talk with his master. To the cloth Mr. Gladstone shows a reverence that occasionally woos the observer to a smile. The callowest curate is sure of a respectful listener in the foremost Eng- lishman of the day. On the other hand, in private conversation the premier does not often brook contradiction. His temper is high, and though, as George Russell has said, it is under vigilant control, there are subjects on which it is easy to arouse the old lion. Then the grand eyes flash, the torrent of brilliant monologue flows with more rapid sweep, and the dinner table is breathless at the spectacle of Mr. Glad- stone angry. As to his relations with his family, they are very charming. It is a pleasure to hear Herbert Gladstone his youngest, and possibly his favorite son speak of "my father." All of them, sons and daughters, are absolutely devoted to his cause, wrapped up in his personality, and enthusiastic as to every side of his character. Of children Mr. Gladstone has always been fond, and he has more than one favorite among his grandchildren. GLADSTONE SETTING OUT ON HIS MORNING WALK HOME FROM CHURC AT HAWARDEN. MR. GLADSTONE'S MORNING. Mr. Gladstone's day begins about 7:30, after seven hours and a half of sound, dreamless sleep, which no disturbing crisis in public affairs was ever known to spoil. At Hawarden it usually opens with a morn- ing walk to church, with which no kind of weather hail, rain, snow, or frost is ever allowed to interfere. In his rough slouch hat and gray Inverness cape, the old man plods sturdily to his devotions. To the A DAY WITH GLADSTONE. THE LIBRARY AT HAWARDEN. rain, the danger of sitting in wet clothes, and small troubles of this kind, he is abso- lutely impervious, and Mrs. Gladstone's solicitude has never availed to change his lifelong custom in this respect. Breakfast over, working time commences. I am often astonished at the manner in which Mr. Gladstone manages to crowd his al- most endlessly varied occupations into the forenoon, for when he is in the country he has practically no other continuous and regular work- time. Yet into this space he has to con- dense his enormous correspondence for which, when no private secretary is available, he seeks the help of his sons and daughters his political work, and his varied literary pursuits. The ex- planation of this ex- treme orderliness of mind is probably to be found in his un- equalled habit of concentration oh the business before him. As in matters of policy, so in all his private habits, Mr. Gladstone thinks of one thing and of one thing only at a time. When Home Rule was up, he had no eyes or ears for any subject but Ireland, of course except ing his favorite excursions into the twin subjects of Homer and Christian theology Enter the room when Mr. Gladstone is THE GLADSTONE FAMILY. HUMAN DOCUMENTS. reading a book ; you may move noisily about the chamber, ransack the books on the shelves, stir the furniture, but never for one moment will the reader be conscious of your presence. At Downing Street, during his earlier ministries, these hours of study were often, I might say usually, pre- ceded by the famous breakfast at which the celebrated actor or actress, the rising poet, the well-known artist, the diplomatist halting on his way from one station of the kingdom to another, were welcome guests. Madame Bernhardt, Miss Ellen Terry, ever, Sir Andrew Clark, Mr. Gladstone's favorite physician and intimate friend, has recommended that tree-felling be given over; and now Mr. Gladstone's recreation, in addition to long walks, in which he still delights, is that of lopping branches off veterans whose trunks have fallen to younger arms. AS A READER. Between the afternoon tea and dinner the statesman usually retires again, and . Ll'.NCH AT HAWARDEN. Henry Irving, Madame Modjeska, have all assisted at these pleasant feasts. HIS AFTERNOON. Lunch with Mr. Gladstone is a very sim- ple meal, which neither at Hawarden nor Downing Street admits of much form or publicity. The afternoon which follows is a very much broken and less regular period. At ' Hawarden a portion of it is usually spent out of doors. In the old days it was devoted to the felling of some giant of the woods. Within the last few years, how- gets through some of the lighter and more agreeable of his intellectual tasks. He reads rapidly, and I think I should say that, especially of late years, he does a good deal of skipping. If a book does not interest him, he does not trouble to read it through. He uses a rough kind of memoria technica to enable him to mark passages with which he agrees, from which he dis- sents, which he desires to qualify, or which he reserves for future reference. I should say the books he reads most of are those dealing with theology, always the first and favorite topic, and the history of Ire- A DAY WITH GLADSTONE. MR. GLADSTONE ON HIS WAY TO THE HOVSE OF COMMONS. land before and after the Act of Indeed, everything dealing with that memorable period is greatly treasure 1. I re- member one hasty glance over Mr. Gladstone's book table in his own house. In addition to the liberal week- ly, " The Speaker," and a few political pamphlets, there were, I should say, fifteen or twenty works on theology, none of them, so far as I could see, of first-rate importance. Of science Mr. Gladstone knows little, and it cannot be said that his interest in it is keen. He belongs, in a word, to the old-fashioned Oxford ecclesiastical school, using the controversial weap- ons which are to be found in the works of Pusey and of Hurrell Froude. In his read- ing, when a question of more minute and out-of-the-way scholarship arises, he appeals to his constant friend and as- sistant, Lord Acton, to whose profound learning he bows with a deference which is very touching to note. Mr. Gladstone's library is not what can be called a Union. select or really first-rate collection. It comprises an undue proportion of theo- logical literature, of which he is a large and not over-discriminating buyer. I doubt, indeed, whether there is any larger private bookbuyer in England. All the booksellers send him their catalogues, es- pecially those of rare and curious books. I have seen many of these lists, with a brief order in Mr. Gladstone's own hand- writing on the flyleaf, with his tick against twenty or thirty volumes which he desires to buy. These usually range round classi- cal works, archasology, special periods of English history, and, above all, works rec- onciling the Biblical record with science. THE LIBRARY AT HAWARDEN MR. GLAD- STONE AS A BUYER OF BOOKS. Of late, as is fairly well known, Mr. Glad- stone has built himself an octagonal iron house in Hawarden village, a mile and a half from the castle, for the storage of his specially valuable books and a collection of private papers which traverse a good many of the state secrets of the greater THE STAIRCASE, HAWARDEN CASTLE. From a photograph by G. W. Webster, Chester, England, HUMAN DOCUMENTS. part of the century. The importance of these is great, and the chances are that be- fore Mr. Gladstone dies they will all be grouped and indexed in his upright, a little crabbed, but perfectly plain handwriting. By the way, a great many statements have been made about Mr. Gladstone's library, sand or so are now distributed between the little iron house to which I have re- ferred, and the Hawarden library. Cu- riously enough, Mr. Gladstone is not a worshipper of books for the sake of their outward adornments. He loves them for what is inside rather than outside. He and I may as well give the facts, which have never before been made public. His original library consisted of about twenty- four thousand volumes. In the seventies, however, he parted with his entire collec- tion of political works, amounting to some eight thousand volumes, to the late Lord Wolverton. The remaining fifteen thou- even occasionally sells extremely rare and costly editions for which he has no special use. In all money matters, indeed, he is a thrifty, orderly Scotchman. He has never been rich, though his affairs have greatly improved since the time when in his first premiership he had to sell his valuable col- lection of china. A DAY WITH GLADSTONE. AT THE DINNER TABLE. healthy appetite of a man of thirty. A glass of champagne is agreeable to him, and if he does not take his glass or two of Dinner with Mr. Gladstone is the stately port at dinner, he makes it up by two or ceremonial meal which it has become to three glasses of claret, which he considers *"*" .Z.- -- '>,--.. -,.S||, 'v^;^ ( /'/'// r ;_i W'lfi' *- " ' v *;?&?// HAWAKUEN CASTLE. the upper-middle-class Englishman. Mr. Gladstone invariably dresses for it, wear- ing the high crest collar which Harry Fur- niss has immortalized, and a cutaway coat which strikes one as of a slightly old-fash- ioned pattern. His digestion never fails him, and he eats and drinks with the an equivalent. Oysters he never could en- dure ; but, like Schopenhauer and Goethe and many another great man, he is a con- sistently hearty and unfastidious eater. He talks much in animated monologue, though the common complaint that he monopolizes the conversation is not a just MR. GLADSTONE S BEDROOM AT HAWARDEN CASTLE. From a photograph by G. W. Webster, Chester, England. 10 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. one. You cannot easily turn Mr. Glad- stone into a train of ideas which does not interest him, but he is a courteous and even eager listener ; and if the subject is of general interest, he does not bear in it any more than the commanding part which the rest of the company invariably allows him. His speaking voice is a little gruffer and less musical than his oratorical notes, which, in spite of the invading hoarseness, still at times ring out with their old clear- ness. As a rule he does not talk on poli- tics. On ecclesiastical matters he is a can meet an old friend or two, and see a young face which he may be interested in seeing. One habit of his is quite unvary- ing. He likes to walk home, and to walk home alone. He declines escort, and slips away for his quiet stroll under the stars, or even through the fog and mist, on a Lon- don winter's night. Midnight usually brings his busy, happy day to a close. With sleeplessness he has never been at all bothered, and at eighty-three his nights are as dreamless and untroubled as those of a boy of ten. THE MORNING-ROOM AT HAWARDEN CASTLE. From a photograph by G. W. Webster, Chester, England. never wearied disputant. Poetry has also a singular charm for him, and no modern topic has interested him more keenly than the discussion as to Tennyson's successor to the laureateship. I remember that at a small dinner at which I recently met him, the conversation ran almost entirely on the two subjects of old English hymns and young English poets. His favorite reli- gious poet is, I should say, Cardinal New- man, and his favorite hymn, Toplady's " Rock of Ages," of which his Latin ren- dering is to my mind far stronger and purer than the original English. When he is in town, he dines out almost every day, though, as I have said, he eschews formal and mixed gatherings, and affects the small and early dinner party at which he IN THE HOUSE. His afternoons when in town and during- the season are, of course, given up pretty exclusively to public business and the House of Commons, which he usually reaches about four o'clock. He goes by a side door straight to his private room,, where he receives his colleagues, and hears, of endless questions and motions, which fall like leaves in Vallombrosa around the head of a prime minister. Probably steps will be taken to remove much of this irk- some and somewhat petty burden from the shoulders of the aged minister. But leader Mr. Gladstone must and will be at eighty- three, quite as fully as he was at sixty. In- deed, the complaint of him always has beea A DAY WITH GLADSTONE. ii that he does too much, both for his own health and the smooth manipulation of the great machine which, as was once re- marked, creaks and moves rather lumber- ingly under his masterful but over-minute guidance. During the last two or three years it has been customary for the Whigs to so arrange that Mr. Gladstone speaks early in the evening. He is not always able to do this while the Home Rule Bill is under discussion, but I do not think he will ever again find it necessary to follow the entire course of a Parliamentary debate. He never needed to do as much listening from the Treasury Bench as he was wont to do in his first and second ministries. I do not think that any prime minister ever spent half as much time in the House of Commons as did Mr. Gladstone ; certainly no one ever made one-tenth part as many speeches. Indeed, it requires all Mrs. Gladstone's vigilance to avert the physical strain consequent upon overwork. With this purpose she invariably watches him in the House of Commons, from a corner seat in the right hand of the Ladies' Gal- lery, which is always reserved for her and which I have never known her to miss occupying on any occasion of the slightest importance. SPEECH-MAKING. I have before me two or three examples of notes of Mr. Gladstone's speeches ; one of them refers to one of the most import- ant of his addresses on the customs ques- tion. It was a long speech, extending, if I remember rightly, to considerably over an hour. Yet the memoranda consist purely of four or five sentences of two or three words apiece, written on a single sheet of note paper, and no hint of the course of the oration is given. Occasion- ally, no doubt, especially in the case of the speech on the introduction of the Home Rule Bill, which was to my mind the finest Mr. Gladstone has ever delivered, the notes were rather more extensive than this, but as a rule they are extremely brief. When Mr. Gladstone addresses a great public meeting, the most elaborate pains are taken to insure his comfort. He can now only read the very largest print, and careful and delicate arrangements are made to provide him with lamps throwing the light on the desk or table near which he stands. Sir Andrew Clark observes the most jealous watchfulness over his patient. A curious instance of this occurred at Newcastle, when Mr. Gladstone was delivering his address, to the great liberal caucus which assembles as the annual meeting of the National Liberal Federation. Sir Andrew had insisted that the orator should confine himself to a speech lasting only an hour. Fearing that his charge would forget all about his promise in the excitement of speaking, the physician slipped onto the platform and timed Mr. Gladstone, watch in hand. The hour passed, but there was no pause in the torrent of words. Sir Andrew was in despair. At last he pen- cilled a note to Mr. Morley, beseeching him to insist upon the speech coming to an end. But Mr. Morley would not undertake the responsibility of cutting a great ora- tion, and the result w,as that Mr. Glad- stone stole another half hour from time and his physician. The next day a friend of mine went breathlessly up to Sir An- drew, and asked how the statesman had borne the additional strain. " He did not turn a hair," was the reply. Practically the only sign of physical failure which is apparent in recent speeches has been that the voice tends to break and die away after about an hour's exercise, and for a moment the sound of the curiously veiled notes and a glance at the marble pallor of the face gives one the impression that after all Mr. Gladstone is a very, very old man. But there is never anything like a total break- down. And no one is aware of the enor- mous stores of physical energy on which the prime minister can draw, who has not sat quite close to him, and measured the wonderful breadth of his shoulders and heard his voice coming straight from his chest in great boufffas of sound. Then you forget all about the heavy wrinkles in the white face, the scanty silver hair, and the patriarchal look of the figure before you. PORTRAITS OF GLADSTONE. MR. GLADSTONE was born at Liver- pool, December 29, 1809. He has been a member of the House of Commons almost continuously since 1832 ; and when he resigned the office of prime minister last year, on account of his advanced age, he was serving in it for the fourth time. His first premiership extended from Decem- ber, 1868, to February, 1874; the second, from April, 1880, to June, 1885 ; the third, from February to August, 1886 ; and the fourth, from August, 1892, to March, 1894. Here are nearly thirteen years ; and as a prime minister retires the moment the country is not with him, they tell in a word what a power Mr. Gladstone has been. It would be strange if, in a political career of upwards of sixty years, Mr. Gladstone had shown no changes of opinion. To several of the measures with which his name is particularly identified, as, for example, Home Rule for Ireland, he has come by slow and cautious degrees and with almost a complete turn on himself. He entered Par- liament, indeed, as a Conservative, and the first prime minister under whom he held office was Sir Robert Peel. It was not until 1851 that he parted company com- pletely with the Conservatives. The next year, 1852, he achieved one of the most brilliant oratorical triumphs of his whole career. Parliament was debating a budget presented by Mr. Disraeli, and Disraeli made in defence of his measure a speech of such cleverness and power that friend and foe alike thought it to be unanswerable. At two o'clock in the morning Mr. Gladstone began a reply. Long before he finished he had completely dissipated the impression left by Disraeli and had captured the House. GLADSTONE AT THREE YEARS OF AGE, WITH HIS SISTER. From a miniature. PORTRAITS OF GLADSTONE. From a painting by George Hayter, reproduced by the kind permission of Sir John Gladstone, Bart. This year Mr. Gladstone had just entered Lincoln's Inn as a student of law, and was serving his first months in Parliament, having received his first election in December, 1832. HUMAN DOCUMENTS. 3LAUSTONE It From a life portrait by Bradley. At this time Mr. Gladstone was of the Opposition in the House of Commons, and acting under the leadership of Sir Robert Peel. PORTRAITS OF GLADSTONE. MK. GLADSTONE IN 1841. AGE 31. From a photograph, by Fradelle & Young, London, of a chalk drawing by W. B. Richmond. In 1841 Mr. Glad- stone entered the cabinet as Vice-President of the Board of Trade and Master of the Mint. GLADSTONE IN 1852. AGE 42. From a photograph by Samuel A. Walker, London. In 1852 Mr. Gladstone became for the first time Chancellor of the Exchequer, an office for which he has many times proved unequalled fitness. HUMAN DOCUMENTS. MR. GLADSTONE IN 1859. AGE 49- From a photograph by Samuel A. Walker, London. This year, under Lord Palmerston, Mr. Gladstone became a sernnd time Chancellor of the Exchequer. MR. GLADSTONE IN 1865. AGE 55. From a photograph by Samuel A. Walker, London, PORTRAITS OF GLADSTONE. MR. GLADSTONE IN 1865. AGE 55. From a photograph by Frederick Hollyer, London, of a portrait painted by Sir G. F. Watts. It was the latter part of 1865, on the death of Lord Palmerston, that Mr. Gladstone first became leader of the House of Commons Jtf HUMAN DOCUMENTS. MR. GLADSTONE IN From a photograph by Samuel A. Walker, London. June 18, 1866, Mr. Gladstone, then in his first experience as leader of the House of Commons, suffered defeat on a reform bill, by the Tories under Disraeli. MR. GLADSTONE IN From a photograph by Samuel A. Walker, London. In 1868 Mr. Gladstone secured the defeat of the Disraeli ministry on the disestablishment of the Irish Church, and himself became prime minister for the first time. PORTRAITS OF GLADSTONE. MR. GLADSTONE IN It AGE 70. From a photograph by Samuel A. Walker, London. This year the Liberals recovered a lost majority in Parliament, Mr. Gladstone himself making a famous campaign, and securing election by a famous majority, in Midlothian. Disraeli (now Lord Beaconsfield) and his cabinet resigned, and Mr. Gladstone again became prime minister. HUMAN DOCUMENTS. MU. GLADSTONE AND HIS GRANDSON (SON OF HIS ELDEST SON, THE LATE W. H. GLADSTONE). 1890. AGE 80. From a portrait painted by McClure Hamilton, and presented by the ladies of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland to Mrs. Gladstone as a souvenir of hers and Mr. Gladstone's golden wedding, celebrated the year before (1889). PORTRAITS OF GLADSTONE. 21 . MR. GLADSTONE IN 1890. AGE 80. After a painting by John Colin Forbes, R. C. A. Reproduced by the kind permission of Henry Graves & Co., London. HUMAN DOCUMENTS. MR. GLADSTONE AT 83, WITH HIS GRANDDAUGHTER DOROTHY DREW. From a photograph by Valentine & Sons, Dundee, taken at Hawarden (Mr. Gladstone's country home), October 13, 1893. At this time Parliament was adjourned for a month or two after long and excited debates on the subject of Home Rule for Ireland. . PORTRAITS OF GLADSTONE. MR. GLADSTONE, HAWARDEN, OCTOBER 13, 1893. AGE 83. From a photograph by Valentine & Sons, Dundee. 24 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. MR. GLADSTONE, HAWARDEN, AUGUST, 1894. AGE 84. From a photograph by Robinson & Thompson, Liverpool and Birkenhead. PORTRAITS OF BISMARCK. PRINCE OTTO EDWARD LEOPOLD VON BISMARCK was born April i, 1815, of a very old and sturdy German fam- ily. He was put early to school, attended several universities, and served his term in the army. His political life began in 1846, when he was elected a member of the diet of "hns province, Saxony. The next year he went to Berlin as a representative in the General Diet, and immediately attracted attention by the force and boldness of his speeches. In 1851 he began his diplomatic career as secretary to the Prussian member of the representative Assembly of German Sovereigns at Frankfort. He has been de- scribe'd at this time as " of very tall, stalwart, and imposing mien, with blue gray, pene- trating, fearless eyes ; of a bright, fresh countenance, with blond hair and beard." In 1859 he was sent as ambassador to Russia. In 1862 he was transferred to Paris ; but a few months later he was made minister of foreign affairs. He inaugu- rated his ministry by the summary dissolu- tion of the Prussian Chamber of Deputies, because it refused to pass the budget pro- posed by the throne, curtly informing the body that the king's government would be obliged to do without its sanction. Five times the deputies were dismissed in this fashion. Bismarck was denounced on all sides ; but as his profound project, already conceived, of uniting the German states into .a compact empire, with Prussia at the head, advanced, by one brilliant stroke of statesmanship after another, toward fulfil- ment, the early distrust was forgotten, and he became, in spite of his apparent contempt for popular rights, a popular idol. The short, sharp war of 1866, terminating Austrian dominance in Germany, began a national progress, under Bismarck's sagacious and strong direction, which came to its consum- mation at the close of the war with France, when, on January 18, 1871, in the palace of the French kings, at Versailles, William I., King of Prussia, was proclaimed Emperor of united Germany. In 1890, differences with the present Emperor, William II., led to Bismarck's retirement from public life. BISMARCK IN 1834. AGE 19. Student in the University of Gottingen. 1851. AGE 36. Diplomatist at Frankfort. From a photograph by A. Bockmann, Strasburg. HUMAN DOCUMENTS. 1854. AGE 39. STILL SERVING AT FRANKFORT. 1866, THE YEAR OF THE WAR WITH AUSTRIA. AGE 51. PORTRAITS OF BISMARCK. 27 BISMARCK IN 1871. AGE 56. From a photograph by Loescher & Petsch, Berlin. On January 18, 1871, the war with France having been brought to a triumphant close, Bismarck had the satisfaction of seeing King William of Prussia crowned Emperor of united Germany in the palace of the French kings, at Versailles, himself becoming at the same time Chancellor of the German Empire. The formal treaty of peace with France was signed a month later. 28 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. BISMARCK IN 1871. AGE 56. PROCLAIMING WILLIAM I. EMPEKOR. VERSAILLES, JANUARY 18, 1871. BISMARCK, IN WHITE UNIFORM, STANDS JUST BEFORE THE THRONE. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY THE BERLIN PHOTOGRAPH COMPANY. PORTRAITS OF BISMARCK. BISMARCK IN 1877. AGE 62. On the eve of the Congress of Berlin, wherein the European powers, largely under Bismarck's guidance, fixed the relations of Turkey. From a photograph by Loescher & Petsch, Berlin. HUMAN DOCUMENTS. BISMARCK IN 1880. AGE 65. From a photograph by Ad. Braun & Co., Paris. 1883. AGE 68. From a photograph by Loescher and Petsch. Berlin 1885. AGE 70. From a photograph by Loescher and Petsch, Berlin. PORTRAITS OF BISMARCK. BISMARCK IN 18 AGE 70. From a photograph by Loescher & Petsch, Berlin. Bismarck's seventieth birthday was celebrated as a great national event in Germany, as have been his succeeding birthdays. HUMAN DOCUMENTS. BISMARCK IN 1886. AGE 71. From a photograph taken at Friedrichsruh by A. Bockmann, Strasburg. :K IN 1886. AGE 71. From a photograph by A. Bockmann, LUbed BISMARCK IN 1887. AGE J2. From a photograph by M. Ziesler, Berlin. PORTRAITS OF BISMARCK. 33 EMTEROR WILLIAM II. AND PRINCE BISMARCK. I From a photograph by M. Fiesler, Berlin. 1889. AGE 74. From a photograph by M. Fiesler, Berlin. 1889. AGE 74. From a photograph by Jul. Braatz, Berlin. 34 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. BISMARCK IN 1890. AGE 75. In the spring of this year Bismarck's differences with William II. culminated in a retirement from office, which was practically a dismissal, after a continuous cabinet service of nearly thirty years. This portrait was taken at Friedrichsruh two months after his resignation. From a photograph by A. Bockmann, Strasburg. PORTRAITS OF BISMARCK. 35 BISMARCK IN 1890. AGE 75. From a copyright photograph owned by Strumper & Co., Hamburg. BISMARCK IN 1891. AGE 76. Greeted by a body of students at Kissingen. From a photograph by Pilartz, Kissingen. HUMAN DOCUMENTS. BISMARCK IN 1894. AGE 79. From a photograph by Karl Hahn, Munich. PERSONAL TRAITS OF GENERAL GRANT. BY GENERAL HORACE PORTER. [General Horace Porter served on General Grant's staff from the time Grant took command of the army in the East until the close of the war. He was also Grant's Assistant Secretary of War, and, through Grant's first term as President, his private secretary. EDITOR.] THE recurrence of General Grant's birth- day never fails to recall to the minds of those who were associated with him the many admirable traits of his character. A number of these traits, if not absolutely peculiar to him, were more thoroughly de- veloped in his nature than in the natures of other men. His personal characteristics were always a source of interest to those who served with him, although he never seemed to be conscious of them himself. He had so little egotism in his nature that he never took into consideration any of his own peculiarities, and never seemed to feel that he possessed any qualities different from those common to all men. He always shrank from speaking of matters personal to himself, and evidently never analyzed his- own mental powers. In his intercourse he did not appear to study to be reticent regarding himself ; he appeared rather to be unconscious of self. He was always calm and unemotional, yet deeply earnest in every work in which he engaged. While his men- tal qualities and the means by which he accomplished his purposes have been some- thing of a puzzle to philosophers, he was always natural in his manners and intensely human in everything he did. Among the many personal traits which might be mentioned, he possessed five attributes which were pronounced and con- spicuous, and stand out as salient points in his character. They were Truth, Courage, Modesty, Generosity, and Loyalty. He was, without exception, the most ab- solutely truthful man I ever encountered in General J. A. Rawlins, General Grant. Colonel Bowers, Chief of Staff. Assistant Adjutant-General. TAKEN AT CITY POINT HEADQUARTERS EARLY IN 1865. 3 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. GENERAL HORACE PORTER. From a photograph by Pach Brothers. public or private life. This trait may be recognized in the frankness and honesty of expression in all his correspondence. He was not only truthful himself, but he had a horror of untruth in others. One day while sitting in his bedroom in the White House, where he had retired to write a message to Con- gress, a card was brought in by a servant. An offi- cer on duty at the time, seeing that the President did not want to be dis- turbed, remarked to the servant, " Say the Presi- dent is not in." General Grant overheard the re- mark, turned around suddenly in his chair, and cried out to the ser- vant, " Tell him no such thing. I don't lie myself, and I don't want any one to lie for me." When the President had before him for his action the famous Infla- tion Bill, a member of Congress urged him persistently to sign it When he had vetoed it, and it was found that the press and public every- where justified his action, the Congressman came out in a speech reciting how materially he had assisted in bringing about the veto. When the President read the report of the speech in the newspapers, he said, " How can So-and-so state publicly such an un- truth ! I do not see how he can ever look me in the face again." He had a contempt for the man ever after. Even in ordinary conversation he would relate a simple inci- dent which happened in one of his walks upon the street, with all the accuracy of a translator of the new version of the Scriptures ; and if in telling the story he had said mistakenly, for instance, that he had met a man on the south side of the avenue, he would return to the subject hours after- ward to correct the error and state with great particularity that it was on the north side of the avenue that the encounter had taken place. These corrections and con- stant efforts to be accurate in every state- ment he made once led a gentleman to say of him that he was " tediously " truthful. It has often been a question of ethics in war- fare whether an officer is justifiable in put- ting his signature to a false report or a deceptive letter for the purpose of having it fall into the hands of the enemy, with a view to misleading him. It is very certain that General Grant would never have resorted to such a subterfuge, however important might have been the results to be attained. General Grant possessed a rare and con- MASSAPONAX CHURCH, VIRGINIA. GRANT'S HEADQUARTERS IN MAY, 1864. PHOTOGRAPH BY BRADY. PERSONAL TRAITS OF GENERAL GRANT. 39 spicuous Courage, which, seen under all circumstan- ces, appeared never to vary. It was not a courage in- spired by excitement ; it was a steady and patient courage in all the scenes in which it was displayed. It might be called, more ap- propriately, an unconscious- ness of danger. He seemed never to be aware of any danger to himself or to any person about him. His physical and moral courage were both of the same high order. To use an Ameri- canism, he was "clean grit." This characteristic early displayed itself in the nerve he exhibited, as a cadet at West Point, in breaking fractious horses in the rid- ing-hall. His courage was conspicuous in all the bat- tles in Mexico in which he was engaged, particularly GRANT in leading an attack against one of the gates of the City of Mexico, at the head of a dozen men whom he had called on to volunteer for the purpose. It showed itself at Belmont, in the gallant manner in which he led his troops, and in his remaining on shore in the retreat until he had seen all his men aboard the steamboats. At Donelson and Shiloh, and in many of the fights in the Virginia campaign, while he never posed for effect, or indulged in mock heroics, his exposure to danger when necessary, and his habitual indifference under fire, were constantly noticeable. He was one of the few men who never displayed the slightest nervous- ness in battle. Dodging bullets is by no means proof of a lack of courage. It pro- ceeds from a nervousness which is often purely physical, and is no more significant as a test of courage than the act of winking when something is thrown suddenly in one's face. It is entirely involuntary. Many a brave officer has been known to indulge in " jack-knifing " under fire, as it is called ; that is, bending low or doubling up, when bullets were whistling by. In my own ex- perience I can recall only two persons who, throughout a rattling musketry fire, could sit in their saddles without moving a muscle or even winking an eye. One was a bugler in the regular cavalry, and the other was General Grant. The day the outer lines of Petersburg S HEADQUARTERS AT CITY POINT EARLY IN 1C Photograph by Brady. were carried, and the troops were closing up upon the inner lines, the General halted near a house on a piece of elevated ground which overlooked the field. The position was un- der fire, and the enemy's batteries seemed to pay particular attention to the spot, no- ticing, perhaps, the group of officers col- lected there, and believing that some of the Union commanders were among them. The General was engaged in writing some de- spatches, and paid no attention whatever to the shots falling about him. Members of the staff remarked that the place was becom- ing a target, and suggested that he move to a less conspicuous position, but he seemed to pay no attention to the advice given. After he had finished his despatches, and taken another view of the enemy's works, he quietly mounted his horse and rode slowly to another part of the field, remarking to the officers about him, with a jocose twinkle in his eye, " Well, they do seem to have the range on us." During one of the fights in front of Pet- ersburg the telegraph-poles had been thrown down, and the twisted wires were scattered about upon the ground. While our troops were falling back before a vigorous attack made by the enemy, the General's horse caught his foot in a loop of the wire, and in the animal's efforts to free himself the coil became twisted still tighter. The enemy 4 o HUMAN DOCUMENTS. THE McCLEAN HOUSE IN APPOMATTOX, VIRGINIA, WHERE GRANT AND LEE MET AND FIXED THE TERMS OF LEE S SURRENDER, APRIL 9, 1865. was moving up rapidly, delivering a heavy fire, and there was no time to be lost. The staff officers began to wear anxious looks upon their faces, and became very apprehen- sive for the General's safety. He sat quietly in his saddle, giving directions to an orderly, and afterward to an officer who had dis- mounted, as they were struggling ner- vously to uncoil the wire, and kept cautioning them in a low, calm tone of voice not to hurt the horse's leg. Finally the foot was re- leased ; but none too quickly, as the enemy a few minutes later had gained possession of that part of the field. His moral courage was manifested in many instances. He took a grave responsi- bility in paroling the officers and men cap- tured at Vicksburg and sending them home, and persons who did not understand the situation subjected him to severe criticism. But he shouldered the entire responsibil- ity, and subsequent events proved that he was entirely correct in the action he had taken. It was supposed at Appomattox that the terms he gave to Lee and his men might not be approved by the authorities at Wash- ington. But without consulting them, Gen- eral Grant assumed the entire responsibility. There was not a moment's hesitation. Even in trivial matters he never seemed to shrink from any act which he set out to perform. The following incident, though trifling in itself, illustrates this trait in his character. When we were in the heat of the political campaign in which he was a candidate for the Presidency a second time, and when there was the utmost violence in campaign meetings, and unparalleled abuse exchanged between members of the contest- ing parties, the President made many trips by rail in New Jersey, where he was resid- ing at his summer home at Elberon. He always travelled in an ordinary passenger- car, and mingled freely with all classes of people. On one of these trips he said to me : " I think I will go forward into the smoking- car and have a smoke." The car was filled with a rough class of men, several of them under the influence of liquor. The Presi- dent sat down in a seat next to one of the passengers. He was immediately recog- nized, and his neighbor, evidently for the purpose of " showing off," proceeded to make himself objectionably familiar. He took out a cigar, and turning to the Presi- dent cried : " I say, give us a light, neigh- bor," and reached out his hand, expecting the President to pass him the cigar which he was smoking. The President looked him in the eye calmly for a few seconds, and then pulled out a match-box, struck a match, and handed it to him. Those who had been looking on applauded the act, and PERSONAL TRAITS OF GENERAL GRANT. the smoker was silenced, and afterward became'very respectful. Even the valor of his martial deeds was surpassed by the superb courage displayed in the painful illness which preceded his death. Though suffering untold torture, he held death at arm's length with one hand, while with the other he penned the most brilliant chapter in American history. His fortune had disappeared, his family was without support, and summoning to his aid all of his old-time fortitude, he sat through months of excruciating agony, laboring to finish the book which would be the means of saving those he loved best from want. He seemed to live entirely upon his will-power until the last lines were finished, and then yielded to the first foe to whom he had ever surrendered Death. His extreme Modesty attracts attention in all of his speeches and letters, and es- pecially in his " Memoirs. " A distinguished literary critic once remarked that that book was the only autobiography he had ever read which was totally devoid of egotism. The General not only abstains from vaunt- ing himself, but seems to take pains to enumerate all the good qualities in which he is lacking ; and, while he describes in eu- logistic terms the persons who were asso- ciated with him, he records nothing which would seem to be in commendation of him- self. Although his mind was a great store- house of useful information, the result of constant reading and a retentive memory, he laid no claim to any knowledge he did not possess. He agreed with Addison that "pedantry in' learning is like hypociisy in religion, a form of knowledge without the power of it." He had a particular aversion to egotists and braggarts. Th*ough fond of telling stories, and at times a most interest- ing raconteur, he never related an anecdote which was at all off color, or which could be construed as an offence against modesty. His stories possessed the true geometrical requisites of excellence : they were never too long and never too broad. His unbounded generosity was at all times displayed towards both friends and foes. His unselfishness towards those who served with him is one of the chief secrets of their attachment to him, and the unquali- fied praise he gave them for their work was one of the main incentives to the efforts which they put forth. After the successes Colonel Babcock. Colonel Porter. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN 1865 AT BOSTON, WHEN GRANT WAS RECEIVING PUBLIC WELCOMES THROUGHOUT THE NORTH AFTER THE CLOSE OF THE WAR. HUMAN DOCUMENTS. in the West, in writing to Sherman, he said : " What I want is to express my thanks to you and McPherson as the men to whom above all others I feel indebted for what- ever I have had of success. How far your advice and assistance have been of help to me, you know. How far your execution of whatever has been given you to do en- titles you to the reward I am receiving, you cannot know as well as I." After Sherman's successful march to the sea there was a rumor that Congress in- tended to create a lieutenant-generalship for him and give him the same grade as that of Grant. By this means he would have be- come eligible to the com- mand of the army. Sherman wrote at once to his com- mander, saying that he had no part in the movement, and should certainly decline such a commission if offered to him. General Grant wrote him in reply one of the most manly letters ever penned, which contained the follow- ing words : " No one would be more pleased with your advancement than I ; and if you should be placed in my position, and I put subordi- nate, it would not change our relations in the least. I would make the same exer- tions to support you that you have ever done to support me, and I would do all in my power to make our cause win." When Sherman granted terms of surrender to Gen- eral Joe Johnston's army which the government re- pudiated, and when Stanton denounced Sherman's conduct unsparingly, and Grant was ordered to Sherman's head- quarters by the President to conduct further operations there in person, the Gen- hitter in battle and not an officer of brains. General Grant resented this with great warmth, and immediately took up the cud- gels in Sheridan's favor. He said : " While Sheridan has a magnetic influence possessed by few men in an engagement, and is seen to best advantage in battle, he does as much beforehand to contribute to victory as any living commander. His plans are al- ways well matured, and in every movement he strikes with a definite purpose in view. No man is better fitted to command all the armies in the field. " General Grant's generosity to his foes will be remembered as long as the world con- GRANT'S HORSE "JEFF DAVIS," CAPTURED ON DAVIS'S PLANTATION IN MISSISSIPPI Photograph by Brady. tinues to honor manly qualities. After the surrender at Vicksburg he issued a field order saying : " The paroled prisoners will be sent out of here to-morrow. Instruct the eral-in-chief went only as far as Raleigh, commands to be orderly and quiet as the He remained there in the background in- prisoners pass, and to -make no offensive re- stead of going out to the front, so as not to marks." appear to share the credit of receiving Johnston's final surrender upon terms ap- proved by the government. He left that honor solely to Sherman. He stood by him manfully when his motives were questioned In his correspondence with General Lee, looking to the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, he said : " I win 1 meet you, or designate officers to meet any officers you may name, for the purpose of and his patriotism unjustly assailed. After arranging definitely terms upon which the Sheridan had won his great victories, some surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia one spoke in General Grant's presence in a will be received." He thus took pains to manner which sought to belittle Sheridan relieve General Lee from the humiliation and make it appear that he was only a hard of making the surrender in person, in case PERSONAL TRAITS OF GENERAL GRANT. 43 that commander chose to designate another officer for the purpose. In this General Grant showed the same delicacy of feeling as that which actuated Washington when he spared Cormvallis from the necessity of surrendering his army in person at York- town. After the surrender at Appomattox our troops began to fire salutes. General Grant sent orders at once to have them stopped, using the following words : " The war is over, the rebels are our countrymen again, and the best sign of rejoicing after the GRANT'S HORSE "EGYPT," A THOROUGHBRED FROM SOUTHERN ILLINOIS. Photograph by Brady. victory will be to abstain from all demon- strations in the field." When, two months after the close of the war, Lee made application in writing to have the privileges included in the Presi- dent's amnesty proclamation extended to him, General Grant promptly indorsed his letter as follows : " Respectfully forwarded through the Secretary of War to the Presi- dent, with the earnest recommendation that the application of General Robert E. Lee for amnesty and pardon may be granted him/' Andrew Johnson was, however, at that time bent upon having all ex-Con- federate officers indicted for the crime of treason, whether they kept their paroles or not, and a number of indictments had already been found against them. In this emergency General Lee applied by letter to General Grant for protection, and he knew that such an application would not be in vain. General Grant put the most emphatic indorsement upon this letter, which con- tained the following language : " In my opinion the officers and men paroled at Appomattox Court House, and since upon the same terms given Lee, cannot be tried for treason so long as they observe the terms of their parole. . . . The action of Judge Underwood in Norfolk has already had an injurious effect, and I would ask that he be or- dered to quash all indict- ments found against paroled prisoners of war, and to desist from further prosecution of them." It must be remem- bered that this action was tak- en when the country was still greatly excited by the events of the war and the assassi- nation of President Lincoln, and it required no little courage on the part of Gen- eral Grant to take so decided a stand in these matters. Perhaps the most pro- nounced trait in General Grant's character was that of unqualified Loyalty. He was loyal to every work and cause in which he was en- gaged : loyal to his friends, loyal to his family, loyal to his country, and loyal to his God. This characteristic pro- duced a reciprocal effect in those who served with him, and was one of the chief reasons why men became so loyally attached to him. It so dominated his entire nature that it some- times led him into error, and caused him to stand by friends who were no longer worthy of his friendship, and to trust those in whom his faith should not have been reposed. Yet it is a trait so noble that we do not stop to count the errors which may have resulted from it. It showed that he was proof against the influence of malicious aspersions and slanders aimed at worthy men, and that he had the courage to stand as a barrier between them and their un- worthy detractors, and to let generous sentiments have a voice in an age in which the heart plays so small a part in public life. It has been well said that "the best 44 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. GENERAL GRANTS KATHtK AMJ MO'JHtK. teachers of humanity are the lives of great will afford a liberal education to American men." A close study of the traits which youth in the virtues which should adorn the were most conspicuous in General Grant character of a man in public life. PORTRAITS OF GENERAL GRANT. AS BREVET SECOND LIEUTENANT. AGE 21. Taken in Cincinnati in 1843, just after graduation from West Point. AS CAPTAIN WHILE STATIONED AT SACKETT*S HARBOR, NEW YORK, 1849. AGE 27. From a very small miniature. 4 6 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. GENERAL GRANT IN THE AUTUMN OF 1861. AGE 39. From a photograph loaned by Colonel Frederick D. Grant. GENERAL GRANT IN 1864, DURING THE CAMPAIGN OF THE WILDERNESS. AGE 42. Photograph by Brady. PORTRAITS OF GENERAL GRANT. 47 TAKEN IN 1863 BEFORE VICKSBURG. AGE 41. From a defective negative. HUMAN DOCUMENTS. MAY, 1864. AGE 42. TAKEN AT HEADQUARTERS IN THE WILDERNESS. Brady, photographer. PORTRAITS OF GENERAL GRANT. 49 EARLY IN 1865, NEAR THE CLOSE OF THE WAR. AGE 43. From a spoiled negative. HUMAN DOCUMENTS. 1865. AGE 43. TAKEN BY GUTEKUNST, PHILADELPHIA, ON GRANT'S FIRST TRIP NORTH AFTER THI PORTRAITS OF GENERAL GRANT. 5 1 1868. AGE 46. NOT LONG BEFORE GRANT'S FIRST ELECTION AS PRESIDENT. 1869. AGE 47. SOON AFTER GRANT'S FIRST INAUGURATION AS PRESIDENT. HUMAN DOCUMENTS. ABOUT 1870. AGE "48. PORTRAITS OF GENERAL GRANT. 53 ABOUT 1872. AGE 50. Kurtz, photographer, New York. 54 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. 1873. AGE 51. AT THE BEGINNING OF GRANT'S SECOND TERM AS I'KESIDEM Brady, photographer. PORTRAITS OF GENERAL GRANT. 55 1876. AGE 54. HUMAN DOCUMENTS. PORTRAITS OF GENERAL GRANT. 57 GENERAL GRANT, MRS. GRANT, AND THEIR ELDEST SON COLONEL FREDERICK D. GRANT. Taken by Taber at San Francisco on Grant's landing from the voyage around the world, September 22, 1879. HUMAN DOCUMENTS. l88l. AGE 59. WHEN GRANT TOOK UP HIS RESIDENCE IN NEW YORK. W. KURTZ, PHOTOGRAPHER. PORTRAITS OF GENERAL GRANT. 55 1882. AGE 60. Fredricks, photographer, New York. 6o HUMAN DOCUMENTS. \ GENERAL SHERMAN WHEN IN COMMAND OF THE MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI, 1866. AGE 46. SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF GENERAL SHERMAN. BY S. H. M. BYERS. diary, I find this entry : OW well I recall now the first time I ever heard the voice of General Sherman. It was night, in the woods by the banks of the Tennessee River. On looking over my half-faded war " November 23, 1863. It has rained all the day. The men have few rations, the animals no food at all. Thousands of horses and mules are lying dead in the muddy roads and in the woods. We are a few miles below Chattanooga, close to the river. The Rebels are on the other side. Everybody here ex- pects a great battle. Since noon our colonel got orders for us to be ready to ferry over the river at midnight no baggage." It was very dark that night in the woods when our division slipped down to the water's edge and commenced entering the pontoons. " Be as quiet as possible, and step into the boats rapidly," I heard a voice say. The speaker was a tall man, wearing a long waterproof coat that covered him to his heels. He stood close beside me as he spoke, and one of the boys said in a low voice : " That is Sherman." It was the first time I had ever heard him speak. Though a great commander, at that mojnent leading many troops, still he was down there in the dark, personally at- tending to every detail of getting us over the river. Shortly our rude boat, with thirty people aboard, pushed out into the dark water, and we were whirled around by the eddies, while expecting every moment a blaze of musketry in our faces from the other shore. But, somehow, we felt con- fident that all was well, for was not our great general himself close by, watching the movement ? In the battle that followed, our troops were successful. Sherman was everywhere along the front, personally directing every movement. He was sharing every danger, and the soldier's fear was that his general might be killed, and the battle lost in con- sequence. In the charge of the "Tunnel," I, with many comrades, fell into the enemy's hands, and was taken to Libby Prison. Few of those captured with me ever got back North alive, and those who did are .nearly all long since dead. Fifteen months of terrible experience in the prisons of the South passed. More than once I had escaped, only to be retaken. At last, though, I did get away, and 'when 62 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. Sherman's army, marching north through the Carolinas, captured Columbia, they found me secreted in the garret of a negro's cabin in the town. It happened that, while I was a prisoner, I had written some verses in praise of the great campaign from Chattanooga to the ocean. The song found favor with my prison comrades. It also soon reached the soldiers in the North, and, before I knew it, it was being sung everywhere. It was " Sherman's March to the Sea," and the song soon gave its name to the campaign itself. As Sherman entered Columbia at noon that i;th of February, 1865, riding at the head of his sixty thousand victorious vet- erans, a soldier ran up to him, and told him the author of the song had escaped, from prison, and was standing near by, on the steps of a house. He halted the whole column, while he motioned to me to come out, and warmly shook my hand. " Tell all the prisoners who have es- caped," said he, " to come to me at camp to-night. I want to do something for all of them. They must be made comfort- able." The bands played, and the vast column again moved on amidst cheers for " Billy" Sherman, " Johnny " Logan, and other heroes of the line. I looked at *he battle- worn flags of the regiments. I had not seen loyal colors for about sixteen months. Perhaps I was weak, but I am sure I felt my eyes moisten and my heart bound when I looked upon the very flag I had seen in the hot charge that day at Missionary Ridge. I did not go to the General's head- quarters that night. I was ashamed to go in all my rags. But I walked the streets and saw the city burned to ashes. But Sherman had not done this. Long before the Union troops entered, I saw Hampton's Confederate cavalry firing thousands of bales of cotton to prevent its falling into Union hands. A fearful wind raged to- wards morning, and the flakes of burning cotton soon set the city on fire. That night I heard with my own ears South Carolinians condemn Wade Hampton and Jefferson Davis. " They are those who brought all this on the people of the South," cried one old man as he saw his home devoured by the flames, and thought of his sons dead on useless battlefields. Later, Wade Hampton was foolish enough to publicly attack Sherman for in- humanity during his " March." " His paper is for home consumption," the General wrote to me; "but if he at- tempts to enlarge his sphere I will give him a blast of the truth as you and hundreds know it." I went to friends in my old brigade the next day after the burning of the city, but to my surprise General Sherman sent an officer to hunt me up and bring me to head- quarters. " You must go," said the officer, in an- swer to my expressed reluctance. " You must ; it is an order." Our meeting, unimportant in itself, showed the simplicity and character of Sherman. It was in the woods. The col- umns had halted for the night, and the tent of the General was pitched at a lone spot away from the roadside. As was usual at army headquarters, an enormous flag was suspended between two trees. Near by the horses of the bodyguard were picketed to long ropes, while the men either layabout on the grass or busied themselves preparing their supper. Not far away, in the woods and at roadsides, were the bivouacs of the tired army. I was but a stripling officer, and was not a little abashed at the idea of appearing before the com- mander of the army. I found him sitting on a camp-stool by a low rail fire. He Avas looking over some papers. " This is Adjutant Byers," said the officer. The General dropped his papers, stepped right over the fire with his long legs, and seized me by the hand. " I want to thank ydu for your song," he said, "and I want you to tell me how you, there in prison, got hold of all that I was doing. You hit it splendidly. I have little for you to do here at headquarters. There is little for anybody to do," he said after awhile (I think he meant he did it all himself) ; " but I want to give you a place on my staff. You must take your meals with me." Now, for a prisoner of war, just getting out of a horrible pen, a place on the com- mander's staff, with the privilege of eating at his table, was like getting into paradise. " Later you will get a horse and all you need," he went on. That moment the cook, a great ebony- faced negro, came up, bowed very low, and announced supper. The General pushed me into the supper tent ahead of him. The well-uniformed staff officers were already there, assembled about a long rude table of boards. Every one of them held up his fork and stared at me. The General in- PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF GENERAL SHERMAN. troduced me, adding some complimentary things. "And I want you all to know him," he said, " and after supper you must hunt him up some clothes." "I have an extra coat," said Surgeon Moore. "And I a pair of trousers," said another. My wardrobe was to be renewed in no time. The bare anticipation of the fact restored my confidence. The General seated me at his right hand, and bade me make no ceremony about proceeding to whatever was before me. The meal was simple. It was the ordinary army rations, that Sherman never could march or swim an army through the lower part of North Carolina in midwinter, but he was a com- mander who never stopped at such obsta- cles as rivers and swamps when marching for a desired object. Here were rivers swollen into a dozen channels, dark swamps that seemed interminable, miles of roads that were lately bottomless, or often under three feet of ice-cold water. The bridges were destroyed everywhere. The narrow causeways, called roads by cour- tesy, if not submerged, were defended by the enemy's batteries. It rained almost constantly day and night, and the only SHERMAN BEFORE ATLANTA, I AGE 44. with a chicken or two added, which the cook had foraged that day on the march. I ventured to relate something of my ex- periences in prison. The General listened with the closest attention, and it seemed to me that from that moment he was my friend. It was the commencement of an attachment that lasted until his death, twenty-five years. During the rest of that famous marching and wading through the Carolinas I was constantly at headquarters until we reached the Cape Fear River. And what a cam- paign that was, through swamps and woods and over bridgeless streams ! Joe Johnston's engineers had told their chief protection the army had was the little rub- ber blankets or shelter tents they carried on their backs in addition to their knap- sacks and several days' rations. There were not a half dozen complete tents in the army. Sherman himself oftenest slept under a tent " fly," under trees, or else in stray country churches. Through all the mud, swamp, forest, and water, the troops dragged two thousand wagons, besides ambulances and batteries. The horses and mules often floundered in the bottomless roads, became discouraged, gave out, and died. Then the men took their places, and dragged wagons and can- non for miles. Whole brigades worked HUMAN DOCUMENTS. sometimes day and night making tempo- rary roadbeds from trees felled in the swamps. The men were glad to sleep anywhere in the mud, in the woods, in the rain, at the roadside anywhere, if only they could lie down without being shot at. There is official record that one division of the troops on this terrible march waded through swamps and forded thirty-five riv- ers where the ice-cold water often reached to the men's waists. The same division, while floundering through the swamps, constructed fifteen miles of corduroy wagon road and one hundred and twenty- two miles of side road for the troops. There were no quartermaster's trains, so the troops were nearly destitute of cloth- ing. Thousands of the army were shoe- less before the campaign was half over. One night Sherman and his staff lodged in a little deserted church they found in the woods. I recall how the General him- self would not sleep on the bit of carpet on the pulpit platform. " Keep that for some of you young fel- lows who are not well," he said laughingly, as he stretched himself out on a long hard bench till morning. He shared all the privations and hard- ships of the common soldier. He slept in his uniform every night of the whole cam- paign. Sometimes we did not get into a camp till midnight. I think every man in the army knew the General's face, and thousandsspokewith him personally. The familiarity of the troops at times was amus- ing. " Don't ride too fast, General," they would cry out, seeing his horse plunging along in the mire at the roadside, as he tried to pass some division. " Pretty slip- pery going, Uncle Billy ; pretty slippery going." Or, "Say, General, kin you tell us is this the road to Richmond ? " Every soldier of his army had taken on the enthusiasm of the General himself. They would go anywhere that he might point to. Often as he approached some regiment, a wild huzza would be given, and taken up and repeated by the troops a mile ahead. Instinct seemed to tell the boys, when there was any loud shouting anywhere whatever, that Uncle Billy was coming, and they joined in the cheers till the woods rang. It was a common thing for the General to stop his horse and speak words of encouragement or praise to some sub- ordinate officer or private soldier strug- gling at the roadside. He seemed to know the faces and even the names of hundreds of his troops. Even the foragers, whose cleverness and fleetness fed the army, and who left the regiments at daylight every morning on foot, and at the close of each day returned to camp on horseback and muleback, laden with supplies, he knew often by name. Along with perfect disci- pline, every day showed some proof of his sympathy with the common soldiers. He had his humorous side with them too. When the army reached Goldsborough,. half the men were in rags. One day a di- vision was ordered to march past him in review. The men were bare-legged and ragged, some of them almost hatless. "Only look at the poor fellows with their bare legs," said an officer at the General's side, sympathizingly. "Splendid legs," cried the General, with a twinkle in his eye, "splendid legs. Would give both of mine for any one of them." On the march and in the camp Sher- man's life was simplicity itself. He had few brilliantly uniformed and useless aids about him. The simple tent " fly " was- his usual headquarters, and under it all his military family ate together. His de- spatches he wrote mostly with his own hand. He had little use for clerks. But Dayton, his adjutant-general, was better than a regiment of clerks. When we halted somewhere in the woods for the night, the General was the busiest man in the army. While others slept, his little camp-fire was burning, and often in the long vigils of the night I have seen a tall form walking up and down by that fire- Sometimes we got a little behind the army with our night camp, or too far in front., and then the staff officers and the order- lies would buckle on their pistols, and we remained awake all night. Sherman him- self slept but little. He did not seem to need sleep, and I have known him to stay but two hours in bed many a night. In later years a slight asthma made much sleep impossible for him. After the war, when I was at his home in St. Louis, he seldom retired till twelve or one o'clock. It was often as late, too, on this march. It was a singularly impressive sight to see this solitary figure walking there by the flickering camp-fire while the army slept. If a gun went off somewhere in the distance, or if an unusual noise were heard r he would instantly call one of us to go and find out what it meant. He paid small attention to appearances ; to dress almost none. "There is going to be a battle to-day,, sure," said Colonel Audenreid, of the staff, one. morning before daylight. PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF GENERAL SHERMAN. GENERAL SHERMAN IN 1865. AGE 45. From a photograph by Brady. " How do you know ? " asked a comrade. "Why, don't you see? The General's up there by the fire putting on a clean col- lar. The sign's dead sure." A battle did take place that day, and Cheraw, with forty cannon, fell into our hands. It was more a run than a battle. Daylight usually saw us all ready for the saddle. When noon came we dis- mounted at the roadside, sat down on a log or on the grass, and had a simple lunch, washed down with water from the swamp, or something stronger from a flask that was ever the General's companion ; for he was a soldier, and was living a sol- dier's life. 66 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. When we reached the Cape Fear River, in the Carolinas, we found there (at Fa- yetteville) a splendid arsenal, built in former times by the United States. Now it was used for making arms to destroy the Government. Sherman burned it to the ground ; but first he took me all through the building and explained its complicated machinery and apparatus. I svas astonished that any one but a mechan- ical engineer could know all about such things. "Why, of course, one must learn every- thing," he said to me. " I picked this thing up at leisure* hours. One must never let a chance to learn something be lost. I say this to young men always," he con- tinued. "No matter if the thing don't seem to be of much use at the time. Who knows how soon it may be wanted ? No matter how far away from one's calling it may seem, all knowledge, however gained, is of use ; sometimes of great use. Why," he went on, "once when I captured a town in Alabama, I found the telegraph wire in perfect order. The enemy had forgotten it or had run away too quick to cut it. My operator was not with me. I called to know if any soldier in the bodyguard could work an instrument. " ' I can,' said a beardless private. " He had picked up a knowledge of the thing, 'just for fun,' he said. I set him at work. Important news was going over the wire from Lee. That boy caught the message. I had it signalled back of my lines to be repeated to General Grant in Virginia. Perhaps it helped to save a bat- tle. Anyway, that young man won pro- motion. Learning a little thing once when chance offered, afterward gave him the op- portunity of his life. " When I was a young man stationed in Georgia," he continued, "my comrades at the military post spent their Sundays play- ing cards and visiting. I spent mine in riding or walking over the hills of the neighborhood. I learned the topography of the country. It was no use to me then. Later, I led an army through that region, and the knowledge of the country I had gained there as a young fellow helped me to win a dozen victories." We went from the arsenal back to the breakfast table in an adjoining house. " This arsenal has cost a mint of money," he said, " but it must burn. It is time to commence hurting these fellows. They must find out that war is war ; and the more terrible it is made, the sooner it is over." I told him what Stonewall Jackson said as to not taking prisoners. " Perhaps he was right," said the General. "It seems cruel; but if there were no quarter given, most men would keep out of war. Rebellions would be few and short." While we were eating, a whistle blew. It was from a little tugboat that had steamed its way up the swollen and dangerous river from Wilmington. It passed the enemy hidden on either bank. It was the first sound from the North heard since the army left the ocean. No one in all the North knew where Sherman's army was. Rumors brought from the South said it was "floundering and perishing in the swamps of the Carolinas." That day the General directed me to board this tugboat, run down the river in the night, and carry despatches to General Grant in front of Richmond, and to President Lincoln at Washington. " Don't say much about how we are doing down here," said the General, as he put his arm about me and said farewell that evening down at the river bank. "Don't tell them in the North we are cut- ting any great swath here. Just say we are taking care of whatever is getting in front of us. And be careful your boat don't get knocked to the bottom of the river before daylight." Our little craft was covered nearly all over with cotton bales. The river was very wide and out of its banks everywhere ; the night was dark. Whatever the enemy may have thought of the little puffs of steam far out on the dark, rapid water, we got down to the" sea unharmed. A fleet ocean steamer at once carried me to Vir- ginia. Grant was in a little log cabin at City Point, and when an officer was an- nounced with despatches from Sherman, he was delighted. He took me into a back room, read the letters I ripped out of my clothing, and asked me many questions. Then General Ord entered. "Look here," said General Grant, de- lighted as a child. " Look here, Ord, at the news from Sherman. He has beaten even the swamps of the Carolinas." " I am so glad," said Ord, rattling his big spurs ; "I am so glad. I was getting a little uneasy." "I not a bit," said Grant. "I knew Sherman. I knew my man. I knew my man," he gravely continued, almost to himself. Rawlins, the adjutant-general, was called in to rejoice with the others. Then a PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF GENERAL SHERMAN. 67 GENERAL SHERMAN IN 1869. AGE 49. From a photograph by Brady. leave of absence was made out for me to go North to my home, where I had been but eight days during the whole war, and now my months of painful imprisonment had undermined my health. When next I saw General Sherman it was at my own house in Switzerland, after the war had closed. He was making his grand tour of Europe, and came out of his way to visit me. I was then a consul at Zurich. For days we talked the old times over. All the military men in Switzerland wanted to see the great American captain. A company of them were invited to an excursion up the lake. Then it was learned that nearly all of them had been students of Sherman's campaigns for months. It was a novel sight to see them under the awning of the steamer, surrounding Sherman, while with pencil and maps in hand he traced 68 HUMAN DOCUMENTS, for them all the strategic lines of " The March to the Sea." A high officer begged as a souvenir the map that Sherman's hand had traced. " It shall be an heirloom in my family," he declared. The lake pleased the General. "Still," said he, " it is no prettier than the lakes at Madison, Wisconsin. It looks like them, but they are our own ; they are American." He appreciated beautiful scenes and dwelt upon them almost with the love of a poet. " I am glad you saw San Remo," he wrote me. "Vividly I recall the ride to Genoa, the gorgeous scenery of the sea and shore, of sheltered vales and olive- far up the lake, at the time of his visit. It was two miles from the boat landing at the village, and I could get no fit car- riage to take him up. "Let me walk," said he. ".Don't rob me of the only opportunity I have had to use my feet in Europe." All the villagers hung out flags, and the peasants, who knew from the town papers that he was coming, stood at the roadsides with bared heads. Then a com- pany of village cadets marched up the hill to our house to do him honor. He spoke to them in English. They did not understand a word, but gave a grand hurrah, and then marched down again. When Sherman went to live in Wash- GENERAL SHERMAN IN 1876. AGE 56. From a photograph by Mora. clad hills, with the snow-capped Apen- nines behind. Washington," he said, " is to my mind the handsomest city in the world, not excepting Paris ; and the Po- tomac, when walled in and its shores in grass-plots, may some day approximate to the Rhine in loveliness." It rained a little the morning he was starting from Zurich to the St. Gothard Pass for Italy, and threatened storm. My wife tried to induce him to wait for better weather. " No, that I never do," said he. " If it is raining when I start, it is sure to clear up on the way ; and that's when we like the weather to be good. No, I would rather start in a storm than not." We lived in Bocken, a country house ington it seemed as if every soldier who came there felt bound to call on him. Every man of them was received as an old friend and companion. Day in, day out, the bell would ring, and, "It's a soldier," the maid would announce. "Let him in," the General would an- swer. No matter what he was engaged upon, or who was in the room, the worthy and the unworthy alike went off with his bless- ing, and, if need be, his aid. He kept open accounts at shoe-stores, where every needy soldier calling on him could get shoes at his expense. One of his bene- ficiaries, at least, did not withhold due ex- pressions of gratitude. A young colored man, who wore a big scarlet necktie and PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF GENERAL SHERMAN. 69 twirled in one hand a silk hat and in the other a fancy cane, calling, said : " Yes, Mr. Sherman, I wants to thank you very much for the place you done got for me in the department. I likes the place. Yes, Mr. Sherman. And I wants to thank God for you very much, and I hopes you'll get to heaven just sure. Fact is, I just know you will." " That's all right," said the General, glancing over the top of the newspaper he was reading, "only you look out that you don't get to the other place." Sherman loved young people associ- ated with them all his life. There was no frolic he could not take part in with them. Boys, not less than girls, liked him and his happy ways. He made the sun shine for them. If he kissed the girls, the girls kissed him. Once I saw him at Berne when he was boarding the train for Paris. Every Amer- ican girl who happened to be in the town came to see him off. Not one of them had ever seen him before, but every one of them kissed him ; so did some of their mothers. Women like real heroes in this world. In 1874 he moved up town to Fifteenth Street, and almost next door to Mr. Elaine. Sometimes in the hot summer evenings the two sat on the stone walk out in front of Sherman's house till late in the night, talking about everything except politics. I was often an interested listener. Sher- man called Elaine the " Great Premier." " He has a great genius for running things," said he, "and parties; likes to make friends, and has got lots of them ; knows how to make enemies too. Can't keep all his promises makes too many ; forgets them. That's politics. He is a great man, though, a statesman, spite of shortcomings." Speaking of Elaine's bitter enemies, he once said : " All saccessful men are hated by "somebody." Sometimes those hot summer evenings, in Fifteenth Street, he held quasi-recep- tions out in front of the house, so many people came to see him. Everybody felt at liberty to call, or, if he saw friends passing under the gaslight, he bade them sit down and chat. Inside the house his hospitality was boundless. There was never any end to guests. He kept open house, as it were. The table was always spread, and unex- pected guests sat down daily. I wondered at the time how his salary, though large, ever paid his expenses. His private office was a little room down in the basement. Who in Washington can ever forget the little tin sign on the win- dow below, bearing the simple words : " OFFICE OF GENERAL SHERMAN." " Not the great Sherman ! " many a passer-by has exclaimed, as he halted and looked down at the window, hoping possi- bly for a single glimpse of the man him- self. He always chose these modest basements for his own office, whether in Washington, St. Louis, or New York. The furnishing was no less modest. A plain desk, his familiar chair, seats for a few friends by the little open fireplace, a fine engraving of General Grant, an occasional battle scene, a big photograph of Sheridan, and some cases and shelves filled with his books, war maps, and valuable correspond- ence. Simple as it seemed, all was sys- tematized. The Government allowed him one clerk, Mr. Barrett, whose whole time was spent in classifying and indexing papers and letters as valuable as any in all America. Sherman had for twenty-five years corresponded with many notable people Lincoln, Chase, Grant, Sheridan, all the heroes of the war times, civil or military, besides hundreds of private indi- viduals. It is in these latter letters, scat- tered among friends everywhere, that is best seen the spark of nature's fire that, next to his deeds, most marks Sherman as a man of genius. He wrote as he talked, sometimes at random, but always brill- iantly. Often late in the night, as he walked up and down the little room among the letters of the great men he had known, it seemed as if he might be in com- munion with their spirits. They were nearly all dead ; he had outlived most of the heroes of the war North or South, and seemed at times like one who had been in the world, seen its glories and its follies, and was ready himself to depart. " Some night as I come home from the theatre or a dinner," he once said, " a chill will catch me. I will have a cold, be un- well a day, and then " It all happened, at last, just as his im- agination had foreseen it. After he removed to St. Louis, where he had a quiet house at 912 Garrison Avenue, the office was in the simple basement as before. The same tin sign was on the window. All seemed as before ; nothing changed. Almost every night, after other friends had left, we sat in his room and talked or read. I had been invited to his house at this time for the purpose of HUMAN DOCUMENTS. editing certain of his letters for the " North American Review." " Here are my keys," he said one night, throwing them on my desk. " There are all my papers and letters. You will find things there that will interest people." And I did ; but I did not regard it as right, nor myself at liberty, to print many of the letters at the time. " Before you moved out of Atlanta, Gen- eral," I once asked, " what did you think would be the effect of your marching that army down to the ocean ? " " I thought it would end the war," he answered quickly. " It was to put me be- hind Lee's army so soon as I should turn north to the Carolinas. You have the let- ter there that Lee once wrote, saying it was easy for him to see that unless my plans were interrupted he would be com- pelled to leave Richmond. I had scarcely reached the Roanoke River when he com- menced slipping out of Richmond, and the whole Confederacy suddenly came to an end." General Grant realized to the full the tremendous importance of Sherman's last movements. " That was a campaign," said he, " the like of which is not read of in the past his- tory. " I looked over hundreds of Sherman's papers. When I found anything that spe- cially interested me, I mentioned it to him. Then he dropped his book, and talked by the hour, relating to me the incidents, and speaking of noted men whom he had known. These were the times when it was most worth while to hear Sherman talk. While I busied myself with the letters, he was deep in Walter Scott, or Dickens, or Robert Burns. A copy of Burns lay on his desk constantly. Certain of Dickens's novels he read once every year. I have forgotten which they were. He was a constant reader of good books, and I think he knew Burns almost by heart. He was also fond of music, and went much to the opera. Army songs always pleased him, and there was one commencing, " Old fel- low, you've played out your time," he could not hear too often. " It is the whole and true history of a soldier's life and sorrows," he would say. He hated the newspapers, yet through necessity, almost, he read them every morning, making running comments on what they said. If there were funny things in them, or spicy, he read them aloud, for he was a lover of a good joke. " But there's none of it true," he would say. "I almost think it impossible for an editor to tell the truth. If this country is ever given over to socialism, communism, and the devil, the newspapers will be to blame for it. The chief trouble of my life has been in dealing with newspapers. They want sensations something that will sell. If they make sad a hundred or a thousand hearts, it is of DO concern to them." For professional politicians he had as little regard as for the newspapers. " But there are newspapers and newspa- pers, "said he ; "politicians and politicians ; but statesmen are scarce as hens' teeth. No American can help interesting himself in politics. That belongs to a republic. Every man's a ruler here whether he knows anything about it or not ; and all parties are about alike." But he had every confidence in our gov- ernment. " Thanks to the Union soldiers," said he, " the Ship of State is in port, and it don't matter much who's President. But parties are necessary. No single man can run this government without a united party to help him. Again, "he said, "our national strength is tested by the political hurricanes which pass over us every four years, and by such transitions as took place when the govern*- ment passed from Garfield to Arthur. Next week the Democrats will meet and nominate Jeff Davis, Cleveland, or some other fellow ; but it don't matter who is captain the ship's in. Anyway, our best Presidents are usually accidents." Sherman's own name was always being proposed for President, but he had no de- sire for the office. " My consent never will be obtained," said he. "It is entirely out of the ques- tion. I don't want the Presidency and will not have it, I recall too well the ex- periences of Jackson, Harrison, Taylor, Grant, Hayes, Garfield all soldiers to be tempted by the siren voice of flattery." When in 1884 it was insisted that he should run, and he was told it was a duty, and that "no man dare refuse a call of the people," he answered sternly : " No politi- cal party convention is the keeper of the United States ; and if really nominated I would decline in such language as would do both the convention and myself harm." No matter how early the General was out of bed those mornings in St. Louis, it was hard to get him to breakfast if once he had commenced reading or writing down in the basement. To remedy this, his wife had the newspapers put on the breakfast table. Mrs. Sherman always called him " Cump." PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF GENERAL SHERMAN. That was his name with her before he was eminent, and I am sure he liked it, with all the love and familiarity it conveyed, far more than any of the titles given him by Presidents and legislatures. In fact, he gave little regard to titles alone. " Lieutenant A is again off looking up his ancestors," he once said to me, "just as if ancestors or titles made a man. I suppose I had some military talent to start with, but it was work, not ancestors, instantly pulled the metal badge from his own breast and pinned it on my coat. That badge is on my desk while I write these recollections. Once he took me to see " Buffalo Bill " at the fair grounds. A crippled soldier we met on the way begged for help, and he so nearly emptied his pocket-book to the man, he had to borrow money to get us into the show. The show delighted him as it might have delighted a little child. He called for GENERAL SHERMAN IN 1888. AGE 68. From a photograph by Sarony. and study, and forever work, that brought me my success." His nature was generous and unselfish in the extreme. One night at St. Louis he was invited to speak at the presenta- tion of a new flag to Ransom Post. When I came down stairs to accompany him, he stood in the parlor dressed and wait- ing. " Where's your badge ? " he said to me. "Why, General, I have none here." " Have none ? Take this," he said, and Colonel Cody (" Buffalo Bill ") to be brought to him that he might shake hands with him. He had known him many years before. "That man's a genius," said he, when Cody went back to the ring. " He puts his life into his show, and Cody believes in himself." Not every warrior can shed a tear. Sherman's heart was as tender as a child's. I have seen those thin, compressed lips tremble, and the brown eyes moisten, at the recital of a wrong. He had two sides HUMAN DOCUMENTS. to his nature. In war he had all the ele- ments of the stern soldier ; he could be resolute, but not pitiless. Gallantry and chivalry were parts of his nature. In peace he was a student, a gracious gentle- man ; the man whom women and children loved. His kindness simply knew no bounds. For a companion-in-arms, no matter what his rank, he had abiding re- gard. " Sherman recommends everybody for place," said a department chief to me one day. " Now which one can he want ap- pointed ?" " He wants them all appointed," I re- plied. His tall form, his genial manners, but' above all the story of his great deeds, made him a constantly noticeable figure wherever he went. His face was as famil- iar to Americans as the face of Washing- ton or Lincoln. He always seemed to me younger than he really was. He had to the last a buoyancy of spirits that usually belongs only to youth. I never saw him speak to a young person without smiling ; and as to his ways toward women, he was a Bayard of the Bayards. The term chivalrous belonged to him by birth- right. I recall how, after a noon dinner party at Berne once, a lady, not a young or a beautiful one, had started up the stairs alone. A dozen young fellows loitering there allowed her to go unnoticed. The General, at the salon door, got a glimpse of her half way up to the landing. In long strides he bounded instantly up the stairs, and had her arm before she knew it. Her smile repaid him as it rebuked the rest. Despite reports to the contrary, he was as chivalrous toward women and children in the South as he was toward his own people, and protected them as fully. I recall vividly how once on the march in the Carolinas he caused a young staff officer to be led out before the troops, his sword broken in two and his shoulder- straps cut from his shoulders, because he had permitted some of his men to rob a Southern woman of her jewelry. "I am a thief," were the words he pla- carded over the head of another soldier, who had stolen a woman's finger-ring. With this inscription above his head, the culprit stood on top of a barrel by a bridge while the whole army filed past him. He was always making little speeches. He had to ; it was demanded of him. He was no orator, but he said original things. His words were crisp, to the point, and never to be forgotten. When the family were preparing to re- move from St. Louis to New York, Sher- man said: "I must see people; I must talk." He loved St. Louis, but there was only one New York. I begged a trifle from his little room before he went that room in which I had so often, late into the night, sat alone with him and listened to the magic of his talk. He took a bronze paper-weight from his desk. " It is the image of America's greatest captain," he said, and gave me a little fig- ure of General Grant that had been on his desk for many years. General Sherman's appreciation of Grant knew no bounds. " He was the one level-headed man among us all," he said one night. In New York I was with him again from time to time. Again his office was in the basement. The same furniture, the same pictures, the little open fireplace, the same man, the same talk. Advancing years changed his features a little, but not his spirits. His hair was gray, but his eyes were bright as ever. Then came a day when I went into the little basement in Seventy-first Street only to find the chair of the Great Captain for- ever vacant. His body lay in its coffin in a darkened room up-stairs. It was clad in the full uniform of a commanding general. The commander of an opposing army helped bear it to the tomb ; and never was the grief of a nation more sincere. PROFESSOR JOHN TYNDALL. BY HERBERT SPENCER. JOHN TYNDALL, LL.D., F.R.S. 1865. AGE 45. AMONG the various penalties entailed by ill-health, a not infrequent one is the inability to pay the last honors to a valued friend ; and sometimes another is the undue postponement of such tribute to his memory as remains possible. Of both these evils I have just had experience. It was, I think, in 1852 that Professor Tyndall gave at the Royal Institution the lecture by which he won his spurs : prov- ing, as he then did, to Faraday himself, that he had been wrong in denying dia- magnetic polarity. I was present at that lecture ; and when introduced to him very shortly after it, there commenced one of those friendships which enter into the fabric of life and leave their marks. Though both had pronounced opinions about most things, and though neither had much reticence, the forty years which have elapsed since we first met witnessed no interruption of our cordial relations. In- deed, during recent years of invalid life suffered by both of us, the warmth of nature characteristic of him has had in- creased opportunity for manifesting itself. A letter from him, dated November 25111, inquiring my impressions concerning the climate of this place (St. Leonard's), raised the hope that something more than inter- course by correspondence would follow ; but before I received a response to my reply there came the news of the sad catastrophe. I need not dwell on the more conspicu- ous of Professor Tyndall's intellectual traits, for these are familiar to multitudes of readers. His copiousness of illustra- tion, his closeness of reasoning, and his lucidity of statement have been suffi- ciently emphasized by others. Here I will remark only on certain powers of thought, not quite so obvious, which have had much to do with his successes. Of these the chief is " the scientific use of the imagination." He has himself insisted upon the need for this, and his own career exemplifies it. There prevail, almost uni- versally, very erroneous ideas concerning the nature of imagination. Superstiti'ous peoples, whose folk-lore is full of tales of fairies and the like, are said to be imagina- tive ; while nobody ascribes imagination to the inventor of a new machine. Were this conception of imagination the true one, it would imply that, whereas children and savages are largely endowed with it, and whereas it is displayed in a high degree by poets of the first order, it is deficient in those having intermediate types of mind. But, as rightly conceived, im- agination is the power of mental represen- tation, and is measured by the vividness and truth of this representation. So con- ceived, it is seen to distinguish not poets only, but men of science ; for in them, too, " imagination bodies forth the forms [and actions] of things unknown." It does this in an equal, and sometimes even in a higher degree ; for, strange as the asser- tion will seem to most, it is nevertheless true that the mathematician who discloses to us some previously unknown order of space-relations, does so by a greater effort of imagination than is implied by any poetic creation. The difference lies in the fact that, whereas the imagination of the poet is exercised upon objects of human interest and his ideas glow with emotion, the imagination of the mathematician is exercised upon things utterly remote from human interest, and which excite no emo- tion : the contrasted appreciations of their respective powers being due to the circum- stance that whereas people at large can follow, to a greater or less extent, the imaginations of the poet, the imaginations of the mathematician lie in a field inacces- 74 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. ' PROFESSOR TYNDALL IN 1872, DURING HIS VISIT TO AMERICA. AGE 52. From a photograph by Mora, Broadway, New York. sible to them, and practically non-exist- ent. This constructive imagination (for we are not concerned with mere reminiscent imagination), here resulting in the crea- tions of the poet and there in the dis- coveries of the man of science, is the high- est of human faculties. With this faculty Professor Tyndall wasjargely endowed. In common with successful investigators in general, he displayed it in forming true conceptions of physical processes pre- viously misinterpreted or uninterpreted ; and, again, in conceiving modes by which the actual relations of the phenomena could be demonstrated ; and, again, in devising fit appliances to this end. But to a much greater extent than usual, he dis- played constructive imagination in other fields. He was an excellent expositor; and good exposition implies much con- structive imagination. A prerequisite is the forming of true ideas of the mental states of those who are to be taught ; and a further prerequisite is the imagining of methods by which, beginning -with concep- tions they possess, there may be built up in their minds the conceptions they do not possess. Of constructive imagination as displayed in this sphere, men at large ap- pear to be almost devoid ; as witness the absurd systems of teaching which in past times, and in large measure at present, have stupefied, and still stupefy, children by presenting abstract ideas before they PROFESSOR TYNUALL IN 1885. AGE 65. From a photograph by Kingsbury & Notcutt, London. have any concrete ideas from which they can be drawn. Whether as lecturer or writer, Professor Tyndall carefully avoided this vicious practice. In one further way was his constructive imagination exemplified. When at Queen- wood College he not only took care to set forth truths in such ways and in such order that the comprehension of them de- veloped naturally in the minds of those he taught he did more : he practised those minds themselves in constructive imagina- tion. He so presented his problems as to exercise their powers of investigation. He did not, like most teachers, make his pupils mere passive recipients, but made them active explorers. As these facts imply, Professor Tyndall's thoughts were not limited to physics and allied sciences, but passed into psy- chology ; and though this was not one of his topics, it was a subject of interest to him. Led as he was to make excursions into the science of mind, he was led also into that indeterminate region through which this science passes into the science of being ; if we can call that a science of which the issue is nescience. He was much more conscious than physicists usually are that every physical inquiry, pursued to the end, brings us down to metaphysics, and leaves us face to face with an insoluble problem. Sundry proposi- tions which physicists include as lying with- in their domain do not belong to physics PROFESSOR JOHN TYNDALL. 75 at all, but are concerned with our cogni- tions of matter and force a fact clearly shown by the controversy at present going on about the fundamentals of dynamics. But in him the consciousness that here there exists a door which, though open, science cannot pass through, if not always present, was ever ready to emerge. Not improbably his early familiarity with theo- logical questions, given him by the contro- versy between Catholicism and Protestant- ism, which occupied his mind much during youth, may have had to do with this. But whatever its cause, the fact, as proved by various spoken and written words, was a belief that the known is surrounded by an unknown, which he recognized as some- thing more than a negation. Men of science may be divided into two classes, of which the one, well exemplified in Fara- day, keeping their science and their reli- gion absolutely separate, are untroubled by any incongruities between them ; and the other of which, occupying themselves exclusively with the facts of science, never ask what implications they have. Be it trilobite or be it double star, their thought PROFESSOK TYNDALL IN 1890. AGE 70. From a photograph by Fradelle & Young, London. about it is much like the thought of Peter Bell about the primrose. Tyndall did not belong to either class ; and of the last I have heard him speak with implied scorn. Being thus not simply a specialist but in considerable measure a generalist, will- ingly giving some attention to the or- ganic sciences, if not largely acquainted with them, and awake to "the humanities," if not in the collegiate sense, yet in a wider sense Tyndall was an interesting companion ; beneficially interesting to those with brains in a normal state, but to me injuriously interesting, as being too exciting. Twice I had experience of this. When, after an injury received while bath- ing in a Swiss mountain stream, he was laid up for some time and, on getting back to England, remained at Folkestone, I went down to spend a few days with him. "Do you believe in matter?" was a ques- tion which he propounded just as we were about to bid one another good-night after a day's continuous talking. Ever since a nervous breakdown in 1855, over my second book, talking has told upon me just as much as working, and has had to be kept within narrow limits ; so that persistence in this kind of thing was out of the question, and I had to abridge my stay. Once more the like happened when, after the meeting of the British Association at Liverpool, we ad- journed to the Lakes. Gossip, which may he carried on without much intellectual tax, formed but a small element in our conversa- tion. There was almost unceasing discussion as we rambled along the shores of Windermere, or walked up to Rydal Mount (leaving our names in the visitors' book), or as we were being rowed along Gras- mere, or when climbing Loughrig on our way back. TyndalPs intel- lectual vivacity gave me no rest ; and after two utterly sleepless nights I had to fly. I do not think that on these oc- casions, or on any occasion, poli- tics formed one of our topics. Whether this abstention resulted by accident or whether from per- ception that we should disagree, I cannot say possibly the last. Our respective leanings may be in part inferred from our respective attitudes towards Carlyle. To me, profoundly averse to autocracy, Carlyle's political doctrines had 7 6 ever been repugnant. Much as I did, and still do, admire his marvel- lous style and the vigor, if not the truth, of his thought so much so that I always enjoy any writing of his, however much I disagree with it intercourse with him soon proved impracti- cable. Twice or thrice, in 1851-52, I was taken to see him by Mr. G. H. Lewes; but I soon found that the alterna- tives were listening in silence to his dogmas, sometimes absurd, or getting into a hot argu- ment with him, which ended in our glaring at one another ; and as I did not like either alternative I ceased to go. With Tyndall, however, the case seems to have been different possibly because of greater tolerance of his political creed and his advocacy of personal government. The rule of the strong hand was not, I fancy, as repellant to Tyndall as to me ; and, in- deed, I suspect that, had occasion offered, he would not have been reluctant to exer- cise such rule himself. Though his sym- pathies were such as made him anxious for others' welfare, they did not take the direc- tion of anxiety for others' freedom as the means to their welfare ; and hence he was, I suppose, not in pronounced antagonism with Carlyle on these matters. But diver- gent as our beliefs and sentiments were in earlier days, there has been in recent days mutual approximation. A conversation with him some years since made it mani- fest that personal experience had greatly shaken the faith he previously had in public administrations, and made him look with more favor on the view of state func- tions held by me. On the other hand, my faith in free institutions, originally strong (though always joined with the belief that the maintenance and success of them is a question of popular character), has in these later years been greatly decreased by the conviction that the fit character is not possessed by any people, nor is likely to be possessed for ages to come. A na- tion of which the legislators vote as they are bid and of which the workers surren- der their rights of selling their labor as they please, has neither the ideas nor the sentiments needed for the maintenance of HUMAN DOCUMENTS. HINDHEAD HOUSE, PROFESSOR TYNDALL'S ENGLISH HOME, WHERE HE DIED. liberty." Lacking them, we are on the way back to the rule of the strong hand in the shape of the bureaucratic despotism of a socialist organization, and then of the mili- tary despotism which must follow it ; if, indeed, some social crash does not bring this last upon us more quickly. Had we recently compared notes, I fancy that Tyndall and I should have found ourselves differing but little in our views concerning the proximate social state, if not of the ultimate social state. In the sketch he has recently given of our late friend, who was one of the small group known as the " X Club," Professor Huxley has given some account of that body. Further particulars may not unfitly be added ; one of which may come better from me than from him. The impression that the club exercised influence in the scientific world (not wholly without basis, I think) was naturally produced by such knowledge as there eventually arose of its composition. For it contained four presi- dents of the British Association, three presidents of the Royal Society, and among its members who had not filled these highest posts there were presidents of the College of Surgeons, the Mathematical Society, the Chemical Society, etc. Out of the nine I was the only one who was fellow of no society and had presided over nothing. I speak in the past tense, for now, unhappily, the number of rhembers is reduced to five, and of these only three are in good health. There has been no meeting for the past year, and it seems scarcely likely that there will ever be PROFESSOR JOHN TYNDALL. 77 another. But the detail of most interest which Professor Huxley has not given, concerns a certain supplementary meeting which, for many years, took place after the close of our session. This lasted from October in each year to June in the next ; and toward the close of June we had a gathering in the country to which the married members brought their wives, raising the number on some occasions to fifteen. Our programme was to leave town early on Saturday afternoon, in time for a ramble or a boating excursion before dinner ; to have on the Sunday a picnic in some picturesque place adjacent to our temporary quarters ; and, after dinner that evening, for some to return to town, while those with less pressing engagements re- mained until the Monday morning. Two of our picnics were held under Burnham Beeches, one or more on St. George's Hill, Weybridge, and another in Windsor Forest. As our spirits in those days had not been subdued by years, and as we had the added pleasure of ladies' society, these gatherings were extremely enjoyable. If Tyndall did not add to the life of our party by his wit, he did by his hilarity. But my special mo- tive for naming these rural meetings of the THE HALL IN HINDHEAD HOUSE. " X " is that I may mention a fact which, to not a few, will be surprising and per- haps instructive. We sometimes carried with us to our picnic a volume of verse, which was duly utilized after the repast. On one occasion, while we reclined under the trees of Windsor Forest, Huxley read to us Tennyson's " CEnone," and on another occasion we listened to Tyndall's reading of Mrs. Browning's poem, " Lady Geral- dine's Courtship." The vast majority of people suppose that science and poetry are antagonistic. Here is a fact which may, perhaps, cause some of them to revise their opinions. From the impressions of Tyndall which these facts indirectly yield, let me return to impressions more directly yielded. Though it is scarcely needful to say any- thing about his sincerity, yet it cannot properly be passed over, since it was a leading trait in his nature. It has been conspicuous to all, alike in his acts and his words. The Belfast address to the British Association exhibited his entire thought on questions which most men of science pass over from prudential con- siderations. But in him there was no spirit of compromise. It never occurred to him to ask what it was politic to say, but simply to ask what was true. The like has of late years been shown in his utterances con- cerning political matters shown, it may be, with too great an out- spokenness. This outspokenness -^ was displayed, also, in private, v and sometimes perhaps too much ^ displayed ; but every one must |x have the defects of his qualities, and where absolute sincerity ex- ists, it is certain now and then to cause an expression of a feel- ing or opinion not adequately re- strained. But the contrast in genuineness between him and the average citizen was very conspic- uous. In a community of Tyn- dalls (to make a wild supposition) there would be none of that flab- biness characterizing current thought and action no throwing overboard of principles elaborat- ed by painful experience in the past, and adoption of a hand-to- mouth policy unguided by any principle. He was not the kind of man who would have voted for a bill or a clause, which he secretly believed would be injuri- HUMAN DOCUMENTS. PROFESSOR TYNDALL S STUDY, HINDHEAD HOUSE. ous, out of what is euphemistically called " party loyalty," or would have endeav- ored to bribe each section of the elec- torate by ad captandum measures, or would have hesitated to protect life and property for fear of losing votes. What he saw right to do he would have done, regardless of proximate consequences. The ordinary tests of generosity are very defective. As rightly measured, generosity is great in proportion to the amount of self-denial entailed ; and where ample means are possessed large gifts often entail no self-denial. Far more self- denial may be involved in the perform- ance, on another's behalf, of some act which requires time and labor. In addi- tion to generosity under its ordinary form, which Professor Tyndall displayed in un- usual degree, he displayed it under a less common form. He was ready to take much trouble to help friends. I have had personal experience of this. Though he had always in hand some investigation of great interest to him, and though, as I have heard him say, when he had bent his mind to a subject he could not with any facility break off and resume it again, yet, when I have sought his scientific aid in- formation or critical opinion I never found the slightest reluctance to give me his undivided attention. Much more markedly, however, was this kind of generosity shown in another direction. Many men, while they are eager for appre- ciation, manifest little or no appreciation of others, and still less go out of their way to express it. With Tyndall it was not thus : he was eager to recognize achievement. Notably in the case of Faraday, and less notably, though still conspicuously, in many cases, he has be- stowed much labor and sacrificed many weeks in setting forth others' merits. It was evidently a pleasure to him to dilate on the claims of fellow-workers. But there was a derivative form of this generosity calling for still greater eulogy. He was not content with expressing ap- preciation of those whose merits were recognized, but he spent energy unspar- ingly in drawing public attention to those whose merits were unrecognized ; and time after time, in championing the causes of such, he was regardless of the antago- nisms he aroused and the evils he brought on himself. This chivalrous defence of the neglected and the ill-used has been, I think, by few, if any, so often repeated. I have myself more than once benefited by his determination, quite spontaneously shown, that justice should be done in the apportionment of credit ; and I have with admiration watched like actions of his in other cases cases in which no considera- tion of nationality or of creed interfered in the least with his insistence on equita- ble distribution of honors. In thus undertaking to fight for those PROFESSOR JOHN TYNDALL. 79 who were unfairly dealt with, he displayed in another direction that very conspicuous trait which, as displayed in his Alpine feats, has made him to many persons chiefly known I mean courage, passing very often into daring. And here let me, in closing this sketch, indicate certain mis- chiefs which this trait brought upon him. Courage grows by success. The demon- strated ability to deal with dangers pro- duces readiness to meet more dangers, and is self-justifying where the muscular power and the nerve habitually prove adequate. But the resulting habit of mind is apt to influence conduct in other spheres, where muscular power and nerve are of no avail is apt to cause the daring of dangers which are not to be met by strength of limb or by skill. Nature as externally presented in precipices, ice-slopes, and crevasses may be dared by one adequately endowed ; but Nature as internally pre- sented in the form of physical constitution, may not be thus dared with impunity. Prompted by high motives, Tyndall tended too much to disregard the protests of his body. Over-application in Germany caused at one time absolute sleepless- ness for, I think he told me, more than a week ; and this, with kindred trans- gressions, brought on that insomnia by which his after-life was troubled, and by which his powers of work were diminished ; for, as I have heard him say, a sound night's sleep was followed by marked exaltation of faculty. And then, in later life, came the daring which, by its results, brought his active career to a close. He 'conscientiously desired to fulfil an engagement to lecture at the Royal Institution, and was not to be de- terred by fear of consequences. He gave the lecture, notwithstanding the protest which for days before his system had been making. The result was a serious illness, threatening, as he thought at one time, a fatal result ; and, notwithstanding a year's furlough for the recovery of health, he was eventually obliged to resign his posi- tion. But for this defiance of nature there might have been many more years of scientific exploration, pleasurable to himself and beneficial to others ; and he might have escaped that invalid life which for a long time past he had to bear. In his case, however, the penalties of invalid life had great mitigations mitiga- tions such as fall to the lot of but -few. It is conceivable that the physical discom- forts and mental weariness which ill-health brings, may be almost compensated, if not even quite compensated, by the pleasurable emotions caused by unflagging attentions and sympathetic companionship. If this ever happens, it happened in his case. All who have known the household during these years of nursing are aware of the PROFESSOR TVNDALL S COTTAGE IN THE ALPS. unmeasured kindness he has received with- out ceasing. I happen to have had special evidence of this devotion on the one side and gratitude on the other, which I do not think I am called upon to keep to myself, but rather to do the contrary. In a letter I received from him some half-dozen years ago, referring, among other things, to Mrs. Tyndall's self-sacrificing care of him, he wrote : " She has raised my ideal of the possibilities of human nature." CHARLES A. DANA IN HIS OFFICE AT " THE SUN. (Drawn from life by Corwin Knapp Linson.) MR. DANA OF "THE SUN/' BY EDWARD P. MITCHELL. KINGLAKE'S picture of a great editor the most famous, if not the greatest, editorthat English journalism has known represents a man wrapped in midnight mys- tery. He is surrounded by sentinels, and perpetually absorbed during business hours in highly responsible thought. Part of the description of John T. Delane at work mak- ing the next morning's " Times " is worth quoting here, for it does not lack uncon- scious humor : " From the moment of his entering the editor's room until four or five o'clock in the morning, the strain he had to put on his faculties must have been always great, and in stirring times almost prodigious. There were hours of night when he often had to decide to decide, of course, with great swiftness between two or more courses of action momentously different ; when, be- sides, he must judge the appeals brought up to the paramount arbiter from all kinds of men, from all sorts of earthly tribunals ; when despatches of moment, when tele- grams fraught with grave tidings, when notes hastily scribbled in the Lords or Com- mons, were from time to time coming in to confirm or disturb, perhaps even to annul, former reckonings ; and these, besides, were the hours when, on questions newly obtrud- ing, yet so closely, so importunately present that they would have to be met before sun- rise, he somehow must cause to spring up sudden essays, invectives, and arguments which only strong power of brain, with even much toil, could supply. For the delicate task any other than he would require to be in a state of tranquillity ; would require to have ample time. But for him there are no such indulgences ; he sees the hand of the clock growing more and more peremp- tory, and the time drawing nearer and near- er when his paper must, must be made up." No trait is more characteristic of Mr. Dana than his intolerance of anything like humbug about his professional labors or methods. For almost fifty years he has managed to keep easily ahead of the clock, and to meet, without much personal con- sciousness of effort, all sorts of new and sud- denly developed situations requiring swift decision as between courses of action mo- mentously different. Mr. Dana's own im- agination has never decorated with mystic importance this power to dispose rapidly and accurately of any newspaper question that comes up at any hour of the day or night. It has never seemed remarkable to him that he should be able to get out his paper morning after morning, and year after year, without any sense on his part of high pressure or extraordinary intellectual strain. He works hard, and, at the same time, it is quite true that he works easily ; for he works with absolute tranquillity, undisturbed by that most common and most wearing attendant of mental effort, the mind's constant recognition of its own atti- tude towards the labor in which it is at the time engaged. Thus Mr. Dana has always been the master, and not the slave, of the immediate task. The external features of his journalism are simplicity, directness, common sense, and the entire absence of affectation. He would no more think of attempting to live up to Mr. Kinglake's ideal of a great, mysterious, and thought- burdened editor, than of putting on a con- ical hat and a black robe spangled with suns, moons, and stars, when about to receive a visitor to his editorial office in Nassau Street. HUMAN DOCUMENTS. I. THE rather naked little corner room in the " Sun " Building in which Mr. Dana has sat almost daily for twenty-five years, is a surprise to many persons who see it for the first time. His genuine love of beautiful things, his disposition to acquire them if possible, and the extraordinary range and accuracy of his aesthetic appreciations, are so widely known that it is quite natural for those who do not understand him to expect to find his tastes reflected in his accustomed place of work. The room might be even barer than it is and yet serve Mr. Dana's purpose as well as if it were the Gallery of Apollo. On theother hand, if hischairand desk were established in the middle of the vastest and most sumptuous presence-chamber to be found anywhere, and amid a throng of curi- ous and noisy onlookers, Mr. Dana would work on with the same tranquil efficiency, providing his pen did not splutter and the capacious waste-basket at his feet were emp- tied from time to time. The processes of his mind are neither stimulated nor intimi- dated by the surroundings. The accesso- ries of luxurious professional habits are absent because they are superfluous to Mr. Dana ; if he thought they would help him to make a better newspaper, they would all be there. In the middle of the small room a desk- table of black walnut, of the Fulton Street style and the period of the first administra- tion of Grant ; a shabby little round table at the window, where Mr. Dana sits when the day is dark ; one leather-covered chair, which does duty at either post, and two wooden chairs, both rickety, for visitors on errands of business or ceremony ; on the desk a revolving case with a few dozen books of reference ; an ink-pot and pen, not much used except in correcting manuscript or proofs, for Mr. Dana talks off to a stenog- rapher his editorial articles and his corre- spondence, sometimes spending on the re- vision of the former twice as much time as was required for the dictation ; a window seat filled with exchanges, marked here and there in blue pencil for the editor's eyes ; a big pair of shears, and two or three extra pairs of spectacles in cache against an emer- gency : these few items constitute what is practically the whole objective equipment of the editor of " The Sun." The shears are probably the newest article of furniture in the list. They replaced, three or four years ago, another pair of unknown antiq- uity, besought and obtained by Eugene Field, and now occupying, alongside of Mr. Gladstone's axe, the place of honor in that poet's celebrated collection of edged instru- ments. For the non-essentials, the little trapezoid- shaped room contains a third table, holding a file of the newspaper for a few weeks back, and a heap of new books which have passed review ; an iron umbrella rack ; on the floor a cheap Turkish rug ; and a lounge covered with horse-hide, upon which Mr. Dana de- scends for a five minutes' nap perhaps five times a year. The adornments of the room are mostly accidental and insignificant. Ages ago somebody presented to Mr. Dana, with symbolic intent, a large stuffed owl. The bird of wisdom remains by inertia on top of the revolving book-case, just as it would have remained there had it been a stuffed cat or a statuette of Folly. Unno- ticed and probably long ago forgotten by its proprietor, the owl solemnly boxes the compass as Mr. Dana swings the case, reach- ing in quick succession for his Bible, his Portuguese dictionary, his compendium of botanical terms, or his copy of the Demo- cratic National Platform of 1892. On the mantelpiece is an ugly, feather-haired little totem figure from Alaska, which likewise keeps its place solely by possession. It stands between a photograph of Chester A. Arthur, whom Mr. Dana liked and admired as a man of the world, and the japanned cal- endar case which has shown him the time of year for tfye last quarter of a century. A dingy chromo-lithograph of Prince von Bis- marck stands shoulder to shoulder with George, the Count Joannes. The same mingling of sentiment and pure accident marks the rest of Mr. Dana's pict- ure gallery. There is a large and excellent photograph of Horace Greeley, who is held in half-affectionate, half-humorous remem- brance by his old associate in the manage- ment of " The Tribune." Another is of the late Justice Blatchford of the United States Supreme Court ; it is the strong face of the fearless judge whose decision from the Fed- eral bench in New York twenty years ago blocked the attempt to drag Mr. Dana be- fore a servile little court in Washington, to be tried without a jury on a charge of crim- inal libel, at the time when " The Sun " was demolishing the District ring. Over the mantel is Abraham Lincoln. There are pict- ures of the four Harper brothers and of the five Appletons. Andrew Jackson is there twice, once in black and white, once in vivid colors. An inexpensive Thomas Jefferson faces the livelier Jackson. A framed diplo- ma certifies that Mr. Dana was one of sev- eral gentlemen who presented to the State MR. DANA OF " THE SUN." t 8%^^'^iilpB Ti 1 ?:- CITY HALL PARK AND PRINTING HOUSE SQUARE. a portrait in oils of Samuel J. Tilden. On different sides of the room are William T. Coleman, the organizer of the San Fran- cisco Vigilantes, and a crude colored print of the Haifa colony at the foot of Mount Carmel, in Syria. Strangest of all in this singular collection is a photograph of a tall, lank, and superior-looking New England mill girl, issued as an advertisement by some Connecticut concern engaged in the manu- facture of spool cotton. For a good many years the most available wall space in Mr. Dana's office was occupied by a huge paste- board chart, showing elaborately, in deadly parallel columns, the differences in the laws of the several States of the Union respecting divorce. It was put there, and it remained there, serving no earthly purpose except to illustrate the editor's indifference as to his immediate surroundings,until it disappeared as mysteriously as it had come. Mr. Dana's divorce chart may have been stolen, but Superintendent Byrnes was not consulted. Thus far in deference to Mr. McClure's re- spect for objective detail, as throwing light on character. After this hasty but approxi- mately complete catalogue, it is needless to remark that the scheme of decoration car- ried out in the workroom of the foremost personage and most interesting figure in American journalism would indicate to no- body that the occupant of the room knew Manet from Monet, or old Persian lustre from Gubbio. From the windows of his room in the dwarf " Sun" Building, the old Tammany Hall in Park Row, Mr. Dana can look out and up to the sky-high edifices built all around him by his esteemed contemporaries during recent years. He is perfectly con- tent to work on, as he has worked in this same block between Spruce Street and Frankfort almost continuously since Feb- ruary, 1846, in the old-fashioned way, as far as externals are concerned. The absence of ostentation that distinguishes his profes-' sional methods and habits extends to the whole establishment. While the " Sun " Building, as a workshop, lacks no modern appliance or mechanical improvement that contributes to the production of a great daily newspaper, there are few journals less impressively housed, even in the smaller cities of the United States. 8 4 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. II. INTO the corner room described, there swings nearly every morning in the year a man of seventy-five, looking fifteen years younger; largely built, square-framed, with a step as firm as a sea captain's ; vigor- ous, sometimes to abruptness, in his bodily movements, but deliberate and gentle in his speech ; dressed always in such a way that his clothes seem to belong to him and not he to them ; with strong brown hands, rather large, which do not tremble as they hold book or paper; and a countenance, familiar to most Americans through por- traits or caricatures, whose marked feat- ures the caricaturists distort in various whimsical ways without ever succeeding in making the face seem either ridiculous or ignoble. Mr. Dana's full beard is trimmed more closely than in former years. It ranks as snow white only by courtesy; the last strongholds of the pigment are not yet conquered. The impression which Mr. Dana makes upon those who come into contact with him personally, for the first time or the fortieth, is that of vigorous and sympathetic good will, both desirous and capable of pleasing. He is frank and engaging in conversation, and the wonderful range of his intellectual interests makes him equally ready to learn or to communicate. Men who seek him merely to measure their wits against his for a purpose, often go away charmed with their reception and well satisfied with re- sults until they begin to reckon at a dis- tance what has actually been accomplished by the interview. If shrewd kindness beams on the stranger through one of the two lenses of his gold-bowed spectacles, kind shrewdness is alert behind the other glass. He has learned how to say No when necessary, and even to say it in ital- ics; but he has never learned how to say an inconsiderate thing. A very observant Frenchman once re- marked about Mr. Dana : " He is one of the few men over sixty I have known who re- member the way to blush. The only times I have seen Mr. Dana blush have been when something discourteous was said or done in his presence, too trivial to call for direct rebuke." The physical vitality which has served Mr. Dana so well through life that he has never experienced a single hour of serious illness, and which brings him to his desk now at seventy-five with as keen a joy for the day's work and the day's fun as that of any youth under his command, is the most obvious and the least important factor. It accounts, perhaps, for the occasional blush which the French gentleman noted, for the heartiness of his hand-grasp, and in a meas- ure for the general cheerfulness of the view he habitually takes of life ; but inveterate health is by no means a possession peculiar to the editor of "The Sun." Nor is the analysis which goes into the questions of a man's diet and hours of sleep, in order to ascertain the secret of his genius, likely to be rewarding in its results. Mr. Dana uses no tobacco, but that is not the reason why he is superior to petulance and never frets himself under any circumstances, whatever his mood. He knows wine, and respects it and himself; but that is not the reason why he knows at a glance good poetry from bad, even if the good be disguised in cramped handwriting and words mis- spelled, while the bad is displayed in typog- raphy beautiful to see. He prefers the mushroom to mush and milk, being both a connoisseur and a cultivator of the former ; but that is not the reason why, as a journal- ist, his perception of the interesting, the unexpected, the refreshing, has not been dulled by fifty years' exercise. First, a natural, God-given faculty for the acquisi- tion, the discrimination, and the dissemina- tion of facts and ideas ; secondly, a life uncommonly rich and varied in its ac- quaintance with men and its experience of affairs : these are the lines of inquiry to be pursued by any one who is curious for an explanation of the success of Mr. Dana's career, and the incalculable influence of his mind upon the general progress and special methods of American journalism during the long period of his activity in that profession. Mr. Dana was born with a voracious intellectual appetite, which has remained healthy and insatiate all of his life. He shrinks at nothing short of actual dulness, or literary deformity so marked as to be repulsive. He is a tireless reader of books, magazines, and journals in many languages. Whether print or manuscript comes under his eyes, he takes in the ideas seemingly by whole paragraphs, rather than by words,, lines, or even sentences. Unlike most other very rapid readers that I have known, he does not merely sample the page or the chapter or the book. A glance through his glasses seems to establish a circuit which at once puts his brain in possession not only of the essential facts, but also of any refinement of style that may be there, or any novel or felicitous verbal formula, no matter how inconspicuous. When he MR. DANA OF " THE SUN" closes the book or throws aside the news- paper, the probability is small that he has missed anything worth having. This pro- cess of acquisition has been going on with- out a break and with constantly increasing speed ever since his early boyhood. It is supported by a memory which selects with discrimination and then retains with ten- acity. III. MR. DANA was two years old when he left the town of his birth, Hinsdale, New Hamp- shire. His childhood was spent at Gaines, on the Erie Canal, in Orleans County, New York State, in Buffalo, and at Guildhall, Vermont. One of his earliest recollections is of running away from home in Buffalo at the age of three, and going down to the lake to see the first steamboat come in. He got himself very muddy, and on his re- turn his mother tied him to the well-post with her garter. At Gaines he attended the district school during two winter sessions, and picked up what he could find, openly or by stratagem, in the limited literature within his reach. " The first book I remember reading," he says, " was Miss Porter's ' Thaddeus of Warsaw.' That romance made an extraor- dinary impression on my mind. I must have been five years old, certainly not more than six. ' Thaddeus ' was not considered as a suitable book for me ; it was kept stowed away in a drawer of my mother's bureau. I discovered it there, and read it on foot from beginning to end in short in- stallments, standing over the open book in the open drawer, crying hard at the pathetic passages, but always ready to push the drawer to and run if I heard anybody com- ing. It seemed to me to be a great story." The favorite books of Mr. Dana's boy- hood were " Pilgrim's Progress," " Robin- son Crusoe," and, later, " Ivanhoe." He read them over and over again until he almost knew them by heart. When he was eleven he returned to Buffalo to be a clerk in his uncle's dry goods and notions store. " I was pretty good," he says, " at selling stuff, and quick at figures and in making change." For seven years he clerked it, occupying his scant leisure with miscella- neous reading, but touching no school books until he was almost nineteen. His uncle failed in business in 1837, and the future of Mr. Dana's mercantile career be- came clouded. He remained in Buffalo for two years longer, helping to settle up the affairs of the establishment, and meanwhile preparing himself for college. " I was just about nineteen when I tackled the Latin grammar and musa, musce, musce, musam. I found the utmost difficulty in remembering the paradigms. Nothing but the steadiest determination kept my nose to that book." Two winter terms in a country district school and two years in college consti- THE APPROACH TO DOSORIS ISLAND, MR. DANA'S SUMMER HOME. 86 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. tuted the whole of Mr. Dana's experience of any system of education in which he himself was not master as well as pupil. He entered Harvard in 1839 at the age of twenty. His eyesight was seriously affected by too close application, and he was obliged to leave his class at the end of the sopho- more year. Mr. Dana would have been graduated in 1843. Although he was pre- vented from completing the course, the university afterward gave him his degree. His name appears in the triennial cata- logue, and last year he met his old class- mates in Boston to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the class of 1843. While at Cambridge Mr. Dana was a hard student. He so far overcame the first repugnance with which paradigms of de- clension or conjugation inspired him, as to conceive a marked and genuine fondness for the acquisition of other languages than English, living and dead. No year has passed during his busy life without adding to his stock of languages, or increasing his familiarity with some of those which he has already partially acquired. Most spoken languages except the Slavonic and the Oriental are at his command ; and he has but just now started on Russian. He is restless so long as something which he really wants to know remains behind a cur- tain of words which he does not compre- hend. An accidental circumstance, a chance reference, impatience with an ob- viously imperfect translation, may direct his attention to some tongue or some dia- lect which he has not yet checked off. Then he turns to with grammar and dic- tionary, and is not satisfied until his mas- tery of that particular medium of thought is sufficient for practical purposes. Many visitors to the " Sun " office have found Mr. Dana bending over text-book and lexi- con, and working away with the energy of a freshman who has only half an hour be- fore Greek recitation. Such visitors have seen the editor in some of his happiest moments. Curiosity concerning the Norwegian-Ice- landic literature led Mr. Dana, years ago, to a systematic and persistent study of the old Norse. That and its surviving Scan- dinavian kindred have long been a favorite occupation with him. He reads the Sagas and Henrik Ibsen's last play with equal readiness, although not with equal rever- ence. In the whole range of classic litera- ture, next to the Bible, for which his ad- miration is profound and unaffected, the " Divine Comedy " perhaps holds the first place in his esteem. He began to read Dante in the original in 1862, taking it up for the benefit of -his eldest daughter, and afterward accompanying his other children in turn through the incomparable poem. His Dante classes have included some very distinguished men, and have given him great pleasure. Mr. Dana's study of Dante has been almost continuous for thirty years. He has accumulated an extensive and valu- able Dante library. One could scarcely quote a line in the " Divine Comedy " which Mr. Dana would not immediately place. When the editor of " The Sun "met Pope Leo XIII. a few years ago in the Vatican Palace, two most accomplished Dante schol- ars came together, and they exchanged ideas on doubtful readings upon equal terms and with mutual satisfaction. IV. AFTER leaving Harvard the need of out- of-door life and the prospect of intellectual companionship, at a time when books were forbidden to him by the oculists, turned Mr. Dana to the Brook Farm Association for Agriculture and Education, then recently established in West Roxbury. In that re- markable attempt to combine high ideals of thought and conduct with the manipula- tion of fertilizers and the cultivation of vegetables, Mr. Dana was associated with Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, George William Curtis, A. Bronson Alcott, William Henry Channing, George and So- phia Ripley, and others. Theodore Parker, as pastor of the Unitarian Church in West Roxbury, was in close touch with the com- munity. Mr. Dana's share in the division of labor was the management of the fruit department. The history of the Brook Farm experi- ment, notable because of its relation to the intellectual movement in New England at that time, as well as for the distinction sub- sequently attained by most of those who held hoes or milked cows in its service, is not likely to be written by any one directly informed. Nearly all of the Associates have passed away without recording their reminiscences of Brook Farm. Hawthorne's tale is avowedly a fanciful picture. In the preface to the " Blithedale Romance" he appealed to Mr. Dana to preserve for the public both the outward narrative and the inner truth and spirit of the whole affair. That was in 1852 ; there has been no re- sponse yet, and I do not think Mr. Dana will ever find time to chronicle Brook Farm. A gentleman now living in the West, who as a boy was placed by his parents under the MR. DANA OF " THE SUN." tutelage of the philosophers of the com- munity, once told me that he remembered Dana as the sole person connected with the enterprise who showed any real talent for farming, or manifested much practical saga- city in affairs generally. In one way Brook Farm determined Mr. Dana's career ; for while a member of that journalism has been unbroken, except dur- ing the period of the Civil War. Elizur Wright, better remembered in Bos- ton as an insurance actuary than as a news- paper editor, used to tell one story about the youth whom he hired to help him run " The Chronotype." It was an orthodox newspaper, and a great favorite with the A GATEWAY AT DOSORIS. celebrated community he had a part in the management of a publication called "The Harbinger," devoted to social reform, transcendental philosophy, and general lit- erature. In 1844, when the condition of his eyesight permitted him to go to work in earnest, he obtained a place under Elizur Wright on " The Boston Chronotype," a daily newspaper ; and from that time, just fifty years ago, his connection with daily Congregational ministers of Massachusetts and the adjoining States. Mr. Wright went away for a few days, leaving his assistant in control. " During my absence," said Wright," 'The Chronotype'came out mighty strong editorially against hell, to the aston- ishment of the subscribers and the conster- nation of the responsible editor. When I got back I was obliged to write a per- sonal letter to every Congregational min- HUMAN DOCUMENTS. ister in the State, and to many deacons, explaining that the paper had been left in charge of a young man without mel- low journalistic experience. Dana always had a weakness for giving people with fixed convictions something new to think about." " On ' The Chronotype,' " says Mr. Dana himself, "I wrote editorials on all sorts of subjects, read the exchanges, edited the news, did almost everything, and drew five dollars a week. Then I left Boston to better myself, and came on to New York, where ' The Tribune ' gave me ten dollars as city editor. That was in February, 1847". Along in the autumn I struck, and Greeley made it fourteen dollars. So it went on until the French Revolution of 1848. I went to Greeley and told him I wanted to go to Europe for the newspaper. He said : ' Dana, that's no use. You don't know anything about European matters. You would have to get your education be- fore your correspondence was worth your expenses.' Then I asked him how much he would pay me for a letter a week. ' Ten dollars,' he said. I went across and wrote one letter a week to ' The Tribune ' for ten ; one to McMichael's Philadelphia ' North American' for ten ; one to ' The Commercial Advertiser ' in New York for ten ; and to ' The Harbinger ' and 'The Chronotype' one apiece for five. That gave me forty dollars a week for five letters, until ' The Chrono-: type ' went up, and then I had thirty-five. On this I lived in Europe eight months, went everywhere, saw plenty of revolu- tions, supported myself there and my fam- ily here in New York, and came home only sixty-three dollars out for the whole trip." Mr. Dana had married, in 1846, Miss Eunice Macdaniel, who then lived in Walker Street, New York. " On returning from Europe," Mr. Dana went on, continuing the narrative of his early journalism in the financial aspect personal to himself, " I went back to ' The Tribune ' at twenty dollars a week. That and twenty-five dollars were the figures for a long time ; in fact, until another news- paper offered me one hundred. I went to ' The Tribune ' people and told them I couldn't afford to stay at twenty-five. They reminded me gently that Mr. Greeley drew only fifty dollars; it clearly wouldn't do for me to get more than he had. So they gave me fifty, the same as Horace had, and that was the highest salary I ever received on ' The Tribune.' I worked for fifty until I went into the War Department with Stanton." V. IN the "Tribune" establishment, dur- ing the exciting ten years that prepared for and ushered in the Civil War, Mr. Dana supplied the journalistic qualities which Mr. Greeley lacked. Every newspaper man understands that while Horace Gree- ley was a great genius, with a power of writing that drove thought home with a force and a piquancy unsurpassed, he was not a great editor in the proper sense of the word. Dana, with his wider range of intellectual interest, his more accurate sense of news perspective, his saner and steadier judgment of men and events, and his vastly superior executive ability, im- pressed his own personality upon the journal of which he was one of the pro- prietors, and more than nominally the managing editor. The brilliant staff which Mr. Greeley and Mr. Dana gathered around them during the long fight against the extension of slavery, and for the organization of that sentiment in the North which gave birth to the Republican party, included among other writers Bayard Taylor, George Ripley, William Henry Fry, Richard Hildreth the historian, the Count Adam Gurowski, and James S. Pike. The private letters from Greeley and Dana published by Mr. Pike some years before his death, in a volume entitled " First Blows of the Civil War,." and those letters of Greeley to Dana which have found their way into print, sketch the inner workings of the "Tribune" office during this most interesting period. The "Tribune" men were dead in earnest, work- ing both for a great principle and for newspaper fortune. Greeley, uneven in temperament, is seen alternating between enthusiasm and despondency ; sometimes putting in the heaviest licks, sometimes dispirited almost to hopelessness in face of the South, and harassed by the cranks and impracticables at the North. " At the outset," writes the Hon. Henry Wilson in his " Rise and Fall of the " Slave Power, " Mr. Greeley seemed disinclined to enter the contest. He told his associates that he would not restrain them, but, as for himself, he had no heart for the strife." Dana, the central figure in the activity of the establishment, overflowing with vital- ity, enterprise, and pertinacious cheerful- ness, lived ten lives in the ten years that carried him from thirty to forty. We see him prodding the sluggards and holding back the over-hasty ; taking the whole re- sponsibility on his shoulders during Gree- MR. DANA OF " THE SUN." 89 #$a.cr.c.~; MR. DANA S HOUSE ON DOSORIS ISLAND AS SEEN FROM THE DRIVEWAY. ley's protracted vacations in Europe ; rush- ing off to the stump for some favorite Free Soil candidate ; laying plans to gratify his chief's tacit but unconquerable desire for public office ; arranging newspaper com- binations in New York, and sending " The Weekly Tribune " up to two hundred and eighty thousand among the farmers of the Northern States ; rinding fun in every new phase of politics, while keeping the paper straight on its course as the leading organ of anti-slavery sentiment, and working night and day with as serious a purpose as ever animated any journalist ; and in brief intervals of leisure running down to his family at Westport, and writing thence such descriptions of tranquil domesticity as this : " I have been busy with my children, driving them about in old Bradley's one- horse wagon, rowing and sailing with them on the bay and Sound, gathering shells on the shore with them, picking cherries, lounging on the grass, gazing into the sky with the whole tribe about me. Who'd think of paying notes under such circum- stances ? There's no delight like that in a pack of young children of your own. Love is selfish, friendship is exacting, but this other affection gives all and asks noth- ing. The man who hasn't half a dozen young children about him must have a very mean conception of life. Besides, there ought always to be a baby in every house. A house without a baby is in- human." It was during these crowded years just before the war that Mr. Dana found time to project and produce, in connection with Mr. Ripley, the " American Cyclopedia," an undertaking that involved on his part an amount of editorial labor that would have seemed formidable to any other man. While this tremendous job was still in hand, he prepared and published the first edition of his " Household Book of Poetry," one of the best anthologies in existence, shaped by a catholic taste and a genuine love of poetry. Few books have gone into more American homes, or counted more for sound education and continuing pleasure. In the last year of Mr. Dana's fifteen years' connection with " The Tribune," he made an unsuccessful effort to put Horace Greeley in the place wherein that sage fancied he would be most useful to his country ; that is to say, in the Senate of the United States. The most important consequence of the estrangement which had brought about the dissolution of the political firm of Seward, Weed and Greeley, had been the defeat of Seward at Chicago, and the nomination of Abraham Lincoln ; 9 o HUMAN DOCUMENTS. a fortunate event largely, if not princi- pally, due to the attitude of the " Tribune" men towards Seward. Early in the spring of 1860, Greeley was privately offering to bet twenty dollars against Seward's nomi- nation, and was defining his own position in this philosophic, if somewhat profane, fashion : " I don't care what is done about the nomination. I know what ought to be done ; and having set that forth, am con- tent. I stand in the position of the rich old fellow who, having built a church entirely out of his own means, addressed his towns- men thus : " ' I've built you a meeting-house, And bought you a bell ; Now go to meeting, Or go to h ! ' " The next year the New York Legislature had to elect a senator to succeed Mr. Sew- ard, then already chosen by Mr. Lincoln to be his Secretary of State. Mr. Dana went to Albany in Greeley's interest, and managed a campaign which nearly resulted in his nomination by the Republican caucus. The vote was almost equally divided be- tween Mr. Greeley's friends and those of Mr. William Maxwell Evarts ; while a few legislators, pledged to Judge Ira Harris, held the balance of power. Thurlow Weed defeated Greeley by procuring the transfer of the entire Evarts vote to Judge Harris, an achievement which partially squared the Chicago account, and which is interesting as the last incident of a famous political quarrel. Mr. Dana withdrew from " The Tribune " on April i, 1862. His resignation as man- aging editor was due to a radical disagree- ment between Mr. Greeley and himself as to the newspaper's policy with regard to the conduct of the war. Mr. Dana was immediately asked by Secretary Stanton to go to Cairo to examine and settle the ac- counts of the Quartermaster's Department. The job involved the investigation of tan- gled and disputed claims against the Gov- ernment, amounting to between one and two millions of dollars. By far the larger part of the claims were found to be unsound, and were rejected. This work, and other special work of importance to which Stan- ton at once assigned Mr. Dana, led to his appointment as Assistant Secretary of War, an office which he held until the end of hostilities. VI. MR. DANA'S services as Assistant Secre- tary of War are matters of public history, and need be related here only so far as they illustrate the character of the man, or help to describe the perimeter of his many-sided experience. Mr. Lincoln once defined one of Mr. Dana's functions during the war period by styling him "the eyes of the Government at the front." For perhaps a third of the whole time between his appointment as Assistant Secretary of War and the fall of Richmond, Mr. Dana represented the De- partment at the scene of operations. He was with Grant before and behind and around Vicksburg for four months. He saw the Chattanooga campaign from be- ginning to end. He went with Sherman to the relief of Burnside in Knoxville. He was in the Wilderness, and at Spottsylvania, and everywhere with the army throughout the tremendous fighting in the spring of 1864. He was with Sheridan in the Shen- andoah Valley in the autumn of that year ; and he travelled with Grant back to W r ash- ington from Richmond, after the surrender of Lee and the death of the Confederacy. For months at a time he was at the front, in the saddle, on the march, on the field when there was fighting, living at army headquarters as the official repre- sentative of the civil authority, in close personal relations with the commanding generals, fully posted as to their intended movements and largest plans, and sending back to Washington, over General Eckert's wires, daily, and often hourly, despatches for the information of the Secretary of War and the President. Dana's reports to Stanton, when they were of importance, as they generally were, went straight to the White House as soon as they had been translated from the cipher. These despatches, distinguished by com- mon sense, clear perception, direct and fearless statement, and utter lack of respect for foolish or unnecessary routine, consti- tute what is unquestionably the most im- portant work of reporting ever done by any newspaperman. The same qualities which make Mr. Dana a great journalist, made him a consummate reporter of military events. Lincoln saw from the first that he had committed no mistake in his choice of a pair of eyes. He wanted, most of all, the absolute truth of the situation the broad truth freed from unessential details as it appeared to a swift and accurate intelli- gence and a keen judge of human charac- ter. He got it, and more, in Dana's de- spatches and letters to Stanton. In the routine reports of the military service, tardy in arrival, and in construction ham- MR. DANA OF " THE SUN." 9 1 pered by all of the conventions, the leaders and lesser officers upon whose personal qualities depended, in the last analysis, the fate of the Union cause, figured merely as names, with hardly more individuality than so many algebraic symbols. In the Assistant Secretary's reports the men in the field jump into life in from two to half a dozen lines of rapid portraiture. They stood before Lincoln in his study in the White House as if they were there in per- son, with all of their virtues and imperfec- tions. A few words of incidental charac- terization, a half humorous reference to some small incident, gave the President a better understanding of the remote instru- relied, as it has always been his habit to rely, with full confidence upon the soundness of his own electric intuitions. He repre- sented the facts about men and affairs at the front precisely as he himself saw them, without fear or favor, and without terror of precedent. His sole purpose at any time was to give the Government at Wash- ington the information of which it had need at that time. In the whirl and din of the front he sometimes made mistakes of fact, and was quick to correct them. He misjudged men occasionally, and at the earliest opportunity put them right again. He kept his head at times when camp sentiment and even headquarters MR. DANA S HOUSE ON DOSORIS ISLAND AS IT FRONTS LONG ISLAND SOUND. ments through which he was working to suppress the Rebellion than he could have derived by any other medium short of his own personal observation of the men them- selves. Miles of the customary military re- ports were worth less to Lincoln, for his purposes, than half a dozen of Dana's vivid sentences. It is quite obvious that in most hands this would be a dangerous and misleading method of reporting military events. Few men in Mr. Dana's place would have had the courage to disregard so entirely the conventional formula! of official communi- cation ; few men in Mr. Lincoln's place would have been so quick to recognize and appreciate the value of the service. Mr. Dana treated his subject in the only way possible to his mind and pen. He were in the delirium of false hope, or in the indigo depths of unnecessary discour- agement. Upon the steadiness of Dana's judgment, the justice of his observations, and the singleness of his patriotic purpose, Abra- ham Lincoln came to depend more and more during the last two years of the war. It is impossible to look over the Assistant Secretary's telegrams and letters from the front, either those already printed in the voluminous collection of war documents issuing from the Government Press, or the equally important papers that still belong to unpublished history, without wondering at the discernment shown in his early estimates cf leaders then almost unknown ; at the sureness with which he distinguished the stuffed heroes from the real ones, recog- HUMAN DOCUMENTS. A CORNER OF THE LIBRARY AT DOSORIS. nized latent military genius, and detected the bogus article under no matter what pretentiousness of pomp and circumstance ; or at the extent to which his observations and suggestions from the field influenced the military policy of the Administration, and helped to determine the career of generals, the achievements of armies, and the destiny of the national cause. From the hundreds of character sketches swiftly drawn at first sight for the in- formation of Stanton and Lincoln, take, for example, this estimate of John A. Logan, then not very conspicuous among the volunteer generals for the Western States: "This is a man of remarkable qualities and peculiar character. Heroic and brilliant, he is sometimes unsteady. Inspiring his men with his own enthusiasm on the field of battle, he is splendid in all its crash and commotion ; but before it begins he is doubtful of the result, and after it is over he is fearful we may yet be beaten. A man of instinct, and not of reflection, his judgments are often absurd, but his extem- poraneous opinions are very apt to be right. Deficient in education ; deficient, too, in a nice and elevated moral sense, he is full of generous attachments and sincere animosi- ties. On the whole, few can serve the cause of the country more effectively than he, and none will serve it more faithfully." Mentioning Sherman at the time when that commander's name was scarcely known in the East, except for his failure to take Vicksburg in the December previous to Grant's success at that point, Dana writes nothing but admiration and praise : "Sher- man tolerates no idlers, and finds some- thing for everybody to do. The Chief of Artillery [in the Fifteenth Corps staff], Major Taylor, directed by Sherman's omni- present eye and quick judgment, is an offi- cer of great value, although under another general he might not be worth so much. On the whole, General Sherman has a very small and a very efficient staff, but the efficiency comes mainly from him. What a splendid soldier he is ! " Long afterwards, when Sherman was about to start on his march to the sea, it became Mr. Dana's official duty to rebuke that commander, gently and indirectly, for his lack of one of the prime qualities of good generalship, namely, tightness of mouth concerning his own military plans. Grant had been annoyed by the publica- tion in certain Western newspapers of au- thentic intelligence concerning Sherman's intended movements. The silent general complained of this to Stanton, implying that the leakage was in the War Depart- ment. There was a prompt investigation, and it proved that one of Sherman's pay- masters was communicating to his friends the general's plans as stated by Sherman himself. Stanton got hold of, a letter written by a member of Sherman's staff to MR. DANA OF " THE SUN." 93 somebody in Washington, also giving full details of projects which it was better the enemy should not know. " If Sherman cannot keep from telling his plans to paymasters," wrote Stanton angrily to Grant, " and his staff are per- mitted to send them broadcast over the land, the Department cannot prevent their publication." Dana thereupon politely notified Sher- man that correct information was escaping from headquarters at Atlanta and getting into the public prints ; and he received this cheerful, if somewhat irresponsible, reply : " To Hon. C. A. Dana, Assistant Secre- tary of War : If indiscreet newspaper men publish information too near the truth, counteract its effect by publishing other paragraphs calculated to mislead the en- emy, such as, ' Sherman's army has been much reenforced lately, especially in the cavalry, and he will soon move by several columns in circuit, so as to catch Hood's army;' or, 'Sherman's destination is not Charleston, but Selma, where he will meet an army from the Gulf.' " VII. EARLY in September, 1864, Mr. Dana went to Rosecrans's headquarters at Chat- tanooga to accompany the Army of the Cumberland in the great movement which was then expected to be the finishing blow of the war. On his way down through Tennessee he had a long interview with Andrew Johnson on the political future of that almost reconquered State. When he reached headquarters at Stevens's Gap, Rosecrans received him with proper cour- tesy, but at once began a long tirade against Stanton. " General," said Mr. Dana, " I am not here to report your opinion of Mr. Stan- ton. If there's anything your army needs, or that you want done by the Department, tell me, and you shall have it." The Assistant Secretary had not been many weeks with this estimable gentle- man, but most unfortunate soldier, before he saw clearly that what the army needed above all things was another commander. The disastrous day of Chickamauga came, with its casualty list on the Union side of sixteen hundred killed, nine thousand wounded, and five thousand prisoners or missing, and its blunder of generalship ren- dering useless this awful sacrifice. Dana witnessed the rout of Sheridan's and Da- vis's divisions, and was swept off that part of the field in the panic which seemed like another Bull Run. The first news which he sends to Stanton and Lincoln is disheartening, but he is able to modify it a few hours later, when he gets from Gen- eral Garfield the story of Thomas's heroic stand at the left of the long line. Rose- crans withdraws the entire army into Chat- tanooga, and begins to waver between plans for resistance and plans for further _and final retreat. He follows up the great blunder of the Chickamauga day with the almost equally expensive mistake of with- drawing the Union forces which held Look- out Mountain, and abandoning that posi- tion to Bragg's army. This much of history is necessary in order to understand the full significance of Mr. Dana's despatch to Stanton on Sep- tember 24th, two days after the retreat into Chattanooga, recommending the removal of Rosecrans and the substitution of "some Western general of high rank and great prestige, like Grant." Six days later, after a long and frank talk with Garfield, then Rosecrans's chief of staff, Mr. Dana repeated urgently his recommendation that Rosecrans should be removed ; and he suggested that Thomas, "the rock of Chickamauga," be put in command. " He is certainly," wrote Dana, "an officer of the very highest qualities, soldierly and personal." An incident very creditable to Thomas then occurred. On the strength of the camp gossip, Brigadier-General Rousseau, who was briefly described by Dana to Stanton as a person "regarded throughout this army as an ass of eminent gifts," went on his own account to Thomas, and informed him that the War Department was inquiring how the army would like 'to have him in the chief command. Thomas at once sent a confidential friend to Dana to say that while ready to answer any other call to duty, he could not consent to become the successor of Rosecrans, because he would not do anything to countenance the suspicion that he had intrigued against his commander. Meanwhile, with Thomas holding to this attitude on the question of his own pro- motion, affairs at Chattanooga went from bad to worse. The army had lost both confidence in its commander and spirit for the work ahead. At headquarters incapacity ruled, with fluctuating designs, fussiness over details, procrastination on frivolous pretexts, and seeming indifference to the perils that were gathering about the army as the autumn grew older. Dana telegraphed again on October 12 : 94 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. " I have never seen a public man pos- sessing talent with less administrative power, less steadiness and clearness in difficulty, and greater practical incapacity than General Rosecrans. He has invention, fertility, and knowledge, but he has no strength of will and no concentration of purpose. His mind scatters; there is no system in the use of his busy days and restless nights ; no courage against individ- uals, in his composition ; and, with great love of command, he is a feeble commander. He is conscientious and honest, just as he is imperious and disputatious; always with a stray vein of caprice, and an overweening passion for the approbation of his personal friends and the public outside. I consider the army to be very unsafe in his hands, but know of no man except Thomas who could now be safely put in his place." The sequel is well known. A week later Mr. Dana went to Nashville, returning to Chattanooga the next day in company with General Grant; the train narrowly escaping wreck on a high embankment, where a railroad tie had been planted on the track by rebel sympathizers for the destruction of the Union commander. Two days later Rosecrans had been prac- tically superseded by both Grant and Thomas, through a military reorganization by which the former took the command of the military departments of the Tennessee, Ohio, and Cumberland, and the latter the command of the old Army of the Cumber- land, increased by the addition of the Eleventh and Twelfth Corps. Then fol- lowed the splendid actions around Chat- tanooga,Orchard Knob,Lookout Mountain, Missionary Ridge, with their momentous results. Mr. Dana saw the storming of the Ridge, perhaps the most glorious and picturesque exploit of the whole war. He telegraphed to Stanton : " Glory to God ! the day is decisively ours. Missionary Ridge has just been carried by a magnificent charge of Thomas's troops, and the rebels routed." And after- wards : " The storming of the Ridge -was one of the greatest miracles in military history. No man who climbs the ascent by any of the roads that wind along its front can believe that eighteen thousand men were moved up its broken and crum- bling face, unless it was his fortune to witness the deed. It seems as awful as a visible interposition of God. Neither Grant nor Thomas intended it. Their orders were to carry the rifle-pits along the base of the Ridge and capture their occu- pants ; but, when this was done, the unac- countable spirit of the troops bore them bodily up these impracticable steeps, over the bristling rifle-pits on the crest and the thirty cannon enfilading every gully. The order to storm appears to have been given simultaneously by Generals Sheridan and Wood, because the men were not to be held back, dangerous as the attempt ap- peared to military prudence. Besides, the generals had caught the inspiration of the men, and were themselves ready to under- take impossibilities." In the middle of December Mr. Dana went back to Washington, at Grant's request, to explain that general's wishes in regard to the winter campaign. VIII. MR. DANA'S relations with Grant, from his first acquaintance with him at Vicks- burg until the end of the war, were of a peculiarly interesting character. There is no doubt that Grant's military and personal fortunes were at a critical stage when Dana went down to Vicksburg from the War Department early in the spring of 1863. The long delay in capturing the rebel stronghold had started up all the grumblers and growlers at the North. Amazing reports were current, and generally credited, as to personal habits which unfitted the general for high or continuous responsibility. McClernand hoped to regain the command of the expedition, and it was notorious that he and his friends were intriguing against Grant. Other enemies were raising a clamor in the newspapers, and demanding Grant's removal. General Sherman has testified that at this time even Mr. Lincoln and General Halleck seemed to be losing confidence in Grant. His local successes had been brilliant, but the true measure of his military ability and his capacity for larger enterprises were as yet unknown quantities. Mr. Dana's firm belief in Grant's staying powers and certain future x usefulness to the country, was based on close and accurate observation of his character. His letters and despatches from Vicksburg, urging the retention of the general as strongly as he afterwards urged the removal of Rosecrans, for the sake of the Union cause, effectually silenced Grant's enemies at Washington, and un- questionably deterred the Administration from a colossal mistake which, as every- body can now see, would have changed the whole course of history. The Assistant Secretary was in camp with Grant frequently during the rest of MR. DANA OF " THE SUN." 95 the war. The general liked to have Dana at headquarters, and that was likewise the case with the other commanders with whom his missions to the front brought him in- to personal association. Whatever there might be of military jealousy of civilian supervision, yielded to the charm of his companionship and the tact with which he performed his delicate duties. The com- manders quickly discovered that he was there not in any sense as a watch over, or check upon, their operations, but to help them along with all of the aid the Depart- ment and the Administration could render. The generals were invariably Mr. Dana's friends. When the fighting began in the Wilder- ness, in May, 1864, the bloodiest month of the whole war, Dana was summoned to the War Department late one night, when he was at a party. He hurried over to the Department in his evening dress. The President was there, talking very soberly with Stanton. " Dana," said Mr. Lincoln, " you know we have been in the dark for two days since Grant moved. We are very much troubled, and have concluded to send you down there. How soon can you start ? " " In half an hour," replied Dana. In about that time he had an engine fired up at Alexandria, a cavalry escort awaiting him there, and with his own horse was aboard the train at Maryland Avenue that was to take him to Alexandria. His only baggage was a toothbrush. He was just starting, when an orderly galloped with word that the President wished to see him. Dana rode back to the Department in hot haste. Mr. Lincoln was sitting in the same place. " Well, Dana," said he, looking up, " since you went away I've been thinking about it. I don't like to send you down there." " Why not, Mr. President ? " asked Dana, a little surprised. " You can't tell," continued the Presi- dent, " just where Lee is, or what he is doing ; and Jeb Stuart is rampaging around pretty lively in between the Rappa- hannock and the Rapidan. It's a consid- erable risk, and I don't like to expose you to it." " Mr. President," said Dana, " I have a cavalry guard ready and a good horse my- self. If it comes to the worst, we are equipped to run. It's getting late, and I A VIEW OF THE PARLORS AT DOSORIS. 9 6 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. want to get down to the Rappahannock by daylight. I think I'll start." " Well now, Dana," said the President, with a little twinkle in his eyes, " if you feel that way, I rather wish you would. Good night, and God bless you." He reached the scene of action on May 7th, without encountering the redoubtable Jeb Stuart, who was mortally wounded five days later in an engagement with Sheridan's cavalry. Dana saw all of the fighting of the next two months, and rode with Grant to the James and to the front of Petersburg. From Cold Harbor, on June yth, Grant telegraphs to Stanton that Mr. Dana's full despatches render un- necessary frequent or extended despatches from himself. Read continuously, these Virginia despatches of Mr. Dana's afford a panorama of that tremendous campaign as powerfully drawn and as vivid in color as his story of the three months at Chat- tanooga. Here is an interesting request from Grant to the War Department, as for- warded by Mr. Dana the day before the assault on Petersburg : " General Grant wishes that you would send him five hundred thousand dollars in Confederate money for use in a cavalry expedition which he prefers to pay for every- thing taken." The conscientious raid con- templated in this financial ar- rangement was probably the same expedition, led by General James Harrison Wilson, which gives us incidentally in Dana's despatches, a fortnight later, a flashlight view of General Meade. Wilson was one of the youngest, as well as one of the best and bravest soldiers in the Union army, and he distinguished himself in a thousand ways besides his capture of Jef- ferson Davis. He was accused by the Richmond " Examiner " of stealing, while on this raid, not only negroes and horses, but also silver plate and clothing. On the young general's return, Meade summons him to headquarters, and, " taking the ' Examiner's ' statement for truth, reads him a lecture and demands an explanation. Wilson gravely denies the charge of rob- bing women and churches, and hopes that Meade will not be ready to condemn his command because its operations have ex- cited the ire of the enemy." A picture of Lincoln, on his visit to the front in June, 1864 : " The President arrived here about noon, and has just returned from visiting the lines before Petersburg. As he came back, he passed through the division of colored troops under General Hinks, which so greatly dis- tinguished itself on Wednesday last. They were drawn up in double lines on each side of the road, and welcomed him with hearty shouts. It was a memorable thing to behold the President, whose fortune it is to represent the principles of emancipa- tion, passing bare-headed through the en- A CORNER OF THE PARLOR. thusiastic ranks of those negroes armed to defend the integrity of the American Nation." IX. AT his desk in the War Department in Washington Mr. Dana was the same man as at his desk in the "Tribune " office or in the " Sun " office. The visitor, whatever his business, met with a courteous recep- tion, was listened to attentively and with- out any signs of undue haste, and then got a very prompt and decisive answer. Mr. Dana's remarkable capacity for disposing of questions and of persons swiftly, justly, and, in rightful cases, satisfactorily to the applicant, soon attracted Lincoln's atten- tion, and he made good use of it. It was MR. DANA OF " THE SUN." 97 the President's habit, during the last two years of his life, to send over from the White House to the Assistant Secretary's office all sorts of people, from war governors to soldiers' sweethearts, bearing little cards like this : The Assistant Secretary's numberless functions when not at the front gave full employment to his energy. He conducted a good part of the more important official correspondence of the Department. His despatches to Grant and other commanders kept them informed of whatever it was necessary to know of the progress of events outside of their own immediate field. At one time he is in the Northwest untangling the red tape with which the governors of some of the States tied up at home troops which the Government badly needed for service. At another time he is looking after the plots of the rebel conspirators across the Canadian frontier. He receives reports, sends orders, investigates abuses, adjusts controversies, attends to multifari- ous details of routine, and runs the Depart- ment in Mr. Stanton's absence. Only once, as far as I am aware, did any general attempt to obtain a reversal of one of Mr. Dana's decisions. It was a small matter, but the incident now seems rather amusing. The Union Ladies' Committee of Balti- more proposed to provide a Thanksgiving dinner for the wounded in the hospitals there, and permission was asked by friends of the wounded Confederate prisoners to feed them likewise. Mr. Dana promptly granted it, seeing no great peril to the Union cause in turkey and cranberry sauce. Thereupon General Lew Wallace, in command at Baltimore, telegraphed to Stanton, through the Adjutant-General's office, this ringing and rhetorical protest : " I hope the permission given by Hon. Mr. Dana, Assistant Secretary of War, to feast the rebel prisoners in hospital, will be withdrawn. I was not consulted. Had I been, I would have objected to the mak- ing of such a request. The permission will be construed as a license to make manifest once more the disloyalty, now completely cowed in this city. I beg the sleeping fiend may be let alone." Stanton's reply was a short lesson in common sense. " The ^-^^ Secretary sees no objection to supplies for Thanksgiving being received and distributed to rebel prisoners by our Union Com- mittee, provided our own men receive an equal share." The poor rebel wounded got their Thanksgiving dinner, and the sleeping fiend slept the better for being fed. X. MR. DANA'S duties brought him into per- sonal contact, and often into intimate ac- quaintance, with nearly every conspicuous figure of the period, in civil or military life. With Stanton and with Lincoln, of course, his relations were particularly close. For both of those remarkable men his memory cherishes profound admiration and warm af- fection. Between Lincoln and Dana there was a bond in their common and equally strong perception of the humorous. The quality was lacking in Stanton ; and when Lincoln, on the night of the Presidential election of 1864, sat in the War Department awaiting the nation's verdict upon his ad- ministration, and sought to relieve the in- tense strain of the hour by reading aloud some of the nonsense of Petroleum V. Nasby and commenting upon the same, it was to the Assistant Secretary and not to the Sec- retary that the extraordinary lecture was addressed. Stanton listened with amaze- ment. He could scarcely control his dis- gust and indignation at what seemed to him the unaccountable frivolity of such a performance at such a time. Mr. Dana first saw Mr. Lincoln soon after his inauguration in March, 1861. He went to the W T hite House with a party of New York Republicans on a political errand. The interview was in progress, and the President was explaining his views as to the New York patronage, when a door opened, and a tall and lank employee stuck in his head and made this announce- ment : " She wants you ! " " Yes, yes," said Mr. Lincoln, visibly annoyed, and he went on with the explana- tion of his views. HUMAN DOCUMENTS. Presently the door opened again, and the messenger returned : " I say she wants you ! " Four years afterwards Mr. Dana came up to Washington from Richmond with Grant after the final victory of the Union army. He reached the capital on April i3th. On the afternoon of the i4th he re- ceived a despatch from Portland, Maine, reporting that Jacob Thompson was ex- pected to pass through that town in dis- guise, on his way from Canada to England. Stanton was for arresting the rebel Com- missioner, but he sent Dana over to the White House to see the President about it. Lincoln was in the little closet just off his office, in his shirt-sleeves, washing his large hands. " Halloa, Dana," he said ; "what is it now ? " Dana explained that Mr. Stanton had an opportunity to arrest Thompson, and thought it ought to be done. " Well," drawled Lincoln, " I think not. When you have an elephant on hand and he wants to run away, better let him run.". A few hours later Abraham Lincoln lay unconscious in the little bedroom in the Petersen house, opposite Ford's Theatre. Dana was with Stanton until two o'clock in the room adjoining the death-chamber. Then he went home to sleep. He was awakened in the morning by a knock at his door. It was Colonel Pelouze, one of the assistant adjutant-generals. " Mr. Dana," said Colonel Pelouze, " Mr. Lincoln is dead, and Mr. Stanton directs you to arrest Jacob Thompson." I have dwelt, perhaps, beyond the limits of due proportion upon the two years spent by Mr. Dana in the only public office he ever held, and constituting the only inter- ruption to his continuous professional career of half a century. He talks much less than one would expect about his ex- periences during the war period, and has shown no signs of a disposition to put in permanent form the unequalled material afforded by his personal recollections of that period. Indeed, an almost curious indifference to past history, especially as concerning his own performances, is a noticeable trait of his character. With the keenest sense of news perspective in the matter of recording contemporaneous his- tory, and with insatiable avidity for its facts of all sorts, he is inclined to regard as " old " things back of day before yes- terday, or at least back of week before last. Possibly it is not natural that the historical impulse and the journalistic in- stinct, each in the highest form, should coexist. But Mr. Dana is always glad to see his friends of the war time, and he smiles when some veteran whom he last met it may be at Milliken's Bend, or Craw- fish Springs, or New Bethesda Meeting House, persists in addressing him as Gen- eral Dana, a military title which is not his by right. XI. THE failure of the Chicago " Repub- lican " enterprise, in which Mr. Dana en- gaged after the Civil War was over, is still a mystery to those who know the man, but do not know the facts. The active pro- moter was a Mr. Mack, and the concern was organized with a capital of five hun- dred thousand dollars on paper. Only a very small part of this, perhaps sixty or eighty thousand dollars, was ever paid up, a large block of the stock being set aside as a bonus to induce some eminent man to become the editor. Mack went to Mr. Dana soon after Lee's surrender, and brought the influence of the Hon. Lyman Trumbull and others to bear in order to persuade him to accept the place. Mr. Dana went out to Chicago, and was wel- comed with a banquet. On his part, and on the part of his friends in Chicago, there was complete ignorance of the true state of the concern's finances. Mack tried to build up a newspaper without cash. Mr. Dana took his stock, and became nominally editor-in-chief at a nominal salary of seven thousand or ten thousand dollars, he doesn't remember which, on a five years' or eight years' contract. A little later, when the emergencies of the concern com- pelled an assessment, he paid his notes to the amount of ten thousand dollars in good faith. He did not discover till after- wards that his was the sole response to the assessment. The business part of the es- tablishment got in so bad a way on account of the lack of money, that, to disentangle himself, Mr. Dana offered to relinquish all of his stock, to release the company from its contract with him, and to quit, for ten thousand dollars in cash. That was paid to him, and he got out about square. After- wards, by advice of counsel, he declined to pay the notes given by him at the time of the peculiar assessment already spoken of. Suit was brought against him, but after occupying the Illinois courts for ten or a dozen years, the case was decided in Mr. Dana's favor. Under such circumstances, he was editor of the Chicago " Republican " MR. DANA OF " THE SUN." 99 THE BILLIARD HOUSE AT DOSORIS. for about a year, and during that time it was a bright, spunky newspaper. Then Mr. Dana came to New York, and, under conditions very different from those of the Chicago undertaking, acquired with his friends the old " Sun " establishment, which had been owned for thirty years by the Beach family. He took possession of the property at the beginning of 1868, and soon afterwards moved into the little corner room already described. From that time until this Mr. Dana has been the editor of " The Sun " in the full sense of the word. He is, and always has been, in sole charge. The prosperity of " The Sun," its achieve- ments, and its position among the journals of the country, express Mr. Dana's absolute control over its every department. But this is not the story of a newspaper. It is only a necessarily imperfect sketch of the man who edits that newspaper ; whose person- ality, however, perhaps to a greater extent than in the case of any other conspicuous journalist, is identified with the newspaper he edits. XII. WHAT are Mr. Dana's theories of journal- ism ? At the bottom of my heart, I don't believe he ever stopped to think ; that is to say, to formulate anything of the kind, apart from his general ideas of human in- terest, common sense, and the inborn know- how. He has always been much more con- cerned about the practical question of mak- ing for to-morrow morning a paper which its purchasers will be sure to read. Mr. Dana has lectured more than once on jour- nalism, and his audiences and the readers of his published remarks have been de- lighted with his presentation of the subject ; but his experience is too ripe and his wis- dom far too alert to attempt a code of spe- cific directions for the making of a great newspaper. The range of a newspaper depends first of all upon the breadth of its editor's sympathy with human affairs, and the diversity of things in which he takes a personal interest. If he is genuine, its qualities are his ; and nothing that is in him, or that he can procure, is too good to go into its ephemeral pages. What Mr. Dana himself writes, in " The Sun " or elsewhere, has that indefinable piquant quality of style which holds your interest and makes you read on without conscious effort, instead of laboring on with admiration the flavor that is in Charles Reade, but not in George Meredith or George Eliot ; in Saint-Simon and Sainte- Beuve, but not in Ruskin or Gibbon ; in field strawberries, but not in California peaches. When he was a very young man, Mr. Dana wrote poetry. Among his earliest contributions to periodical literature were from half a dozen to a dozen sonnets, usu- ally of sixteen lines, published between 1841 and 1844 in various numbers of " The Dial," the remarkable magazine which Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and George Ripley edited for the benefit of a small but earnest group of men and women. " The Dial " was printed quarterly for about four 100 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. years, and among Mr. Dana's fellow con- tributors during that period were Emerson, Thoreau, Channing, Christopher P. Cranch, James Russell Lowell, and Jones Very. Perhaps one of Dana's poems, written fifty-one years ago, will have now the same interest as a " human document," as would the daguerreotype of him in early manhood which the editor of this magazine has not been lucky enough to find : VIA SACRA. Slowly along the crowded street I go. Marking with reverent look each passer's face, Seeking, and not in vain, in each to trace That primal soul whereof he is the show. For here still move, by many eyes unseen, The blessed gods that erst Olympus kept ; Through every guise these lofty forms serene Declare the all-holding Life hath never slept ; But known each thrill that in Man's heart hath been, And every tear that his sad eyes have wept. Alas for us ! the heavenly visitants, We greet them still as most unwelcome guests, Answering their smile with hateful looks askance, Their sacred speech with foolish, bitter jests ; But oh ! what is it to imperial Jove That this poor world refuses all his love ! That was in 1843. During the half cen- tury since then, Mr. Dana has read more poetry and written less than any other man on earth in whom the love of verse is genu- ine and strong. In judging and using the prose or poetry of others, he is hospitable to almost any respectable style or method, no matter how different from his own, as long as the writer has something to say. His tastes are very catholic. He can tolerate either a style approaching barrenness in its simplicity, or rhetoric that is florid and ornate in the ex- treme, providing it conveys ideas that are not rubbish. He is continually reaching out for fresh vigor, unconventional modes, originality of thought and phrase. If all of Mr. Dana's staff of writers should happen to be cast in one mould, or should gradually assimilate themselves to a single type, so that there was monotony of expression in his newspaper, he would become uneasy. The first thing that would probably occur to him to do would be to send out for a blacksmith, or perhaps the second mate of a tramp steamship, or what not, to write for "The Sun" in the interest of virility and variety. If the man had good ideas, all right ; Mr. Dana himself would attend to the syntax. Imagination is a quality for which he has the highest respect, but it must go with sin- cerity. Dulness he cannot stand. He is as impatient of wishy-washy writing as of cant. He pities a fool and can be kind to him, but he hates a sham ; and this hatred, seated in the profoundest depths of his na- ture, is the key to much that has puzzled some observers of Mr. Dana's professional career. He communicates his individuality and methods to those around him unconscious- ly and by personal force, rather than by any attempt at didactics. No office is less a school of journalism in the sense of formal instruction, or even of systematic sugges- tion, than the " Sun " office. In all of his relations with his subordi- nates and assistants in every department, Mr. Dana is a model chief. He is true to his helpers, reasonable in his requirements, constant in a good opinion once formed. His eyes are on every part of the paper every day, and they are not less sharp for points of defect than for points of excel- lence, but his tongue is ten times quicker to praise than to blame. Generous and prompt recognition of good service of any sort, or of honest, although only partially successful, effort, is habitual with him. His condemnation can be particularly em- phatic, if there is occasion for emphasis ; small literary sins and venial infractions of discipline provoke him to humorous com- miseration, rather than to anger. He never fusses, never is overbearing, never quarrels with what can't be helped. Mr. Augustin Daly tells a story about a visit of his to Mr. Dana's office to remon- strate upon what the manager regarded as too severe criticism of Miss Ada Rehan's performance in a certain part. The pres- ent publisher of " The Sun " was at that time its dramatic critic. " I found no difficulty," says Mr. Daly, " in getting an audience with Mr. Dana. He glanced up from his work and asked, cheerily, ' What can I do for you to-day ? ' "'Mr. Dana,' I began with great firm- ness, 'I have called to try to convince you that you should discharge your dramatic editor. He has ' '"Yes, I see,' he interrupted, all suavity and smiles. ' Well, Mr. Daly, I will speak to Mr. Laffan about this matter, and if he thinks that he really deserves to be dis- charged, I will most certainly do it.' " There is an apocryphal tradition, prob- ably with some slight foundation of fact, which will do as well as if it were entirely true to illustrate Mr. Dana's indifference to disturbing elements, except as they may be useful for newspaper purposes. One night, in the early times of "The Sun," the MR. DANA OF " THE SUN." 101 city editor rushed in from the outside room. " The Sun's " editorial office then consisted of four rooms, all small. " Mr. Dana," exclaimed the city editor, " there's a man out there with a cocked revolver. He is very much excited. He insists on seeing the editor-in-chief." " Is he very much excited ? " replied Mr. Dana, turning back to his pile of proofs. " If you think it worth the space, ask Amos Cummings if he will kindly see the gentle- man and write him up." His judgment of the merits of articles submitted to him is, to an extent rarely equalled, independent of the writer's liter- ary reputation. A famous name is no pass- port to his admiration. I think that Mr. Dana would write " Respectfully declined," or even " Nothing in it ! " on a scrap of paper, and fold the same around a manu- script from Mr. Gladstone, providing it did not seem useful to him, with as little hesi- tation as across a poem on " Spring" from a schoolma'am in the backwoods of Maine or Georgia. If he were prejudiced either way, it would be in favor of the unknown schoolma'am struggling to find an outlet for her poetic sentiment. It is a source of great satisfaction to him to discover in out-of-the-way corners genius that has not been recognized, and to help it out of ob- scurity. This benevolent weakness has cost him, in the aggregate, thousands of hours of valuable time spent in the personal at- tempt to make a poor thing presentable, or in imparting advice and kind but frank criticism to persons unknown to him. Once a clergyman of considerable emi- nence and sensational proclivity volun- teered to write anonymously for " The Sun." His first article came. He had made the amazing blunder of trying to adapt himself to what he supposed to be the worldly and reckless tone proper to a Sunday news- paper. Mr. Dana chuckled quietly as he sent the manuscript back, indorsed in blue pencil, " This is too damned wicked ! " A clerk in the New York Post-Office, sev- eral years ago, copied out in his own hand- writing the Rev. Edward Everett Hale's story, " The Man Without a Country," and offered it to " The Sun " as original matter for ten dollars. He had evidently found the story in a loose copy of the maga- zine where it was first published, and sup- posed it to be forgotten literature. Some- body proposed to publish the impostor's name. " No," said Mr. Dana. " Mark the manu- script ' Respectfully declined,' and mail it to him. He has been honest enough to in- close postage stamps." XIII. MR. DANA looks upon the daily news- paper as something more than a bulletin of the world's events, or a vehicle for contem- poraneous literature. He has steadily re- sisted the modern tendency to subordinate the editorial page, or to render it a mere reflection of public or partisan sentiment as understood by the newspaper's man- agers. "The place of the newspaper press in education," he wrote not long ago in reply to a question from the State Department of Public Instruction, " is like that of the pul- pit. It is incidental, not essential." But with Mr. Dana, as with every journalist who is influenced by his brilliant example, the place of the editorial page in the daily newspaper is essential, and not merely inci- dental. A newspaper without positive, inde- pendent, aggressive convictions, generated inside and not outside of the office, and without the habit of uttering them fearless- ly, is easy enough to imagine ; but it would be a newspaper without Mr. Dana. He does not think it necessary to check off every piece of news, or even every im- portant piece of news, with a corresponding paragraph of comment. That is not his idea of an editorial page. " A man at the dinner table, or anywhere else," he said one day to a new writer, " who insists on giving you his opinion about everything on earth, is a bore. So is the newspaper." He has no hard and fast rules to go by in the selection of topics for editorial treat- ment. You can never tell what subjects Mr. Dana will discuss, or what subjects he will pass over, in to-morrow's " Sun." His inclination is always towards the specific, rather than the abstract ; towards the novel, the fresh, the unexpected, rather than the matter-of-course. He would leave over an article any day on " The State of the Union," in favor of one on " The Mar- ket for Poetry," or " The Vitality of Islam," or " The Sorrows of Rich Men," or " How Engaged Couples Should Act ; " provid- ing the latter were the more meritorious production, and seemed to him likely to be read with more interest by more people. He has always believed in iteration as an agent in the process of planting ideas. " If you say a true and important thing once, in the most striking way, people read 102 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. it, and say to themselves, ' That is very likely so,' and forget it. If you keep on saying it, over and over again, even with less felicity of expression, you'll hammer it into their heads so firmly that they'll say, ' It is so ; ' and they'll remember forever it is so." The characteristics of the man are in " The Sun." His broad sense of news interest, persistent, inquisitive, sympathetic, and appreciative in a thousand different directions, and as keen with respect to sons whom he is supposed to regard with unconditional disapproval. The strongest and steadiest impulse in Mr. Dana's mind as an editor, is the Amer- ican sentiment. It lies deeper than his partisanship, and it shapes his politics. His political philosophy may be Jeffersonian in its conception of the functions and limita- tions of the Federal Government in ordi- nary times, but back of that are not only the patriotism that is natural to his tem- perament, but also that broader idea of the DOSORIS BLUFF, OVERLOOKING LONG ISLAND SOUND. small things as to great, shapes every part of the paper, and dominates every depart- ment. His editorial page is himself. It reflects his independence of thought, his self-reliance, his humor and philosophy, and his marked partiality, ethical consid- erations being equal, or nearly so, for the cause of the under dog in the fight. No matter how the crowd shouts, he follows his own judgment. He follows it un- hesitatingly, and without worrying about questions of expediency as affecting him- self. He is loyal beyond most men in his friendships, and positive, although less per- sistent, and rather impersonal, in his dis- likes. Nothing is more common than to hear him speaking kindly, and with just appreciation of their good qualities, of per- nation's might and destiny which was bred in him by the events of the years when he was with Lincoln and Stanton, and with the armies in the field. XIV. THE revolution which his genius and in- vention have wrought in the methods of practical journalism in America during the past twenty-five years can be estimated only by newspaper makers. His mind, always original, and unblunted and un- wearied at seventy-five, has been a prolific source of new ideas in the art of gathering, presenting, and discussing attractively the news of the world. He is a radical and unterrified innovator, caring not a copper MR. DANA OF "THE SUN." 103 for tradition or precedent when a change of method promises a real improvement. Restlessness like his, without his genius, discrimination, and honesty of purpose, scatters and loses itself in mere whimsicali- ties or pettinesses ; or else it deliberately degrades the newspaper upon which it is exercised. To Mr. Dana's personal inven- tion are due many, if not most, of the broad changes which within a quarter of a century have transformed journalism in this country. From his individual percep- tion of the true' philosophy of human in- terest, more than from any other single source, have come the now general repudi- ation of the old conventional standards of news importance ; the modern newspaper's appreciation of the news value of the senti- ment and humor of the daily life around us ; the recognition of the principle that a small incident, interesting in itself and well told, may be worth a column's space, when a large dull fact is hardly worth a stickful's ; the surprising extension of the daily newspaper's province so as to cover every department of general literature, and to take in the world's fancies and imagin- ings, as well as its actual events. The word "news" has an entirely different signifi- cance from what it possessed twenty-five or thirty years ago under the ancient common law of journalism as derived from Eng- land ; and in the production of this im- mense change, greatly in the interest of mankind and of the cheerfulness of daily life, it would be difficult to exaggerate the direct and indirect influence of Mr. Dana's alert, scholarly, and widely sympathetic perceptions. The idea of the newspaper syndicate sys- tem, extensively and successfully applied during the past ten years, and with such marked effect* upon the character of the miscellaneous literature furnished to the public through the daily press, originated with Mr. Dana. The first story syndicated by him, if I am not mistaken, was one by Mr. Bret Harte, in 1877 or 1878. Soon after that he purchased a number of short stories from some of the most eminent of living writers, " The Sun " sharing the expense and the right to publish the series with half a dozen selected journals in different parts of the United States. One of these stories was a tale called " Georgina's Reasons," by Mr. Henry James, Jr. A circumstance that seemed highly humorous to Mr. Dana, and particularly so in view of Mr. James's fas- tidious ideas of literary form, was that one of the Western journals in the syndicate should have lent distinction to the narra- tive by means of the following scheme of headlines in large, bold type : GEORGINA'S REASONS! HENRY JAMES'S LATEST STORY I A WOMAN WHO COMMITS BIGAMY AND ENFORCES SILENCE ON HER HUSBAND ! TWO OTHER LIVES MADE MISERABLE BY HER HEARTLESS ACTION ! XV. MR. DANA'S life outside of his work is his own property, and is to be touched here with reserve. From late in the autumn until early in the spring he occupies his town house at the northwest corner of Madi- son Avenue and Sixtieth Street. His sum- mer home, Dosoris, two or three miles from the village of Glen Cove, is an island of about fifty acres, in the Sound, close to the Long Island shore, and connected therewith by a short bridge. The estate gets its name from the circumstance that the island was once a wife's dowry, dos uxoris. Mr. Dana bought the place soon after his return from Chicago to New York, and extended and modernized the interior of the homely, com- fortable mansion, which is just visible, through the foliage, from the passing steam- boats in the Sound. One of the greatest en- joyments of his life has been found in the beautifying of Dosoris Island. Its trees and fruits and flowers are famous. Its proprie- tor is an accomplished botanist, a zealous and scientific cultivator, and an artist who might have been a distinguished landscape gardener if he had not been a great editor. He has made Dosoris a wonderful and cele- brated arboretum ; but to most visitors it is first of all a lovely spot. An eminent painter who travelled in Cuba with Mr. Dana several years ago, was somewhat puzzled at the gratification which his companion manifested after a hot and tiresome excursion in the hills of the Vuelta Abajo. He did not learn the cause until dinner-time. Mr. Dana had satisfied himself by personal observation that the pinus Elliotti) or some other special pinus which had been troubling his mind, did grow in that region. He regarded the day as a perfect success. Mr. Dana is fond of horses, of cattle, of dogs, even of pigs and feathered bipeds. He likes to have life, in all of its amiable forms, animal and vegetable, going on healthily and happily around him. 104 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. He is as constant in his tastes as in his friendships. An intellectual or aesthetic pursuit once begun by him becomes a last- ing occupation and resource. Whether he takes up orchids, or Norse literature, or early Persian ceramics, his interest in the subject never shades back into indifference. His collection of Chinese porcelain of the best period is noted among connoisseurs for the rarity and beauty of its specimens, and the knowledge governing his selections. In pictorial art, his special fondness is for some of the painters of the Barbizon school, as shown by his purchases ; but he is ap- preciative of all good art. He has never formed a large library, and is nothing of a bibliomaniac. He owns some rare vol- umes, but, as a rule, books are with him tools rather than treasures. He cares noth- ing for acquisition for the sake of. display. He is fond of showing his pictures, or his china, or his trees, to those who can share his own unaffected enjoyment of them. He is a companionable man, and he likes to gather entertaining people around him. His circle of personal acquaintance is re- markably large and various. He can be happy in the society of any refined person able to interest him, but he is happiest with his own family, his children and grand- children. For twenty years his most inti- mate friend and most constant companion has been his son and principal professional assistant, Mr. Paul Dana. A few weeks ago, just two days before he was seventy-five years old, Mr. Dana climbed to the top of Croydon Mountain in New Hampshire, leading a party of much younger men who came toiling and puffing after him. In his editorial office he is hard at work six days in the week, put- ting in like a boy of fifty, and still set- ting the pace for the profession which acknowledges him as its leader. To his own mind there is nothing extraordinary in this. PORTRAITS OF CHARLES A. DANA. 1852. AGE 33. io6 H UMAN DOCUMENTS. 1857 AGE 38. 1865. AGE 1867. AGE 48. 1882. AGE 63 PORTRAITS OF CHARLES A. DANA. 107 1869. AGE 50. io8 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. MR. DANA BEFORE GRANT'S HEADQUARTERS AT SPOTTSYLVANIA, 1864. AGE 44. CHARLES A. DANA. 109 1894. AGE 75. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDERSON, NEW YORK. no HUMAN DOCUMENTS. MR. DANA AT THE PRESENT DAY. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN BY HIS SON, MR. PAUL DANA. MY FIRST BOOK "TREASURE ISLAND." BY ROBERT Louis STEVENSON. IT was far, indeed, from being my first book, for I am not a novelist alone. But I am well aware that my paymaster, the great public, regards what else I have writ- ten with indifference, if not aversion. If it call upon me at all, it calls on me in the familiar and indelible character ; and when 1 am asked to talk of my first book, no ques- tion in the world but what is meant is my first novel. Sooner or later, somehow, anyhow, I was bound I was to write a novel. It seems vain to ask why. Men are born with vari- ous manias : from my earliest childhood it was mine to make a plaything of imaginary series of events ; and as soon as I was able to write, I became a good friend to the paper-makers. Reams upon reams must have gone to the making of " Rathillet," the " Pentland Rising,"* the " King's Par- don " (otherwise " Park Whitehead "), " Edward Darren," " A Country Dance," and a " Vendetta in the West ; " and it is consolatory to remember that these reams are now all ashes, and have been received again into the soil. I have named but a few of my ill-fated efforts : only such, indeed, as came to a fair bulk ere they were desisted from ; and even so, they cover a long vista of years. " Rathillet " was attempted be- fore fifteen, the " Vendetta " at twenty-nine, and the succession of defeats^lasted un- broken till I was thirty-one. By that time I had written little books and little essays and short stories, and had got patted on the back and paid for them though not enough to live upon. I had quite a reputation. I was the successful man. I passed my days in toil, the futility of which would some- times make my cheek to burn, that I should spend a man's energy upon this business, and yet could not earn a livelihood ; and still there shone ahead of me an unattained ideal. Although I had attempted the thing with vigor not less than ten or twelve times, I had not yet written a novel. All all my pretty ones had gone for a little, and then stopped inexorably, like a schoolboy's watch. * Ne pas confondre. Not the slim green pamphlet with the imprint of Andrew Elliott, for which (as I see with amazement from the booklists) the gentlemen of England are willing to pay fancy prices ; but its predecessor, a bulky historical romance without a spark c-* merit, and now de- leted from the world. I might be compared to a cricketer of many years' standing who should never have made a run. Anybody can write a short story a bad one, I mean who has industry and paper and time enough ; but not every one may hope to write even a bad novel. It is the length that kills. 'I he accepted novelist may take his novel up and put it down, spend days upon it in vain, and write not any more than he makes haste to blot. Not so the beginner. Human nature has cer- tain rights ; instinct the instinct of self- preservation forbids that any manfcheered and supported by the consciousness of no previous victory) should endure the miseries of unsuccessful literary toil beyond a period to be measured in weeks. There must be something for hope to feed upon. The be- ginner must have a slant of wind, a lucky vein must be running, he must be in one of those hours when the words come and the phrases balance of themselves even to begin. And having begun, what a dread looking LLOYD OSBOURNE, THE " SCHOOLBOY IN THE LATE MISS MCGREGOR'S COTTAGE." 112 HUMAN DOCUMENTS, xgl^pllg^^ ' THE STEVENSON FAMILY COTTAGE ABOVE PITLOCHRY. PITLOCHRY, A VILLAGE NEAR THE STEVENSON COTTAGE. From a photograph by G. W. Wilson & Co., Aberdeen MY FIRST BOOK 1 ' TREASURE ISLAND." SPITTAL OF GLENSHEE. forward is that until the book shall be ac- complished ! For so long a time the slant is to continue unchanged, the vein to keep running ; for so long a time you must hold at command the same quality of style ; for so long a time your puppets are to be always vital, always consistent, always vigor- ous. I remember I used to look, in those days, upon every three-volume novel with a sort of veneration, as a feat not possibly of literature but at least of physical and moral endurance and the courage of Ajax. In the fated year I came to live with my father and mother at Kinnaird, above Pit- lochry. There I walked on the red moors and by the side of the golden burn. The rude, pure air of our mountains inspirited, if it did not inspire us ; and my wife and I projected a joint volume of bogie stories, for which she wrote " The Shadow on the Bed," and I turned out " Thrawn Janet," and a first draft of the " Merry Men." I love my native air, but it does not love me ; and the end of this delightful period was a cold, a fly blister, and a migration, by Strath- airdle and Glenshee, to the Castleton of Braemar. There it blew a good deal and rained in proportion. My native air was more unkind than man's ingratitude ; and I must consent to pass a good deal of my time between four walls in a house lugubri- ously known as " the late Miss McGregor's cottage." And now admire the finger of predestination. There was a schoolboy in the late Miss McGregor's cottage, home for the holidays, and much in want of " some- thing craggy to break his mind upon." He had no thought of literature ; it was the art of Raphael that received his fleeting suf- frages, and with the aid of pen and ink, and a shilling box of water-colors, he had soon turned one of the rooms into a picture gal- lery. My more immediate duty towards the gallery was to be showman ; but I would sometimes unbend a little, join the artist (so to speak) at the easel, and pass the afternoon with him in a generous emula- tion, making colored drawings. On one of these occasions I made the map of an island ; it was elaborately and (I thought) beautifully colored ; the shape of it took my fancy be- yond expression ; it contained harbors that pleased me like sonnets ; and, with the un- consciousness of the predestined, I ticketed my performance " Treasure Island." I am told there are people who do not care for maps, and find it hard to believe. The names, the shapes of the woodlands, the courses of the roads and rivers, the prehis- toric footsteps of man still distinctly trace- HUMAN DOCUMENTS, ROBERT LOUIS STKVENSON. From a photograph by Sir Percy Shelley. MY FIRST BOOK- -" TREASURE ISLAND. MRS. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. HUMAN DOCUMENTS. able up hill and down dale, the mills and the ruins, the ponds and the ferries, perhaps the " Standing Stone" or the " Druidic Circle " on the heath here is an inexhaustible fund of interest for any man with eyes to see, or twopence worth of imagination to under- stand with. No child but must remember laying his head in the grass, staring into the infinitesimal forest, and seeing it grow populous with fairy armies. Somewhat in this way, as I pored upon my map of "Treasure Island," the future characters of the book began to appear there visibly among imaginary woods ; and their brown faces and bright weapons peeped out upon me from unexpected quarters, as they passed to and fro, fighting and hunting treasure, on these few square inches of a flat projection. The next thing I knew, I had some paper before me and was writing out a list of chapters. How often have I done so, and the thing gone no farther ! But there seemed elements of success about this enterprise. It was to be a story for boys ; no need of psychology or fine writ- ing ; and I had a boy at hand to be a touchstone. Women were excluded. I was unable to handle a brig (which the " His- paniola" should have been), but I thought I could make shift to sail her as a schooner without public shame. And then I had an idea for John Silver from which I promised myself funds of entertainment : to take an admired friend of mine (whom the reader very likely knows and admires as much as I do), to deprive him of all his finer qualities and higher graces of temperament, to leave him with nothing but his strength, his courage, his quickness, and his magnificent geniality, and to try to express these in terms of the culture of a raw tarpaulin. Such psychical surgery is, I think, a common way of " mak- ing character;" perhaps it is, indeed, the only way. We can put in the quaint figure that spoke a hundred words with us yester- day by the wayside ; but do we know him ? Our friend, with his infinite variety and flexibility, we know but can we put him in? Upon the first we must engraft secon- dary and imaginary qualities, possibly all wrong ; from the second, knife in hand, we must cut away and deduct the needless arborescence of his nature ; but the trunk and the few branches that remain we may at least be fairly sure of. On a chill September morning, by the cheek of a brisk fire, and the rain drum- ming on the window, I began the " Sea Cook," for that was the original title. I have begun (and finished) a number of other books, but I cannot remember to have sat down to one of them with more complacency. It is not to be wondered at, for stolen waters are proverbially sweet. I am now upon a painful chapter. No doubt the parrot once belonged to Robin- CASTLETON OF BRAEMAR, FROM MORRONB. Photograph by G. W. Wilson & Co., Aberdeen. MY FIRST BOOK 1 ' TREASURE ISLAND. 117 . 1834. "THE LATE MISS MCGREGOR'S COTTAGE," BKAEMAR. son Crusoe. No doubt the skeleton is con- veyed from Poe. I think little of these, they are trifles and details ; and no man can hope to have a monopoly of skeletons or make a corner in talking-birds. The stockade, I am told, is from " Masterman Ready." It may be I care not a jot. These useful writers had fulfilled the poet's saying : departing, they had left behind them " Footprints on the sands of time ; Footprints that perhaps another " and I was the other ! It is my debt to Washington Irving that exercises my con- science, and justly so, for I believe plagiar- ism was rarely carried farther. I chanced to pick up the " Tales of a Traveller " some years ago, with a view to an anthology of prose narrative, and the book flew up and struck me : Billy Bones, his chest, the com- pany in the parlor, the whole inner spirit and a good deal of the material detail of my first chapters all were there, all were the property of Washington Irving. But I had no guess of it then as I sat writing by the fireside, in what seemed the springtides of a somewhat pedestrian inspiration ; nor yet day by day, after lunch, as I read aloud my morning's work to the family. It seemed to me original as sin ; it seemed to belong to me like my right eye. I had counted on one boy ; I found I had two in my audience. My father caught fire at once with all the romance and childishness of his original nature. His own stories, that every night of his life he put himself to sleep with, dealt perpetually with ships, roadside inns, robbers, old sailors, and com- mercial travellers before the era of steam. He never finished one of these romances : the lucky man did not require to ! But in " Treasure Island " he recognized some- thing kindred to his own imagination ; it was his kind of picturesque ; and he not only heard with delight the daily chapter, but set himself actively to collaborate. When the time came for Bill}- Bones's chest to be ransacked, he must have passed the better part of a day preparing, on the back of a legal envelope, an inventory of its contents, which I exactly followed ; and n8 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. BRAKMAR, FROM CRAIG COVNACH. Photograph by G. W. Wilson & Co., Aberdeen. the name of " Flint's old ship," the " Wal- rus," was given at his particular request. And now, who should come dropping in, ex machina, but Dr. Jaap, like the dis- guised prince who is to bring down the curtain upon peace and happiness in the last act, for he carried in his pocket not a horn or a talisman, but a publisher had, in fact, been charged by my old friend Mr. Henderson to unearth new writers for " Young Folks." Even the ruthlessness of a united family recoiled before the extreme measure of inflicting on our guest the muti- lated members of the "Sea Cook ; " at the same time we would by no means stop our readings, and accordingly the tale was be- gun again at the beginning, and solemnly redelivered for the benefit of Dr. Jaap. From that moment on I have thought highly of his critical faculty ; for when he left us, he carried away the manuscript in his portmanteau. Here, then, was everything to keep me up sympathy, help, and now a positive engagement. I had chosen besides a very easy style. Compare it with the almost contemporary " Merry Men ; " one may pre- fer the one style, one the other 'tis an affair of character, perhaps of mood ; but no expert can fail to see that the one is much more difficult, and the other much easier, to maintain. It seems as though a full- grown, experienced man of letters might engage to turn out " Treasure Island " at so many pages a day, and keep his pipe alight. But alas ! this was not my case. Fifteen days I stuck to it, and turned out fifteen chapters ; and then, in the early paragraphs of the sixteenth, ignominiously lost hold. My mouth was empty ; there was not one word more of " Treasure Island " in my bosom ; and here were the proofs of the beginning already waiting me at the " Hand and Spear"! There I corrected them, living for the most part alone, walking on 1 the heath at Weybridge in dewy autumn mornings, a good deal pleased with what I had done, and more appalled than I can depict to you in words at what remained for me to do. I was thirty-one ; I was the head of a family ; I had lost my health ; I had never yet paid my way, had never yet made two hundreds pounds a year ; my father had quite recently bought back and cancelled a book that was judged a failure ; was this to be another and last fiasco ? I was indeed very close on despair ; but I shut my mouth hard, and during the journey to Davos, where I was to pass the winter, had the resolution to think of other things, and bury myself in the novels of M. du Boisgobey. Arrived at my destination, down I sat one morning to the unfinished tale, and behold ! it flowed from me like small talk ; and in a second tide of delighted industry, and again at the rate of a chapter MY FIRST BOOK" TREASURE ISLAND." 119 a day, I finished " Treasure Island." It had to be transacted almost secretly. My wife was ill, the schoolboy remained alone of the faithful, and John Addington Symonds (to whom I timidly mentioned what I was engaged on) looked at me askance He was at that time very eager I should write on the l< Characters " of Theophrastus, so far out may be the judgments of the wisest men. But Symonds (to be sure) was scarce the confidant to go to for sympathy in a boy's story. He was large-minded ; " a full man," if there ever was one ; but the very name of my enterprise would suggest to him only capitulations of sincerity and solecisms of style. Well, he was not far wrong. "Treasure Island" it was Mr. Hender- son who deleted the first title, " The Sea Cook " appeared duly in the story paper, where it figured in the ignoble midst without woodcuts, and attracted not the least atten- tion. I did not care. I liked the tale my- self, for much the same reason as my father liked the beginning: it was my kind of pict- uresque. I was not a little proud of John Silver also, and to this day rather admire that smooth and formidable adventurer. What was infinitely more exhilarating, I had passed a landmark ; I had finished a tale, and written " The End " upon my manuscript, as I had not done since the ' Pentland Rising," when I was a boy of sixteen, not yet at college. In truth it was so by a set of lucky accidents : had not Dr. Jaap come on his visit, had not the tale flowed from me with singular ease, it must have been laid aside like its predecessors, and found a circuitous and unlamented way to the fire. Purists may suggest it would have been better so. I am not of that mind. The tale seems to have given much pleasure, and it brought (or was the means of bringing) fire and food and wine to a deserving family in which I took an interest. I need scarce say I mean my own. But the adventures of " Treasure Island " are not yet quite at an end. I had written it up to the map. The map was the chief part of my plot. For instance, I had called an islet " Skeleton Island," not knowing what I meant, seeking only for the imme- diate picturesque ; and it was to justify this name that I broke into the gallery of Mr. Poe and stole Flint's pointer. And in the same way, it was because I had made two harbors that the " Hispaniola" was sent on her wanderings with Israel Hands. The time came when it was decided to repub- lish, and I sent in my manuscript and the map along with it to Messrs. Cassell. The proofs came, they were corrected, but I heard nothing of the map. I wrote and asked ; was told it had never been received, and sat aghast. It is one thing to draw a map at random, set a scale in one corner of it at a venture, and write up a story to the measurements. It is quite another to have to examine a whole book, make an MOULIN, ANOTHER VILLAGE NEAR THE STEVENSON COTTAGE. THIS VIEW IS FROM THE SOUTH. 120 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. STEVENSON IN 1893. From a photograph taken in Australia. inventory of all the allusions contained in it, and with a pair of compasses painfully design a map to suit the data. I did it, and the map was drawn again in my father's office, with embellishments of blow- ing whales and sailing ships ; and my father himself brought into service a knack he had of various writing, and elaborately forged the signature of Captain Flint and the sail- ing directions of Billy Bones. But some- how it was never " Treasure Island " to me. I have said it was the most of the plot. I might almost say it was the whole. A few reminiscences of Poe, Defoe, and Washington Irving, a copy of Johnson's " Buccaneers," the name of the Dead Man's Chest from Kingsley's "At Last," some recollections of canoeing on the high seas, a cruise in a fifteen-ton schooner yacht, and the map itself with its infinite, eloquent suggestion, made up the whole of my mate- rials. It is perhaps not often that a map figures so largely in a tale ; yet it is always important. The author must know his countryside, whether real or imaginary, like his hand ; the distances, the points of the compass, the place of the sun's rising, the behavior of the moon, should all be beyond cavil. And how troublesome the moon is ! I have come to grief over the moon in MY FIRST BOOK" TREASURE ISLAND." 121 " Prince Otto ; " and, so soon as that was pointed out to me, adopted a precaution which I recommend to other men I never write now without an almanac. With an almanac, and the map of the country and the plan of every house, either actually plotted on paper or clearly and immediately apprehended in the mind, a man may hope to avoid some of the grossest possible blunders. With the map before him, he will scarce allow the sun to set in the east, as it does in the "Antiquary." With the almanac at hand, he will scarce allow two horsemen, journeying on the most urgent affair, to employ six days, from three of the Monday morning till late in the Satur- day night, upon a journey of, say, ninety or a hundred miles ; and before the week is out, and still on the same nags, to cover fifty in one day, as he may read at length in the inimitable novel of " Rob Roy." And it is certainly well, though far from necessary, to avoid such croppers. But it is my contention my superstition, if you like that he who is faithful to his map, and consults it, and draws from it his in- spiration, daily and hourly, gains positive support, and not mere negative immunity from accident. The tale has a root there ; it grows in that soil ; it has a spine of its own behind the words. Better if the coun- try be real, and he has walked every foot of it and knows every milestone. But. even with imaginary places, he will do well in the beginning to provide a map. As he studies it, relations will appear that he had not thought upon. He will discover obvi- ous though unsuspected shortcuts and foot- paths for his messengers ; and even when a map is not all the plot, as it was in " Treasure Island," it will be found to be a mine of suggestion. VAILIMA," STEVENSON'S HOUSE NEAR APIA, SAMOA. 9 PORTRAITS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. Born November 13, 1850; died December 3, 1894. AGE 20 MONTHS. 1852. AGE 6. 1857. AGE 14. 1865. PORTRAITS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. 123 AGE 19. 1870. 124 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. AGE 21. 1872. AGE 24. 1875. AGE 42. AUSTRALIA, 1893. PORTRAITS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. I2 5 AGE 48. AUSTRALIA, 1893. THESE FOUR PORTRAITS ARE ALL OF ONE TIME 126 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. AN AFTERNOON WITH OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. BY EDWARD EVERETT HALE. DOROTHY Q. Y first recollection of Dr. Holmes is -seeing him standing on a bench at a college din- ner when I was a boy, in the year 1836. He was full of life and fun, and was delivering I do not say reading one of his little college poems. He always writes them with joy, and recites them if that is the word with a From the portrait in Spirit not to be de- Dr. Hoimes's study. scribed. For he is a born orator, with what people call a sympathetic voice, wholly under his own command, and entirely free from any of the tricks of elocution. It seems to me that no one really knows his poems to the very best who has not had the good fortune to hear him read some of them. But I had known all about him before that. As little boys, we had by heart, in those days, the song which saved " Old Ironsides " from destruction. That was the pet name of the frigate " Constitu- tion," which was a pet Boston ship, be- cause she had been built at a Boston shipyard, had been sailed with Yankee crews, and, more than once, had brought her prizes into Boston Harbor. We used to spout at school : " Nail to the mast her holy flag. Spread every threadbare sail, And give her to the god of storms, The lightning and the gale ! " Ah me! There had been a Phi Beta anniversary not long before, where Holmes had delivered a poem. You may read " Poetry, a Metrical Essay," in the volumes now. But you will look in vain for the covert allusions to Julia and Susan and Elizabeth and the rest, which, to those who knew, meant the choicest belles of our little company. Have the queens of to-day any such honors ? Nobody is more accessible than Dr. Holmes. I doubt if any doorbell in Bos- ton is more rung than his. And nowhere is the visitor made more kindly at home. His own work-room takes in all the widtfi of a large house in Beacon Street ; a wide window commands the sweep of the mouth of Charles River ; in summer the gulls are hovering above it, in winter you may see them chaffing together on bits of floating ice, which is on its way to the sea. Across that water, by stealthy rowing, the boats of the English squadron carried the men who were to die at Concord the next day, at Concord Bridge. Beyond is Bunker Hill Monument ; and just this side of the monument Paul Revere crossed the same river to say that that English army was coming. For me, I had to deliver on Emerson's ninetieth birthday an address on my memories of him and his life. Holmes used to meet him, from college days down, in a thousand ways, and has written a charming memoir of his life. I went round there one day, therefore, to ask some questions, which might put my own memories of Emerson in better light, and afterwards I obtained his leave to make this sketch of the talk of half an hour. When we think of it here, if we ever fall to talking about such things, every one would say that Holmes is the best talker we have or know. But when you are with him, you do not think whether he is or is not. You are under the spell of his kind- ness and genius. Still no minute passes in which you do not say to yourself : " I hope I shall remember those very words always." Thinking of it after I come home, I am reminded of the flow and fun of the Autocrat. But you never say so to your- self when you are sitting in his room. I had arranged with my friend Mr. Sample that he should carry his camera to the house, and it was in gaps in this very conversation that the picture of both of us was taken. I told Dr. Holmes how pleased I was at this chance of going to posterity under his escort. I told him of the paper on Emerson which I had in hand, and thanked him, as well as I could, in a few words, for his really mar- vellous study of Emerson in the series of American Authors. I said I really wanted NOTE. This article was written in May, 1893. Dr. Holmes died October 7, 1894. EDITOR. 128 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. O. W. HOLMES'S BIRTH-PLACE AT CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, ERECTED IN 1725. From a photograph by Wilfrid A. French. to bring him my paper to read. What I was trying to do, was to show that the great idealist was always in touch with his time, and eager to know what, at the mo- ment, were the real facts of American life. /. I remember where Emerson stopped me on State Street once, to cross-question GARDEN DOOR OF THE CAMBRIDGE HOUSE. me about some details of Irish emigra- tion. Holmes. Yes, he was eager for all prac- tical information. I used to meet him very often on Saturday evenings at the Saturday Club ; and I can see him now, as he bent forward eagerly at the table, if any one were making an interesting observation, with his face like a hawk as he took in what was said. You felt how the hawk would be flying overhead and looking down on your thought at the next minute. I re- member that I once spoke of " the three great prefaces," and quick as light Emer- son said, " What are the three great pref- aces?" and I had to tell him. /. I am sure I do not know what they are. What are they ? Holmes. They are Calvin's to his " Insti- tutes," Thuanus's to his history, and Poly- bius's to his. /. And I have never read one of them ! Holmes. And I had then never read but one of them. It was a mere piece of en- cyclopaedia learning of mine. /. What I shall try to do in my address is to show that Emerson would not have touched all sorts of people as he did, but for this matter-of-fact interest in his daily surroundings if he had not gone to town- meetings, for instance. Was it you or Lowell who called him the Yankee Plato ? Holmes. Not I. It was probably Lowell, in the " Fable for Critics." I called him AN AFTERNOON WITH OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 129 " a winged Franklin," and I stand by that. Matthew Arnold quoted that afterwards, and I was glad I had said it. /. I do not remember where you said it. How was it ? Dr. Holmes at once rose, went to the turning book-stand, and took down volume three of his own poems, and read me with great spirit the passage. I do not know how I had forgotten it. " Where in the realm of thought, whose air is song. Does he, the Buddha of the West, belong ? He seems a winged Franklin, sweetly wise, Born to unlock the secrets of the skies ; And which the nobler calling, if 'tis fair Terrestrial with celestial to compare, To guide the storm-cloud's elemental flame, Or walk the chambers whence the lightning came, Amidst the sources of its subtile fire, And steal their effluence for his lips and lyre ? " Here he said, with great fun, "-One great good of writing poetry is to furnish you with your own quo- tations." And after- wards, when I had made him read to me some other verses from his own poems, he said, " Oh, yes, as a reservoir of the best quotations in the language, there is nothing like a book of your own poems." I said that there was no greater non- sense than the talk of , Emerson's time, that he introduced German philosophy here, and I asked Holmes if he thought that Emerson had borrowed anything in the philosophical line from the Ger- man. He agreed with me that his philoso- phy was thoroughly home-bred, wrought out in experience of own home-life. and the his He said THE HOUSE IN RUE MONSIEUR LE PRINCE WHERE DR. HOLMES LIVED FOR TWO YEARS WHEN STUDYING MEDICINE IN PARIS. that he was dis- posed to believe that that would be true of Emerson which he knew was true of himself. He knew Emerson went over a great many books, but he did not really believe that he often really read a book through. I remember one of his phrases was, that he thought that Emerson "tasted books ; " and he cited a bright lady from Philadelphia, whom he had met the day before, who had said that she thought men of genius did not rely much upon their reading, and had complimented him by asking if he did so. Holmes said : "I told her I had to tell her that in reading my mind is always active. I do not follow the author steadily or implicitly, but my thought runs off to right and left. It runs off in every direction, and I find I am not so much taking his book as I am thinking my own thoughts upon his sub- ject." /. I want to thank you for your contrast between Emerson and Carlyle : "The hatred of unreality was uppermost in Car- lyle ; the love of what is real and genuine, with Emerson." Is it not perhaps possible that Carlyle would not have been Carlyle but for Emerson ? Emerson found him discouraged, and as he supposed alone, and at the very be- ginning led him out of his darkest places.' I think it was on this that Dr. Holmes spoke with a good deal of feeling about the value of appreci- ation. He was ready to go back to tell of the pleasure he had received from per- sons who had written to him, even though he did not know them, to say of how much use some par- ticular line of his had been. Among others he said that Lothrop Motley had told him that, when he was all worn out in his work in a coun- try where he had not many friends, and among stupid old manuscript ar- chives, two lines of Holmes's braced him up and helped him through : " Stick to your aim : the mongrel's hold will slip, But only crowbars loose the bulldog's grip." He was very funny about flattery. " That is the trouble of having so many friends, everybody flatters you. I do not mean to 130 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. let them hurt me if I can help it, and flat- tery is not necessarily untrue. But you have to be on your guard when every- body is as kind to you as everybody is to me" He said, in passing, * that Emerson once quoted two lines of his, and quoted them horribly. They are from the poem called "The Steamboat : " " The beating of her rest- less heart, Still sounding through the storm." quoted her Emerson them thus : "The pulses of iron heart Go beating through the storm." I was curious to know about Dr. Holmes's ex- perienceof coun- try life, he knows all nature's pro- cesses so well. So he told me how it happened that he went to Pittsfield. It seems that, a century and a half ago, his ancestor, Jacob Wendell, had a royal grant for the whole township there, with some small exception, perhaps. The place was at first called Pontoosoc, then Wendelltown, and only afterward got the name of Pittsfield from William Pitt. One part of the Wendell property descended to Dr. Holmes's mother. When he had once seen it he was struck with its beauty and fitness for a country home, and asked her that he might have it for his own. It was there that he built a house in which he lived for eight or nine years. He said that the Housatonic winds backwards and forwards through it, so that to go from one end of his estate to the other in a straight line re- quired the crossing it seven times. Here his children grew up, and he and they were enlivened anew every year by long summer days there. He was most interesting and animated as he spoke of the vigor of life and work O. W. HOl-MES'S RESIDENCE IN BEACON STREET, BOSTON. and poetical composition which come from being in the open air and living in the country. He wrote, at the request of the neighborhood, his poem of " The Plough- man," to be read at a cattle-show in Pittsfield. "And when I came to read it afterwards I said, ' Here it is ! Here is open air life, here is what breathing the mountain air and living in the midst of nature does for a man ! ' And I want to read you now a piece of that poem, because it contained a prophecy." And while he was looking for the' verses, he said, in the vein of the Autocrat, " No- body knows but a man's self how many good things he has done." So we found the first volume of the poems, and there is "The Plough- man," written, observe, as early as 1849. " O gracious Mother, whose benignant breast Wakes us to life, and lulls us all to rest, How thy sweet features, kind to every clime, Mock with their smile the wrinkled front of time ! We stain thy flowers, they blossom o'er the dead ; We rend thy bosom, and it gives us bread ; O'er the red field that trampling strife has torn, Waves the green plumage of thy tasselled corn ; Our maddening conflicts sear thy fairest plain, Still thy soft answer is the growing grain. Yet, O our Mother, while uncounted charms Steal round our hearts in thine embracing arms, Let not our virtues in thy love decay, And thy fond sweetness waste our strength away. No ! by these hills, whose banners now displayed In blazing cohorts Autumn has arrayed ; By yon twin summits, on whose splintery crests The tossing hemlocks hold the eagles' nests ; By these fair plains the mountain circle screens, And feeds with streamlets from its dark ravines, True to their home, these faithful arms shall toil To crown with peace their own untainted soil ; AN AFTERNOON WITH OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. THE BAY WINDOW IN DR. HOLMES S STUDY. And, true to God, to freedom, to mankind, If her chained bandogs Faction shall unbind, These stately forms, that bending even now Bowed their strong manhood to the humble plough, Shall rise erect, the guardians of the land, The same stern iron in the same right hand, Till o'er the hills the shouts of triumph run, The sword has rescued what the ploughshare Now in 1849, I, who remember, can tell you, every-day people did not much think that Faction was going to unbind her bandogs and set the country at war ; and it was only a prophet-poet who saw that there was a chance that men might forge their ploughshares into swords again. But you see from the poem that Holmes was such a prophet-poet, and now, forty-four years after, it was a pleasure to hear him read these lines. I asked him of his reminiscences of Emerson's famous Phi Beta Kappa oration at Cambridge, which he has described, as so many others have, as the era of inde- pendence in American literature. We both talked of the day, which we remembered, and of the Phi Beta dinner which followed it, when Mr. Everett presided, and bore touching tribute to Charles Emerson, who had just died. Holmes said : " You can- not make the people of this generation understand the effect of Everett's oratory. I have never felt the fascination of speech as I did in hearing him. Did it ever oc- cur to you, did I say to you the other day, that when a man has such a voice as he had, our slight nasal resonance is an ad- vantage and not a disadvantage ? " I was fresher than he from his own book on Emerson, and remembered that he had said there somewhat the same thing. His A CORNER IN DR. HOLMES S STUDY. 132 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. words are : " It is with delight that one who remembers Everett in his robes of rhetorical splendor ; who recalls his full- blown, high-colored, double-flowered peri- ods ; the rich, resonant, grave, far-reaching music of his speech, with just enough of nasal vibration to give the vocal sounding- board its proper value in the harmonies of utterance, it is with delight that such a one recalls the glowing words of Emerson whenever he refers to Edward Everett. It is enough if he himself caught enthusiasm from those eloquent lips. But many a listener has had his youthful enthusiasm fired by that great master of academic oratory." I knew, when I read this, that Holmes referred to himself as the "youth- ful listener," and was glad that within twenty-four hours he should say so to me. So we fell to talking of his own Phi Beta poem. A good Phi Beta poem is an impossibility ; but it is the business of genius to work the miracles, and Holmes's is one of the few successful Phi Beta poems in the dreary catalogue of more than a century. The custom of having "the poem," as people used to say, as if it were always the same, is now almost abandoned. Fortunately for us both, a tap was heard at the door, and Mr. John Holmes appeared, his brother. Mr. John Holmes has not chosen to publish the bright things- which he has undoubtedly written, but in all circles where he favors people with his pres- ence he is known as one of the most agree- able of men. Everybody is glad to set him on the lines of reminiscences. The two- brothers, with great good humor, began tell- ing of a dinner party which Dr. Holmes had given within a few days to a number of gentlemen whose average ages, according to them, exceeded eighty. One has to make allowance for the exaggeration of their fun, but I think, from the facts which they dropped, that the average must have been maintained. One would have given a good deal to be old enough to be permitted to be at that dinner. This led to talk of the Harvard class of 1829, for whose meetings Holmes has written so many of his charm- ing poems. He said that they are now to have a dinner within a few days, and named the gentlemen who were to be there. Among them, of course, is Dr. Samuel F. Smith, the author of " America." I noticed that Dr. Holmes always called him " My country 'tis of thee," and so did all of us. And then these two critics be- gan analyzing that magnificent song. "It will not do to laugh at it. People show that they do not know what they are talk- DOROTHY Q'S HOUSE IN QUINCY, MASSACHUSETTS.* * Also called the Peter Butler house. Sewall in his diary speaks of it as Mr. Quincy's new house (1680-85). There Dorothy was born and married. AN AFTERNOON WITH OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 133 DR. O. W. HOLMES DELIVERING HIS FAREWELL ADDRESS AS PARKMAN PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY IN THE MEDICAL SCHOOL OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY, NOVEMBER 28, 1882. From a proof print in the possession of Dr. James R. Chadwick. ing about when they speak lightly of it. Did you ever think how much is gained by making the first verse begin with the .sin- gular number? Not our country, but 'My country/ ' / sing of thee ' ? There is not an American citizen but can make it his own, and does make it his own, as he sings it. And it rises to a Psalm-like grandeur at the end. It is a magnificent hold to have upon fame to have sixty million people sing the verses that you have written." John Holmes said : " How good ' templed hills ' is, and that is not alone in the poem." Both John Holmes and I pleaded to be permitted to come to the class dinner, but Dr. Holmes was very funny. He pooh-poohed us both ; we were only children, and we were not to be pres- ent at so rare a solemnity. For me, I already felt that I had been wicked in wasting so much of his time. But he has the gift of making you think that you are the only person in the world, and that he is only living for your pleasure. Still I knew, as a matter of fact, that this was not so, and very unwillingly I took my- self away. .As I walked home I meditated on the fate of a first-rate book in our time. Holmes had expressed unaffected surprise that I spoke with the gratitude which I felt about his "Life of Emerson." The book must have cost him the hard work of a year. It is as remarkable a study as one poet ever made of another. Yet I think he said to me that no one had seemed to understand the care and effort which he had given to it. Here is the position in the United States now about the criticism of such work. At about the time that the " North American Review " ceased to review books, there came, as if by general consent, an end to all elaborate criticism of new books here. I think myself that this is a thing very much to be regretted. In old times, who- ever wrote a good book was tolerably sure that at least one competent person would study it and write down what he thought 134 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. O. W. HOLMES AND E. E. HALE. From a photograph taken in Dr. Holmes's study, May 22, 1893. about it ; and, from at least one point of view, an author had a prospect of knowing how his book struck other people. Now we have nothing but the hasty sketches, sometimes very good, which are written for the daily or weekly press. So it happens that I, for one, have never seen any fit recognition of the gift which Dr. Holmes made to our time and to the next generation when he made his study of Emerson's life for the " American Men of Letters " series. Apparently he had not. Just think of it ! Here is a poet, the head of our " Academy," so far as there is any such Academy, who is willing to devote a year of his life to telling you and me what Emerson was, from his own personal recol- lections of a near friend, whom he met as often as once a week, and talked with per- haps for hours at a time, and with whom lie talked on literary and philosophical subjects. More than this, this poet has been willing to go through Emerson's books again, to re-read them as he had originally read them when they came out, and to make for you and me a careful analysis of all these books. He is one of five people in the country who are com- petent to tell what effect these books pro- duced on the country as they appeared from time to time. And, being competent, he takes the time to tell us this thing. That is a sort of good fortune which, so far as I remember, has happened to nobody excepting Emerson. When John Milton died, there was nobody left who could have done such a thing ; certainly nobody did do it, or tried to do it. I must say, I think it is rather hard that, when such a gift as that has been given to the people of any country, that people, while boasting of its seventy millions of numbers and its thousands of billions of acres, should not have one critical journal of which it is the business to say at length, and in detail, whether Dr. Holmes has done his duty well by the prophet, or whether, indeed, he has done it at all. When we left Dr. Holmes, he and his household were looking forward to the an- nual escape to Beverly. Somebody once wrote him a letter dated from"Manchester- by-the-Sea," and Holmes wrote his reply under the date " Beverly-by-the-Depot." AN AFTERNOON WITH OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. '35 And here let me stop to tell one of those jokes for which the English language and Dr. Holmes were made. A few years ago, in a fit of economy, our famous Mas- sachusetts Historical Society screwed up its library and other offices by some fifteen feet, built in the space underneath, and rented it to the city of Boston. This was all very well for the treasurer ; but for those of us who had passed sixty years, and had to climb up some twenty more iron stairs whenever we wanted to look at an old pamphlet in the library, it was not so great a benefaction. When Holmes went up, for the first time, to see the new quarters of the Society, he left his card with the words, " O. W. Holmes. High- story-call Society." We understood then why the councils of the Society had been over-ruled by the powers which manage this world, to take this flight towards heaven. I ought to have given a hint above of his connection and mine with the society of " People who Think we are Going to Know More about Some Things By and By." This society was really formed by my mother, who for some time, I think, was the only member. But one day Dr. Holmes and I met in the "Old Corner Bookstore," when the " corner " had been moved to the corner of Hamilton Place, and he was telling me one of the extraor- dinary coincidences which he collects with such zeal. I ventured to trump his story with another ; and, in the language of the ungodly, I thought 1 went one better than he. This led to a talk about coincidences, and I said that my mother had long since said that she meant to have a society of the people who believed that some time we should know more about such curious coincidences. Dr. Holmes was delighted with the idea, and we "organized" the so- ciety then and there ; he was to be presi- dent, I was to be secretary, and my mother was to be treasurer. There were to be no other members, no entrance fees, no con- stitution, and no assessments. We seldom meet now that we do not authorize a meet- ing of this society and challenge each other to produce the remarkable coinci- dences which have passed since we met before. There is an awful story of his about the last time a glove was thrown down in an English court-room. It is a story in which Holmes is all mixed up with a marvellous series of impossibilities, such as would make Mr. Clemens's hair grow gray, and add a new chapter to his studies of telep- athy. I will not enter on it now, with the detail of the book that fell from the ninth shelf of a book-case, and opened at the exact passage where the challenge story was to be described. As for the story of his hearing Dr. Phinney at Rome, and the other story of Mr. Emerson's hearing Dr. Phinney at Rome, I never tell that excepting to confi- dential friends who know that I cannot tell a lie. For if I tell it to any one else, he looks at me with a quizzical air, as much as to say, " This is as bad as the story of the ' Man Without a Country ; ' and I do not know how much to believe, and how much to disbelieve." O. W. HOLMES'S SUMMER RESIDENCE AT BEVERLY FARMS. PORTRAITS OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES was the son of a clergyman, eminent in his day, and the author of a book well known to students of American history, "Annals of America." He was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 29, 1809, the third in a family of five children. He prepared for college at Phillips Andover Academy, and graduated from Harvard in 1829. He then began the study of the law, but later turned to medicine, and passed three years in study in Europe chiefly in Paris. He received his degree in 1836. In 1839 he became professor of anatomy and physiology at Dartmouth College. He resigned the position after a year or two, and took up the practice of his profession in Boston. In 1847 ne be- came professor of anatomy and physiology at Harvard ; and in this office he served continuously until near the close of 1882, when he- discontinued his lectures and in- structions on account of his age. Thence- forward until his death, October 7, 1894, he led a life of comparative leisure and re- tirement. Such in outline was Dr. Holmes's career. The literary employments which are the source of his fame were in the main diver- sions. The business of his life was the teaching and practice of medicine. Yet he began to write as a school-boy, and con- tinued with unabated vigor almost to the very last of his days. As a student at Harvard he contributed to the college peri- odicals, and delivered a poem at commence- ment ; and the year after his graduation, when he was but twenty-one years old, he wrote the famous poem " Old Ironsides," which helped to save the frigate " Consti- tution " from irreverent destruction. One of six frigates which Congress had ordered constructed in 1794, the "Constitution" had played a brilliant part, as Commodore Preble's flagship, in the war against Trip- oli, between 1801 and 1805. Then, under Captain Isaac Hull, she had fought the first naval battle of the war of 1812, cap- turing the British frigate " Guerriere," and had followed this with other notable vic- tories over the British. So when, in 1830, it was thiftily proposed to break her up, because no longer fit for service, Holmes, to adopt his own phrase on the matter, " mocked the spoilers with his school-boy scorn." Not alone as a school-boy, though, was he outspoken against the spoilers. His muse never grew too mature or dignified to speak a warm, strong word for any good human cause. Holmes's great literary opportunity and inspiration came in 1857, when the " Atlan- tic Monthly " was founded. He provided the name for the new magazine, shared in the preliminary conferences, and by his contributions did more than any one else to secure it immediate popularity. Lowell accepted the editorship with some mis- givings, as it should seem, for he said, " I will take the place, as you all seem to think I should ; but, if success is achieved, we shall owe it mainly to the doctor " (mean- ing Holmes). The opulent fulfilment of this expecta- tion was " The Autocrat of the Breakfast- Table." In beginning his famous talks, the ''Autocrat," it will be remembered, re- marks : " 1 was just going to say, when I was interrupted ;" and in " The Autocrat's autobiography," which prefaces the volume, it is explained that the interruption referred to was "just a quarter of a century in dura- tion." Two articles entitled " The Auto- crat of the Breakfast-Table " had been pub- lished, one in November, 1831, and one in February, 1832, in the " New England Magazine " of that day ; and twenty-five years later, when asked to contribute to the "Atlantic," "the recollection," Dr. Holmes says, " of these crude products of his un- combed literary boyhood suggested the thought that it would be a curious experi- ment to shake the same bough again, and see if the ripe fruit were better or worse than the early windfalls." The experiment proved so acceptable that Dr. Holmes recurred to the "Auto- cratic " form again and again. " The Professor at the Breakfast-Table " followed the " Autocrat ; " then, though many years later, " The Poet at the Breakfast-Table ; " and finally, three years before the author's death, came to complete the series, " Over the Teacups." But in addition to these Dr. Holmes produced several books of poems, three novels ("Elsie Venner," 1861 ; "The Guardian Angel," 1868; and "A Mortal Antipathy," 1885), several biogra- phies, and numerous medical works and papers a large list for a man with whom writing was never the main business of his life. PORTRAITS OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 37 ALL FROM DAGUERREOTYPES THE TWO LAST ONES, BETWEEN 1845 AND 1855. THB FIRST IS THE EARLIEST PICTURE OF DOCTOR HOLMES, AND HE IS UNABLE TO PLACE A DATE UPON IT. '38 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. MARCH, 1869. AGE 60. AUGUST, 1874. AGE 65. ABOUT 1882. AGE 73. NOVEMBER, 18QI. AGE 82. PORTRAITS OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 139 HOWELLS AND BOYESEN. A CONVERSATION BETWEEN W. D. HOWELLS AND PROFESSOR H. H. BOYESEN. RECORDED BY PROFESSOR BOYESEN. WHEN I was requested to furnish a dramatic biography of Mr. How- ells, I was confronted with what seemed an insuperable difficulty. The more I thought of William Dean Howells, the less dramatic did he seem to me. The only way that occurred to me of introduc- ing a dramatic element into our proposed interview was for me to assault him with tongue or pen, in the hope that he might take energetic measures to resent my in- trusion ; but as, notwithstanding his unva- rying kindness to me, and many unforgot- ten benefits, I cherished only the friendliest feelings for him, I could not persuade my- self to procure dramatic interest at such a price. My second objection, I am bound to con- fess, arose from my own sense of dignity, which rebelled against the rdle of an inter- viewer, and it was not until my conscience was made easy on this point that I agreed to undertake the present article. I was reminded that it was an ancient and highly dignified form of literature I was about to revive ; and that my precedent was to be sought not in the modern newspaper inter- view, but in the Platonic dialogue. By the friction of two kindred minds, sparks of thought may flash forth which owe their origin solely to the friendly collision. We have a far more vivid portrait of Socrates in the beautiful conversational turns of " The Symposium " and fie first book of " The Republic " than in the purely ob- jective account of Xenophon in his " Me- morabilia." And Howells, though he may not know it, has this trait in common with Socrates, that he can portray himself, un- consciously, better than I or anybody else could do it for him. If I needed any further encouragement, I found it in the assurance that what I was expected to furnish was to be in the nature of "an exchange of confidences between two friends with a view to publication." It HO WELLS AND BOYESEN. 141 was understood, of course, that Mr. How- ells was to be more confiding than myself, and that his reminiscences were to pre- dominate ; for an author, however unhe- loic he may appear to his own modesty, is bound to be the hero of his biography. What made the subject so alluring to me, apart from the personal charm which in- heres in the man and all that appertains to him, was the consciousness that our friendship was of twenty-two years' stand- ing, and that during all that time not a single jarring note had been introduced to mar the harmony of our relation. Equipped, accordingly, with a good con- science and a lead pencil (which remained undisturbed in my breast-pocket), I set out to "exchange confidences" with the author of "Silas Lapham " and "A Modern In- stance." I reached the enormous human hive on Fifty-ninth Street where my sub- ject, for the present, occupies a dozen most comfortable and ornamental cells, and was promptly hoisted up to the fourth floor know. I am aware, for instance, that you were born at Martin's Ferry, Ohio, March n, 1837 ; that you removed thence to Day- ton, and a few years later to Jefferson, Ashtabula County ; that your father edited, published, and printed a country newspa- per of Republican complexion, and that you spent a good part of your early years in the printing office. Nevertheless, I have some difficulty in realizing the environ- ment of your boyhood." Howells. If you have read my " Boy's Town," which is in all essentials autobio- graphical, you know as much as I could tell you. The environment of my early life was exactly as there described. Boyesen. Your father, I should judge, then, was not a strict disciplinarian ? Howells. No. He was the gentlest of men a friend and companion to his sons. He guided us in an unobtrusive way with- out our suspecting it. He was continually putting books into my hands, and -they were always good books ; many of them PROFESSOR BOYESEN IN HIS STUDY AT COLUMBIA COLLEGE. and deposited in front of his door. It is a house full of electric wires and tubes literally honeycombed with modern con- veniences. But in spite of all these, I made my way triumphantly to Mr. Howells's den, and after a proper prelude began the novel task assigned to me. " I am afraid," I remarked quite en pas- sant, " that I shall be embarrassed not by my ignorance, but by my knowledge con- cerning your life. For it is difficult to ask with good grace about what you already became events in my life. I had no end of such literary passions during my boyhood. Among the first was Goldsmith, then came Cervantes and Irving. Boyesen. Then there was a good deal of literary atmosphere about your child- hood ? Howells. Yes. I can scarcely remem- 142 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. her the time when books did not play a great part in my life. Father was, by his culture and his interests, rather isolated from the community in which we lived, and this made him and all of us rejoice the more in a new author, in whose world we would live for weeks and months, and who colored our thoughts and conversa- tion. Boyesen. It has always been a matter of wonder to me that, with so little regular schooling, you stepped full-fledged into literature with such an exquisite and wholly individual style. Howells. If you accuse me of that kind of thing, I must leave you to account for it. I had always a passion for literature, and to a boy with a mind and a desire to learn, a printing office is not a bad school. Boyesen. How old were you when you left Jefferson and went to Columbus? Howells. I was nineteen years old when I went to the capital and wrote legislative reports for Cincinnati and Cleveland papers ; afterwards I became one of the editors of the " Ohio State Journal." My duties gradually took a wide range, and I edited the literary column and wrote many of the leading articles. I was then in the midst of my enthusiasm for Heine, and was so impregnated with his spirit that a poem which I sent to the " Atlantic Monthly " was mistaken by Mr. Lowell for a translation from the German poet. When he had satisfied himself, however, that it was not a transla- tion, he accepted and printed it. Boyesen. Tell me how you hap- pened to publish your first volume, " Poems by Two Friends," in part- nership with John J. Piatt. Howells. I had known Piatt as a young printer ; afterwards when he began to write poems, I read them and was delighted with them. When he came to Columbus I made his acquaintance, and we became friends. By this time we were both contributors to the " Atlantic Monthly." I may as well tell you that his contributions to our joint volume were far superior to mine. Boyesen. Did Lowell share that opinion ? Howells. That I don't know. He wrote me a very charming letter, in which he said many encouraging things, and he briefly reviewed the book in the "Atlantic." Boyesen. What was the condi- tion of society in Columbus during those days ? Howells. There were many delightful and cultivated people there, and society was charming ; the North and South were both represented, and their characteristics united in a kind of informal Western hos- pitality, warm and cordial in its tone, which gave of its very best without stint. Sal- mon P. Chase, later Secretary of the Treas- ury, and Chief Justice of the United States, was then Governor of Ohio. He had a charming family, and made us young editors welcome at his house. All winter long there was a round of parties at the different houses; the houses were large and we always danced. These parties were brilliant affairs, socially, but besides, we young people had many informal gayeties. The Old Starling Medical Col- lege, which was defunct as an educational institution, except for some vivisection and experiments on hapless cats and dogs that went on in some out-of-the-way cor- ners, was used as a boarding-house ; and there was a large circular room in which we often improvised dances. We young fellows who lodged in the place were half MR. HOWELI.S AT THE TIME OF WRITING "ANNIE KILBURN," 1887. HOW ELLS AND BOYESEN. a dozen journalists, lawyers, and law students ; one was, like my- self, a writer for the " Atlantic," and we saw life with joyous eyes. We read the new books, and talked them over with the young ladies whom we seem to have been al- ways calling upon. I remember those years in Columbus as among the happiest years of my life. Boyesen. From Columbus you went as consul to Venice, did not you ? Howells. Yes. You remember I had written a campaign " Life of Lincoln." I was, like my father, an ardent anti-slavery man. I went myself to Washington soon after Pres- ident Lincoln's inauguration. I was first offered the consulate to Rome ; but as it depended entirely upon perquisites, which amounted only to three or four hundred dollars a year, I declined it, and they gave me Venice. The salary was raised to fif- teen hundred dollars, which seemed to me quite beyond the dreams of avarice. Boyesen. Do not you regard that Venetian experience as a very valuable one? Howells. Oh, of course. In the first place, it gave me four years of almost un- interrupted leisure for study and literary work. There was, to be sure, occasionally an invoice to be verified, but that did not take much time. Secondly, it gave me a wider outlook upon the world than I had hitherto had. Without much study of a systematic kind, I had acquired a notion of English, French, German, and Spanish literature. I had been an eager and con- stant reader, always guided in my choice of books by my own inclination. I had learned German. Now, my first task was to learn Italian ; and one of my early teachers was a Venetian priest, whom I read Dante with. This priest in certain ways suggested Don Ippolito in " A Fore- gone Conclusion." Boyesen. Then he took snuff, and had a supernumerary calico handkerchief ? Hoivells. Yes. But what interested me most about him was his religious skepti- cism. He used to say, " The saints are the gods baptized." Then he was a kind of baffled inventor ; though whether his in- ventions had the least merit I was unable to determine. Boyesen. But his love story ? Howells. That was wholly fictitious. Boyesen. I remember you gave me, in 1874, a letter of introduction to a Venetian THE BIRTHPLACE OF W. D. HOWELLS AT MARTIN'S FERRY, OHIO. friend of yours, named Brunetta, whom I failed to find. Howells. Yes, Brunetta was the first friend I had in Venice. He was a dis- tinctly Latin character sober, well regu- lated, and probity itself. Boyesen. Do you call that the Latin character ? Howells. It is not our conventional idea of it ; but it is fully as characteristic, if not more so, than the light, mercurial, pleasure-loving type which somehow in literature has displaced the other. Bru- netta and I promptly made the discovery that we were congenial. Then we became daily companions. I had a number of other Italian friends too, full of beautiful bonhomie and Southern sweetness of tem- perament. Boyesen. You must have acquired Italian in a very short time ? Howells. Yes; being domesticated in that way in the very heart of that Italy which was then Italia irridente, I could not help steeping myself in its atmosphere and breathing in the language, with the rest of its very composite flavors. Boyesen. Yes ; and whatever I know of Italian literature I owe largely to the com- pleteness of that soaking process of yours. Your book on the Italian poets is one of the most charmingly sympathetic and il- luminative bits of criticism that I know. Howells. I am glad you think so ; but the book was never a popular success. Of 144 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. all the Italian authors, the one I delighted in the most was Goldoni. His exquisite realism fascinated me. It was the sort of thing which I felt I ought not to like ; but for all that I liked it immensely. Boyesen. How do you mean that you ought not to like it ? Howells. Why, I was an idealist in those days. I was only twenty-four or twenty-five years old, and I knew the world chiefly through literature. I was all the time trying to see things as others had seen them, and I had a notion that, in literature, persons and things should be nobler and better than they are in the sor- did reality ; and this romantic glamour veiled the world to me, and kept me from seeing things as they are. But in the lanes and alleys of Venice I found Goldoni everywhere. Scenes from his plays were enacted before my eyes, with all the charm- ing Southern vividness of speech and ges- ture, and I seemed at every turn to have stepped unawares into one of his come- dies. I believe this was the beginning of my revolt. But it was a good while yet before I found my own bearings. f?ii S^^^^iv^- "' '" ^''-"'^^^.&^^^R l - i T ' ilMEfflWwira^^ilite ! THE GIUSTINIANI PALACE, HOWELI.S'S HOME IN VENICE. Boyesen. But permit me to say that it was an exquisitely delicate set of fresh Western senses you brought with you to Venice. When I was in Venice in 1878, I could not get away from you, however much I tried. I saw your old Venetian senator, in his august rags, roasting cof- fee ; and I promenaded about for days in the chapters of your " Venetian Life," like the Knight Huldbrand in the Enchanted Forest in " Undine," and I could not find my way out. Of course, I know that, being what you were, you could not have helped writing that book, but what was the immediate cause of your writing it ? Howells. From the day I arrived in Ven- ice I kept a journal in which I noted down my impressions. I found a young pleasure in registering my sensations at the sight of notable things, and literary reminiscences usually shimmered through my observa- tions. Then I received an offer from the " Boston Daily Advertiser " to write week- ly or bi-weekly letters, for which they paid me five dollars, in greenbacks, a column, nonpareil. By the time this sum reached Venice, shaven and shorn by discounts for exchange in gold premium, it had usually shrunk to half its size or less. Still I was glad enough to get even that, and I kept on writing joyously. So the book grew in my hands until, at the time I resigned, in 1865, I was trying to have it published. I offered it successively to a number of Eng- lish publishers ; but they all declined it. At last Mr. Triibner agreed to take it, if I could guarantee the sale of five hundred copies in the United States, or induce an American publisher to buy that number of copies in sheets. I happened to cross the ocean with Mr. Hurd of the New York firm of Hurd & Houghton, and repeated Mr. Triibner's proposition to him. He refused to commit himself ; but some weeks after my arrival in New York he told me that the risk was practically nothing at all, and that his firm would agree to take the five hundred copies. The book was an instant success. I don't know how many editions of it have been printed, but I should say that its sale has been upward of forty thou- sand copies, and it still continues. The English weeklies gave me long compli- mentary notices, which I carried about for months in my pocket like love-letters, and read surreptitiously at odd moments. I thought it was curious that other people to whom I showed the reviews did not seem much interested. Boyesen. After returning to this coun- try, did not you settle down in New York ? HO WELLS AND BOYESEN. 145 Howells. Yes ; I was for a while a free lance in literature. I did whatever came in my way, and sold my articles to the newspapers, going about from office to office, but I was finally offered a place on " The Nation," where I obtained a fixed position at a salary. I had at times a sense that, by going abroad, I had fallen out of the American procession of prog- ress ; and, though I was elbowing my way energetically through the crowd, I seemed to have a tremendous diffi- culty in recovering my lost place on my native soil, and asserting my full right to it. So, when young men beg me to recommend them for consulships, I always feel in duty bound to impress on them this great danger of falling out of the proces- sion, and asking them whether they have confi- dence in their ability to re- conquer the place they have deserted ; for while they are away it will be pretty sure to be filled by somebody else. A man returning from a residence of several years abroad has a sense of super- fluity in his own country he has become a mere super- numerary whose presence or absence makes no particular difference. Boyesen. What year did you leave " The Nation" and assume the editorship of "The Atlantic"? Howells. I took the edi- torship in 1872, but went to live in Cambridge six or seven years before. I was first assistant editor under James T. Fields, who was uniformly kind and consid- erate, and with whom I got along perfectly. It was a place that he could have made odious to me, but he made it delightful. I have the tenderest regard and the brightest respect for his memory. Boyesen. I need scarcely ask you if your association with Lowell was agreeable ? Howells. It was in every way charming. He was twenty years my senior, but he always treated me as an equal and a con- temporary. And you know the difference between thirty and fifty is far greater than between forty and sixty, or fifty and Boyesen. \V. D. HOWELLS, FROM seventy. I dined with him every week, and he showed the friendliest appreciation of the work I was trying to do. We took long walks together ; and you know what a rare talker he was. Somehow I got much nearer to him than to Longfellow. As a man Longfellow was flawless. He was full of noble friendliness and encourage- ment to all literary workers in whom he believed. Do you remember you once said to me that he was a most inveterate praiser? Howells. I may have said that ; for in the kindness of his heart, and his constitu- tional reluctance to give pain, he did undoubtedly often strain a point or two in speaking well of things. But that was part of his beautiful kindliness of soul and admirable urbanity. Lowell, you know, confessed to being "a tory in his nerves ; " but Longfellow, with all his stateliness of manner, was nobly and per- fectly democratic. He was ideally good ; I think he was without a fault. Boyesen. I have never known a man who was more completely free from snob- bishness and pretence of all kinds. It delighted him to go out of his way to do a man a favor. There was, however, a little touch of Puritan pallor in his tem- perament, a slight lack of robustness ; that is, if his brother's biography can be trusted. What I mean to say is, that he appears there a trifle too perfect ; too bloodlessly, and almost frostily, statuesque. I have always had a little diminutive grudge against the Rev. Samuel Longfellow for not using a single one of those beautiful anecdotes I sent him illustrative of the warmer and more genial side of the poet's character. He evidently wanted to portray a Plutarchian man of heroic size, and he therefore had to exclude all that was subtly individualizing. Howells. Well, there is always room for another biography of Longfellow. Boyesen. At the time when I made your acquaintance, in 1871, you were writing AFTER HIS RETURN 146 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. Vf. D. HOWELLS. From a photograph taken at Cambridge in 1868. was an incomparably delightful and inter- esting man. Boyesen. Yes; I remember him' well. I doubt if I ever heard a more brilliant talker. Howells. No ; he was one of the best talkers in America. And didn't the im- mortal Ralph Keeler appear upon the scene during the summer of '71 or '72 ? Boyesen. Yes ; your small son " Bua" in- sisted upon calling him " Big Man Keeler," in spite of his small size. Howells. Yes, Bua was the only one who ever saw Keeler life-size. Boyesen. I remember how he sat in your library and told stories of his negro min- strel days and his wild adventures in "Their Wedding Journey." Do you re- many climes, and did not care whether member the glorious talks we had together, you laughed with him or at him, but while the hours of the night slipped away would join you from sheer sympathy ; and unnoticed ? We have no more of those how we all laughed in chorus until our splendid conversational rages nowadays, sides ached ! How eloquent we were, to be sure ; and Howells. Poor Keeler ! He was a sort with what delight you read those chapters of migratory, nomadic survival ; but he on "Niagara," "Quebec," and "The St. had fine qualities, and was well equipped Lawrence ; " and with what rapture I lis- for a sort of fiction. If he had lived he tened ! I can never read them without might have written the great American supplying the cadence of your voice, and novel. Who knows? seeing you seated, twenty-two years Boyesen. Was not it at Cambridge that younger than now, in that cosey little Bjornstjerne Bjornson visited you ? library in Berkeley Street. Howells. No ; that was in 1881, at Bel- Howells. Yes ; and do you mind our mont, where we went in order to be in the sudden attacks of hunger, when we would country, and give the children the benefit start on a foraging expedition into the eel- of country air. When I met Bjornson be- lar, in the middle of the night, and return, fore we had always talked Italian ; but you with a cheese and crackers, and I with a watermelon and a bottle of champagne ? What jolly meals we improvised ! Only it is a wonder to me that we survived them. Boyesen. You will never sus- pect what an influence you ex- erted upon my fate by your friendliness and sympathy in those never-to-be-forgotten days. You Americanized me. I had been an alien, and felt alien in every fibre of my soul, until I met you. Then I became domesti- cated. I found a kindred spirit, who understood me, and whom I understood ; and that is the first and indispensable condition of happiness. It was at your house, at a luncheon, I think, that I met Henry James. Howells. Yes ; James and I w*ere constant companions, we took daily walks together; and his father, the elder Henry James, MR. HOWELLS'S STUDY IN CAMBRIDGE. HO WELLS AND BOYESEN. 147 ift^V*^' _^^^ ^ . -^J'i- ,". / - . .-, -!\r W. D. HOWELLS'S SUMMER HOME AT BELMONT IN 1878. the first thing he said to me at Belmont was : " Now we will speak English." And when he had got into the house he picked up a book and said, in his abrupt way : " We do not put enough in ; " meaning, thereby, that we ignored too much of life in our fiction excluded it out of regard for propriety. But when I met him, some years later, in Paris, he had changed his mind about that, for he detested the French naturalism, and could find nothing to praise in Zola. Boyesen. I am going to ask you one of the interviewer's stock questions, but you need not answer, you know : Which of your books do you regard as the greatest ? Howells. I have always taken the most satisfaction in "A Modern Instance." I have there come closest to American life, as I know it. Boyesen. But in " Silas Lapham" it seems to me that you have got a still firmer grip on American reality. Howells. Perhaps. Still, I prefer "A Modern Instance." "Silas Lapham" is the most successful novel I have pub- lished, except "A Hazard of New For- tunes," which has sold nearly twice as many copies as any of the rest. Boyesen. What do you attribute that to? Howells. Possibly to the fact that the scene is laid in New York ; the public throughout the country is far more in- terested in New York than in Boston. New York, as Lowell once said, is a huge pudding, and every town and village has been helped to a slice, or wants to be. Boyesen. I rejoice that New York has found such a subtly appreciative and faith- ful chronicler as you show yourself to be in "A Hazard of New Fortunes." To the equipment of a great city a world-city, as the Germans say belongs a great novel- ist; that is to say, at least one. And even though your modesty may rebel, I shall persist in regarding you henceforth as the novelist par excellence of New York. Howells. Ah, you don't expect me to live up to that bit of taffy ! NOTE. On October 4, 1895, as this book was going through the press, Professor Boyesen died sud- denly, in the very- prime of his life, being but forty-seven years old. Writing of the event, one who knew him intimately says : " The death of Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen takes from the world not the scholarly pro- fessor and eminent author only ; it removes from our midst a large-hearted, generous, public-spirited gentle- man, and this is the loss which we feel hrst. The value of his educational labors and his fame as a writer are known to all ; the active part he has taken in the various movements to purify our political life is known to many ; but only those who came into personal contact with the man know how large was his generosity, how helpful his advice." The same writer speaks of Professor Boyesen's gifts as a lecturer, and referring particularly to a series of lectures on the modern novel, he says : "In these the personal element was strong ; Professor Boyesen had been on terms of friendship and even intimacy with the leading novelists of many lands. His lectures attracted thousands ; the large hall at Columbia College was filled to overflow- ing, often an hour before the time announced. . . . 'It was all due to the personal element,' he said." EDITOR. PORTRAITS OF W. D. HOWELLS. AGE 18. 18 5S . RE SI DENCE, JEFFERSON, OHIO. AGE 23. ,860. NEWS EDITOR OF "OHIO STATK JOU JOURNAL. AGE 25. 1862. CONSUL AT VENICE. AGE 28. MAY, 1865. VENICE, "VENETIAN LIFE AGE 32. 1869. CAMBRIDGE, MASS. "SUBURBAN SKETCHES. PORTRAITS OF W. D. HO WELLS. 149 AGE 41. 1878. BELMONT, MASS. ''THE LADV OF THE AGE 47. 1884. BOSTON, MASS. "THE RISE OF SILAS AROOSTOOK." LAPHAM." AgE 50. 1887. BOSTON. " APRIL HOPES. HUMAN DOCUMENTS. AGE 53. 1890. BOSTON. "THE SHADOW OF A DREAM. 1 PORTRAITS OF PROFESSOR H. H. BOYESEN. Born in Frederiksvxrn, Norway, September 23, 1848 ; died in New York, October 4, 1895. AGE 17. 1865. STUDENT, CHRISTIANIA, NORWAY. AGE 19. 1867. STUDENT, UNIVERSITY OF CHRISTIANIA. PORTRAITS OF H. H. BOYESEN. CHICAGO. EDITOR OF " FREMAD." AGE 27. 1875. PROFESSOR OF GERMAN AT CORNELL UNI- VERSITY, ITHACA, NEW YORK. " TALES OF TWO HEMISPHERES." AGE 34. 1882. PROFESSOR OF MODF.RN LANGUAGES, COLUM- BIA COLLEGE, NEW YORK CITY. " DAUGHTER OF THE PHILISTINES." 1893. THE AUTHOR OF "SOCIAL STRUGGLERS. JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY. A CONVERSATION BETWEEN THE "HOOSIER" POET AND HAMLIN GARLAND. RECORDED BY MR. GARLAND. RILEY'S country, like most of the State of Indiana, has been won from the original forest by incredible toil. Three generations of men have laid their bones beneath the soil that now blooms into gold and lavender harv'ests of wheat and corn. The traveller to-day can read this record of struggle in the fringes of mighty elms and oaks and sycamores which form the grim background of every pleasant stretch of stubble or corn land. Greenfield, lying twenty miles east of Indianapolis, is to-day an agricultural town, but in the days when Whitcomb Riley lived here it was only a half-remove from the farm and the wood-lot ; and the fact that he was brought up so near to the farm, and yet not deadened and soured by its toil, accounts, in great measure at least, for his work. But Greenfield as it stands to-day, modernized and refined somewhat, is apparently the most un- promising field for litera- ture, especially for poetry. It has no hills and no river nor lake. Nothing but vast and radiant sky, and blue vistas of fields be- tween noble trees. It has the customary main street with stores fronting upon it ; the usual small shops, and also its bar-rooms, swarming with loungers. It has its court- house in the square, half- hid by great trees a grim and bare building, with its portal defaced and grimy. The people, as they pass you in the street, speak in the soft, high-keyed nasal drawl which is the basis of the Hoosier dialect. It looks to be, as it is, halfway between the New England village and the Western town. The life, like that of all small towns in America, is apparently slow-moving, pur- poseless, and uninteresting ; and yet from this town, and other similar towns, has Whitcomb Riley drawn the sweetest honey of poesy honey with a native delicious tang, as of buckwheat and basswood bloom, JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY. From a photograph by Barraud, London. JAMES WHITCOMB RILEYHAMLIN GARLAND. -.RIGGSBY S STATION. -THE OLD RILEY HOUSE AND PRESENT SUMMER RESIDENCE, GREENFIELD, INDIANA. " Le's go a-visitin' back to Griggsby's Station Back where the latch-string's a-hangin' from the door, And ever' neighbor round the place is dear as a relation Back where we ust to be so happy and so pore ! " with hints of the mullein and the thistle of dry pastures. I found Mr. Riley sitting on the porch of the old homestead, which has been in alien hands for a long time, but which he has lately bought back. In this house his childhood was passed, at a time when the street was hardly more than a lane in the woods. He bought it because of old-time associations. " I am living here," he wrote me, " with two married sisters keeping house for me during the summer; that is to say, I ply spasmodically between here and Indian- apolis." I was determined to see the poet here, in the midst of his native surroundings, rather than at a hotel in Indianapolis. I was very glad to find him at home, for it gave me opportunity to study both the poet and his material. It is an unpretentious house of the usual village sort, with a large garden ; and his two charming sisters with their families (summering here) give him something more of a home atmosphere than he has had since he entered the lecturer's profes- sion. Two or three children nephews and nieces companion him also. After a few minutes' chat Riley said, with a comical side glance at me : " Come up into my library." I knew what sort of a library to expect. It was a pleasant little upper room, with a bed and a small table in it, and about a dozen books. Mr. Riley threw out his hand in a com- prehensive gesture, and said : " This is as sumptuous a room as I ever get. I live most o' my time in a Pullman car or a hotel, and you know how blamed luxu- rious an ordinary hotel room is." I refused to be drawn off into side dis- cussions, and called for writing paper. Riley took an easy position on the bed, while I sharpened pencils, and studied him closely, with a view to letting my readers know how he looks. He is a short man, with square shoul- ders and a large head. He has a very dignified manner at times. His face is smoothly shaven, and, though he is not bald, the light color of his hair makes him seem so. His eyes are gray and round, and generally solemn, and sometimes stern. His face is the face of a great actor in rest, grim and inscrutable ; in action, full of the most elusive expressions, capable of humor and pathos. Like most humorists, 154 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. he is sad in repose. His language, when he chooses to have it so, is wonderfully concise and penetrating and beautiful. He drops often into dialect, but always with a look on his face which shows he is aware of what he is doing. In other words, he is master of both forms of speech. His mouth is his wonderful feat- ure : wide, flexible, clean-cut. His lips are capable of the grimmest and the mer- riest lines. When he reads they pout like a child's, or draw down into a straight, grim line like a New England deacon's, or close at one side, and uncover his white and even teeth at the other, in the sly smile of " Benjamin F. Johnson," the humble humorist and philosopher. In his own proper person he is full of quaint and beautiful philosophy. He is wise rather than learned wise with the quality that is in proverbs, almost always touched with humor. His eyes are near-sighted and his nose prominent. His head is of the " tack- hammer" variety, as he calls it. The public insists that there is an element of resemblance between Mr. Riley, Eugene Field, and Bill Nye. He is about forty years of age and a bachelor presumably from choice. He is a man of marked neatness of dress and delicacy of manner. I began business by asking if he remem- bered where we met last. "Certainly Kipling's. Great story- teller, Kipling. I like to hear him tell about animals. Remember his story of the two elephants that lambasted the one that went 'must'?" " I guess I do. I have a suspicion, how- ever, that Kipling was drawing a long bow for our benefit, especially in that story of the elephant that chewed a stalk of cane into a swab to wind in the clothing of his keeper, in order to get him within reach. That struck me as bearing down pretty hard on a couple of simple Western boys like us." " Waive the difference for genius. He made it a good story, anyway ; and, aside from his great gifts, I consider Kipling a lovely fellow. I like him because he's natively interested in the common man." I nodded my assent, and Riley went on : " Kipling had the good fortune to get started early, and he's kept busy right along. A man who is great has no time for anything else," he added, in that pecu- liarity of phrase and solemnity of utter- ance which made me despair of ever dramatizing him. " He's going to do better," I replied. " The best story in that book is ' His Private Honor.' That's as good as any- body does. What makes Kipling great is his fidelity to his own convictions and to his own conditions, his writing what he knows about. And, by the way, the Nor- wegians and Swedes at the World's Fair have read us a good lesson on that score. They've put certain phases of their life and landscape before us with immense vim and truth, while our American artists have mainly gone hunting for themes Breton peasants and Japanese dancing-girls." Riley sternly roused up to interrupt : "And ignoring the best material in the world. Material just out o' God's hand, lying around thick " then quick as light he was Old Man Johnson again : " ' Thick as clods in the fields and lanes Er these-ere little hop-toads when it rains ! ' " " American artists and poets have al- ways known too much," I went on. " We've been so afraid the world would find us lacking in scholarship, that we've allowed it to find us lacking in creative work. W 7 e've been so very correct, that we've imitated. Now, if you'd had four or five years of Latin, Riley, you'd be writing Latin odes or translations." Riley looked grave. " I don't know but you're right. Still, you can't tell. Some- times I feel that I am handicapped by ignorance of history and rhetoric and languages." "Well, of course, I ought not to discuss a thing like this in your presence, but I think the whole thing has worked out beautifully for the glory of Indiana and Western literature." There came a comical light into his eyes, and his lips twisted up into a sly grin at the side, as he dropped into dialect : " I don't take no credit for my ignorance. Jest born thataway," and he added a moment later, with a characteristic swift change to deep earnestness : " My work did itself." As he lay, with that introspective look in his eyes, I took refuge in one of the questions I had noted down : " Did you ever actually live on a farm ? " " No. All I got of farm life I picked up right from this distance this town this old homestead. Of course, Greenfield was nothing but a farmer town then, and be- sides, father had a farm just on the edge of town, and in corn-plantin' times he used to press us boys into service, and we went very loathfully, at least I did. I got hold of farm life some way all ways, in fact. JAMES WHITCOMB RILEYHAMLIN GARLAND. I might not have made use of it if I had been closer to it than this." " Yes, there's something in that. You would have failed, probably, in your per- spective. The actual work on a farm doesn't make poets. Work is a good thing in the retrospect, or when you can regulate the amount of it. Yes, I guess you had just the kind of a life to give you a hold on the salient facts of farm life. Anyhow, you've done it, that's settled." Riley was thinking about something which amused him, and he roused up to dramatize a little scene. " Sometimes some kins with for feed, and I get the smell of the fodder and the cattle, so that it brings up the right picture in the mind of the reader. I don't know how I do it. It ain't me." His voice took on a deeper note, and his- face shone with a strange sort of mysti- cism which often comes out in his earnest- moments. He put his fingers to his lips ia a descriptive gesture, as if he held a trum- pet. " I'm only the ' wilier ' through whicfr the whistle comes." "The basis of all art is spontaneous ob- servation," I said, referring back a little. "MILROY'S GROVE" AND OLD NATIONAL ROAD BRIDGE, BRANDVWINE. " Where the dusky turtle lies basking on the gravel Of the sunny sand-bar in the middle tide, And the ghostly dragonfly pauses in his travel To rest like a blossom where the water-lily died." -Babyhood. real country boy gives me the round turn on some farm points. For instance, here comes one stepping up to me : ' You never lived on a farm,' he says. ' Why not ? ' says I. 'Well,' he says, 'a turkey-cock gobbles, but he don't ky-ouck as your poetry says.' He had me right there. It's the turkey- hen that ky-oucks. ' Well, you'll never hear another turkey-cock of mine ky- ouckin',' says I." While I laughed, Riley became serious again. " But generally I hit on the right symbols. I get the frost on the pumpkin and the fodder in the shock ; and I seethe frost on the old axe they split the pump- " If a man is to work out an individual utterance with the subtlety and suggestion of life, he can't go diggin' around among the bones of buried prophets. I take it you didn't go to school much." " No, and when I did I was a failure in everything except reading, maybe. I liked to read. We had McGuffey's Series, you know, and there was some good stuff there. There was Irving and Bryant and Cooper and Dickens- " And ' Lochiel's Warning '- He accepted the interruption. " And ' The Battle of Waterloo,' and ' The Death of Little Nell' " 156 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. I rubbed my knees with glee as I again interrupted : " And there was ' Marco Boz- zaris,' you know, and ' Rienzi.' You recol- lect that speech of Rienzi's ' I come not here to talk,' etc. ? I used to count the class to see if ' Rouse, ye Slaves,' would come to me. It was capitalized, you re- member. It always. scared me nearly to death to read those capitalized passages." Riley mused. " Pathos seems to be the worst with me. I used to run away when we were to read ' Little Nell.' I knew I couldn't read it without crying, and I knew they'd all laugh at me and make the whole thing ridiculous. I couldn't stand that. My teacher, Lee O. Harris, was a friend to me and helped me in many ways. He got to understand me beautifully. He knew I couldn't learn arithmetic. There wasn't any gray matter in that part of my head. Perfectly empty ! But I can't remember when I wasn't a declaimer. I always took natively to anything theatrical. History I took a dislike to, as a thing without juice, and so I'm not particularly well stocked in dates and events of the past." " Well, that's a good thing, too, I guess," I said, pushing my point again. " It has thrown you upon the present, and kept you dealing with your own people. Of course, I don't mean to argue that perfect ignorance is a thing to be desired, but there is no distinction in the historical poem or novel, to my mind. Everybody's done that." Riley continued : " Harris, in addition to being a scholar and a teacher, was, and is, a poet. He was also a playwright, and made me a success in a comedy part which he wrote for me, in our home theatricals." " Well, now, that makes me think. It was your power to recite that carried you into the patent-medicine cart, wasn't it ? And how about that sign-painting ? Which came first ? " " The sign-painting. I was a boy in my teens when I took up sign-painting." " Did you serve a regular apprentice- ship ? " " Yes, learned my trade of an old Dutch- man here, by the name of Keefer, who was an artist in his way. I had a natural faculty for drawing. I suppose I could have illustrated my books if I had given time to it. It's rather curious, but I hadn't been with the old fellow much more than a week before I went to him and asked him why he didn't make his own letters. I couldn't see why he copied from the same old forms all the time. I hated to copy anything." " Well, now, I want to know about that patent-medicine peddling." Something in my tone made him reply quickly : " That has been distorted. It was really a very simple matter, and followed the sign-painting naturally. After the 'trade' episode I had tried to read law with my father, but I didn't seem to get anywhere. Forgot as diligently as I read. So far as school equipment was concerned, I was an advertised idiot ; so what was the use ? I had a trade, but it was hardly what I wanted to do always, and my health was bad very bad bad as / was ! " A doctor here in Greenfield advised me to travel. But how in the world was I to travel without money ? It was just at this time that the patent-medicine man came along. He needed a man, and I argued this way : ' This man is a doctor, and if I must travel, better travel with a doctor.' He had a fine team, and a nice- looking lot of fellows with him ; so I plucked up courage to ask if I couldn't go along and paint his advertisements for him." Riley smiled with retrospective amuse- ment. "I rode out of town behind those horses without saying good-by to any one. And though my patron wasn't a diploma'd doctor, as I found out, he was a mighty fine man, and kind to his horses, which was a recommendation. He was a man of good habits, and the whole company was made up of good straight boys." " How long were you with them ?" " About a year. Went home with him, and was made same as one of his own lovely family. He lived at Lima, Ohio. My experience with him put an idea in my head a business idea, for a wonder and the next year I went down to Anderson and went into partnership with a young fellow to travel, organizing a scheme of advertising with paint, which we called ' The Graphic Company.' We had five or six young fellows, all musicians as well as handy painters, and we used to capture the towns with our music. One fellow could whistle like a nightingale, another sang like an angel, and another played the banjo. I scuffled with the violin and gui- tar." " I thought so, from that poem on ' The Fiddle' in 'The Old Swimmin' Hole.'" " Our only dissipation was clothes. We dressed loud. You could hear our clothes an incalculable distance. We had an idea it helped business. Our plan was to take one firm of each business in a town, paint- JAMES WHITCOMB RILEYHAMLIN GARLAND. 'THE OLD SWIMMIN'-HOLE" AS IT NOW APPEARS. " Childish voices, farther on, Where the truant stream has gone, Vex the echoes of the wood Till no word is understood Save that we are well aware Happiness is hiding there : There, in leafy coverts, nude Little bodies poise and leap, Spattering the solitude " And the silence everywhere Mimic monsters of the deep ! Wallowing in sandy shoals Plunging headlong out of sight, And, with spurtings of delight, Clutching hands and slippery soles, Climbing up the treacherous steep Over which the spring-board spurns Each again as he returns." In Swimming- 'lime. 158 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. ing its advertisements on every road lead- ing into the town : ' Go to Mooney's,' and things like that, you understand. We made a good thing at it." " How long did you do business ?" " Three or four years, and we had more fun than anybody." He turned another comical look on me over his pinch-nose eyeglasses. "You've heard this story about my travelling all over the State as a blind sign-painter ? Well, that started this way. One day we were in a small town somewhere, and a great crowd watching us in breathless wonder and curiosity ; and one of our party said : ' Riley, let me in- troduce you as a blind sign-painter.' So just for mischief I put on a crazy look in the eyes and pretended to be blind. They led me carefully to the ladder, and handed me my brush and paints. It was great fun. I'd hear them saying as I worked, ' That feller ain't blind.' ' Yes, he is; see his eyes.' ''No, he ain't, I tell you; he's playin' off.' * I tell you he is blind. Didn't you see him fall over a box there and spill all his paints ? ' ' Riley rose here and laughingly reenacted the scene, and I don't wonder that the vil- lagers were deceived, so perfect was his .assumption of the patient, weary look of a blind person. I laughed at the joke. It was like the tricks boys play at college. Riley went on. " Now, that's all there was to it. I was a blind sign-painter one day, and forgot it the next. We were all boys, and jokers, naturally enough, but not lawless. All were good fellows. All had nice homes and good people." " Were you writing any at this time ? " " Oh, yes, I was always writing for pur- poses of recitation. I couldn't find printed poetry that was natural enough to speak. From a child I had always flinched at false rhymes and inversions. I liked John G. Saxe because he had a jaunty trick of rhyming artlessly ; made the sense demand the rhyme like " Young Peter Pyramus I call him Peter, Not for the sake of the rhyme or the metre, But merely to make the name completer.' " I liked those classic travesties, too he poked fun at the tedious old themes, and that always pleased me." Riley's voice grew stern, as he said : " I'm against the fel- lows who celebrate the old to the neglect of our own kith and kin. So I was always try- ing to write of the kind of people I knew, and especially to write verse that I could read just as if it were being spoken for the first time." " I saw in a newspaper the other day that you began your journalistic work in Anderson." " That's right. When I got back from my last trip with 'The Graphic Company,' young Will M. Croan offered me a place on a paper he was just connecting himself with. He had heard that I could write, and took it for granted I would be a valuable man in the local and advertising departments. I was. I inaugurated at once a feature of free doggerel advertis- ing, for our regular advertisers. I wrote reams and miles of stuff like this : " ' O Yawcob -Stein, Dot frent of mine, He got dot Cloding down so fine Dot effer'body bin a-buyin' Fon goot old Yawcob Stein.' " "I'd like to see some of those old papers. I suppose they're all down there on file." " I'm afraid they are. It's all there. Whole hemorrhages of it." "Did you go from there to Indianapo- lis?" He nodded. " How did you come to go ? Did you go on the venture ? " " No, it came about in this way. I had a lot of real stuff, as I fancied, quite dif- ferent from the doggerel I've just quoted ; and when I found something pleased the people, as I'd hold 'em up and read it to 'em, I'd send it off to a magazine, and it would come back quite promptly by return mail. Still I believed in it. I had a friend on the opposition paper who was always laughing at my pretensions as a poet, and I was anxious to show him I could write poetry just as good as that which he praised of other writers ; and it was for his benefit I concocted that scheme of imitating Poe. You've heard of that?" " Not from any reliable source." "Well, it was just, this way. I deter- mined to write a poem in imitation of some well-known poet, to see if I couldn't trap my hypercritical friend. I had no idea of doing anything more than that. So I coined and wrote and sent ' Leonainie ' to a paper in a neighboring county, in order that I might attack it myself in my own paper and so throw my friend completely off the track. The whole thing was a boy's fool trick. I didn't suppose it would go out of the State exchanges. I was ap- palled at the result. The whole country JAMES WHITCOMB RILEYHAMLIN GARLAND. 159 RAILROAD BRIDGE, BRANDYWINE. " Through the viny, shady-shiny Interspaces, shot with tiny Flying motes that fleck the winy \Vave-engraven sycamores." A Dream of A utumn. i6o HUMAN DOCUMENTS. took it up, and pitched into me unjusti- fiably." "Couldn't you explain?" "They wouldn't let me explain. I lost my position on the paper, because I had let a rival paper have 'the discovery'! Everybody insisted I was trying to attract attention, but that wasn't true. I simply wanted to make my critic acknowledge, by the ruse, that I could write perfect verse, so far as his critical (?) judgment compre- hended. The whole matter began as a thoughtless joke, and ended in being one of the most unpleasant experiencesof my life." " Well, you carried your point, anyway. There's a melancholy sort of pleasure in doing that." Riley didn't seem to take even that pleasure in it. "In this dark time, just when I didn't know which way to turn friends all drop- ping away I got a letter from Judge Martindale of the ' Indianapolis Journal,' saying, 'Come over and take a regular place on the " Journal," and get pay for your work.'" " That was a timely piece of kindness on his part." ''It put me really on my feet. And just about this time, too, I got a letter from Longfellow, concerning some verses that I had the 'nerve' to ask him to examine, in which he said the verses showed ' the true poetic faculty and insight.' This was high praise to me then, and I went on writing with more confidence and ambition ever after." " What did you send to him ?" " I don't remember exactly some of my serious work. Yes, one of the things was ' The Iron Horse.' " He quoted this : " No song is mine of Arab steed My courser is of nobler blood And cleaner limb and fleeter speed And greater strength and hardihood Than ever cantered wild and free Across the plains of Araby." " How did Judge Martindale come to make that generous offer ? Had you been contributing to the ' Journal ' ?" "Oh, yes, for quite a while. One of the things I had just sent him was the Christ- mas story, ' The Boss Girl,' a newsboy's story. He didn't know, of course, that I was in trouble when he made the offer, but he stood by me afterwards, and all came right." " What did you do on the ' Journal ' ? " " I was a sort o' free-lance could do anything I wanted to. Just about this time I began a series of ' Benjamin F. Johnson ' poems. They all appeared with editorial comment, as if they came from an old Hoosier farmer of Boone County. They were so well received that I gath- ered them together in a little parchment volume, which I called ' The Old Swim- min' Hole and 'Leven More Poems,' my first book." "I suppose you put forth that volume with great timidity ? " " Well, I argued it couldn't break me, so I printed a thousand copies hired 'em dojie, of course, at my own expense." " Did you sell 'em ?" " They sold themselves. I had the ten- bushel box of 'em down in the 'Journal' office, and it bothered me nearly to death to attend to the mailing of them. So when Bowen & Merrill agreed to take the book off my hands, I gladly consented, and that's the way I began with them." " It was that little book that first made me acquainted with your name," I said. " My friend and your friend, Charles E. Hurd, of the 'Boston Transcript,' one day read me the poem ' William Leachman,' which he liked exceedingly, and ended by giving me a copy of the book. I saw at once you had taken up the rural life, and carried it beyond Whittier and Lowell in respect of making it dramatic. You gave the farmer's point of view." " I've tried to. But people oughtn't to get twisted up on my things the way they do. I've written dialect in two ways. One, as the modern man, bringing all the art he can to represent the way some other fellow thinks and speaks; but the 'John- son' poems are intended to be like the old man's written poems, because he is sup- posed to have sent them in to the paper himself. They are representations of written dialect, while the others are repre- sentations of dialect as manipulated by the artist. But, in either case, it's the other fellow doin' it. I don't try to treat of people as they ought to think and speak, but as they do think and speak. In other words, I do not undertake to edit nature, either physical or human." " I see your point, but I don't know that I would have done so without having read 'The Old Swimmin' Hole,' and the 'Tale of the Airly Days.' " I quoted here those lines I always found so meaningful : " Tell of the things just like they was, They don't need no excuse. Don't tech 'em up as the poets does, Till they're all too fine for use ! " JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY HAMLIN GARLAND. 161 \ Wko^yVUv^ "*3^ i r~* FACSIMILE OF AN AUTOGRAPH POEM BY MR. RILEY. Riley rose to his feet, and walked about the room. " I don't believe in dressing up nature. Nature is good enough for God, it's good enough for me. I see Old Man Johnson, a living figure. I know what the old feller has read. I'd like to have his picture drawn, because I love the old cod- ger, but I can't get artists to see that I'm not making fun of him. They seem to think that if a man is out o' plumb in his language he must be likewise in his morals." I flung my hand-grenade : " That's a relic of the old school, the school of cari- cature a school that assumes that if a man has a bulbous nose he necessarily has a bulbous intellect ; which doesn't follow. I've known men with bulbous noses who were neither hard drinkers nor queer in any other particular, having a fine, digni- fied speech and clear, candid eyes." " Now, old Benjamin looks queer, I'll admit. His clothes don't fit him. He's bent and awkward. But that don't pre- vent him from having a fine head and deep and tender eyes, and a soul in him you can recommend." Riley paused, and looked down at me with a strange smile. " I tell you, the crude man is generally moral, for Nature has just let go his hand. She's just been leading him through the dead leaves and the daisies. When I deal with such a man I give him credit for every virtue ; but what he does, and the way he does it, is his action and not mine." He read at this point, with that quaint arching of one eyebrow, and the twist at the side of the mouth with which he always represents " Benjamin F. John- son " : 162 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. " ' My Religen is to jest Do by all my level best, Feelin' God'll do the rest. Facts is, fur as / can see, The good Bein', makin' me, 'LI make me what I ort to be." And that's the lovely Old Man John- son talkin', and not me but I'm listenin' to him, understand, yes, and keepin' still ! " The tender side of the poet came out here, and I said : " I had a talk with your father yesterday, and I find that we're in harmony on a good many reform topics. He's a Populist and a Greenbacker. Do you have any reform leanings?" " Father is a thinker, and ain't afraid of his thinkin' machine. I'm turned away from reform because it's no use. We've got to fvnform, not reform, in our attitude with the world and man. Try reforming and sooner or later you've got to quit, because it's always a question of politics. You start off with a reform idea, that is, a moral proposition. You end up by doing something politic. It's in the nature of things. You can, possibly, reform just one individual, but you can't reform the world at large. It won't work." " All reforms, in your mind, are appar- ently hopeless, and yet, as a matter of .fact, the great aggregate conforms to a few men every quarter of a century." This staggered Riley, and he looked at me rather helplessly. "Well, it's an un- pleasant thing, anyhow, and I keep away from it. I'm no fighter. In my own kind of work I can do good, and make life pleasant." He was speaking from the heart. I changed the subject by looking about the room. " You don't read much, I im- agine ? " He turned another quizzical look on me. " I'm afraid to read much, I'm so blamed imitative. But I read a good deal of chop-feed fiction, and browse with relish through the short stories and poems of to-day. But I have no place to put books. Have to do my own things where I catch time and opportunity." " Well, if you'd had a library, you wouldn't have got so many people into your poems. You remind me of Whit- man's poet, you tramp a perpetual journey. Where do you think you get your verse- writing from ?" " Mainly from my mother's family, the Marines. A characteristic of the whole family is their ability to write rhymes, but all unambitiously. They write rhymed letters to each other, and joke and jim- crow with the Muses." "Riley, I want to ask you. Your father is Irish, is he not ? " " Both yes and no. His characteristics are strongly Irish, but he was born a Penn- sylvania Dutchman, and spoke the Ger- man dialect before he spoke English. It has been held that the name Riley proba- bly comes from 'Ryland,' but there's an ' O'Reilly ' theory I muse over very pleas- antly." I saw he was getting tired of indoors, so I rose. "Well, now, where's the old swimmin' hole ? " His face lighted up with a charming, almost boyish, smile. " The old svvim- min' hole is right down here on Brandy- wine the old ' crick,' just at the edge of town." " Put on your hat, and let's go down and find it." We took our way down the main street and the immensely dusty road towards the east. The locusts quavered in duo and trio in the ironweeds, and were answered by others in the high sycamores. Large yellow and black butterflies flapped about from weed to weed. The gentle wind came over the orchards and cornfields, filled with the fragrance of gardens and groves. The road took a little dip to- wards the creek, which was low, and almost hidden among the weeds. Riley paused. " I haven't been to the old swimmin' hole for sixteen years. We used to go across there through the grass, all except the feller with the busted toe- nail. He had to go round." He pointed at the print of bare, graceful feet in the dust, and said : " We could tell, by the dent of the heel and the sole, There was lots of fun on hand at the old swimmin' hole." As we looked out on the hot midsum- mer landscape, Riley quoted again, from a poem in his then forthcoming book a poem which he regards as one of his best : " The air and the sun and the shadows Were wedded and made as one, And the winds ran o'er the meadows As little children run : " And the wind flowed over the meadows, And along the willowy way The river ran, with its ripples shod With the sunshine of the day : " O, the winds poured over the meadows In a tide of eddies and calms, And the bared brow felt the touch of it As a sweetheart's tender palms. JAMES IVHITCOMB RILEY HAMLIN GARLAND. 163 " And up through the rifted tree-tops That signalled the wayward breeze I saw the hulk of the hawk becalmed Far out on the azure seas." Riley recited this with great beauty of tone and rhythm such as audiences never hear from him, hearing only his dialect. As we walked on we heard shouts, and I plucked Riley's sleeve : " Hear that ? If that isn't the cry of a swimming boy, then my experiences are of no value. A boy has a shout which he uses only when splash- ing about in a pond." Riley's face glowed. " That's right, they're there just as we used to be." After climbing innumerable fences, we came upon the boys under the shade of the giant sycamore and green thorn-trees. The boys jiggled themselves into their clothes, and ran off in alarm at the two staid and dignified men, who none the less had for them a tender and reminiscent sympathy. All about splendid elm-trees stood, and stately green thorn-trees flung their deli- cate, fern-like foliage^ athwart the gray and white spotted boles of tall, leaning sycamores. But the creek was very low, by reason of the dry weather. We threaded our way about, seeking out old paths and stumps and tree trunks, which sixteen years of absence had not entirely swept from the poet's mind. Then, at last, we turned homeward over the rail- road track, through the dusty little town. People were seated in their little back- yards here and there eating watermelon, and Neighbor Johnson's poem on the " Wortermelon " came up : " Oh, wortermelon time is a-comin' 'round agin, And they ain't no feller livin' any tickleder'n me." We passed by the old court-house, where Captain Riley, the poet's father, has prac- tised law for fifty years. The captain lives near, in an odd-looking house of brick, its turret showing above the trees. On the main street groups of men of all ranks and stations were sitting or standing, and they all greeted the poet as he passed by with an off-hand : "How are ye, Jim?" to which the poet replied : " How are you, Tom ? " or " How are you, Jack ? How's the folks ? " Personally, his townsmen like him. They begin to respect him also in another way, so successful has he become in a way measurable to them all. Back at the house, we sat at lunch of cake and watermelon, the sisters, Mrs. Payne and Mrs. Eitels, serving as host- esses most delightfully. They had left MR. GARLAND TAKES NOTES WHILE THE "HOOS1ER" POET TALKS. 164 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. their own homes in Indianapolis for the summer, to give this added pleasure to their poet brother. They both have much of his felicity of phrase, and much the same gentleness and sweetness of bearing. The hour was a pleasant one, and brought out the simple, domestic side of the man's nature. The sisters, while they showed their admiration and love for him, ad- dressed him without a particle of affecta- tion. There is no mysterious abyss between Mr. Riley and his family. They are well- to-do, middle-conditioned Americans, with unusual intellectual power and marked poetic sensibility. Mr. Riley is a logical result of a union of two gifted families, a product of hereditary power, cooperating with the power of an ordinary Western town. Born of a gentle and naturally poetic mother, and a fearless, uncon- ventional father (lawyer and orator), he has lived the life common to boys of vil- lages from Pennsylvania to Dakota, and upon this were added the experiences he has herein related. It is impossible to represent his talk that night. For two hours he ran on he the talker, the rest of us the irritating cause. The most quaintly wise sentences fell from his lips in words no other could have used ; scraps of verse, poetic images, humorous assumptions of character, daring figures of speech I gave up in despair of ever get- ting him down on paper. He read, at my request, some of his most beautiful things. He talked on religion, and his voice grew deep and earnest. " I believe a man prays when he does well," he said. "I believe he worships God when his work is on a high plane ; when his attitude towards his fellow-men is right, I guess God is pleased with him-" I said good-night, and went off down the street, musing upon the man and his work. Genius, as we call it, defies conditions. It knows no barriers. It finds in things close at hand the most inexhaustible storehouse. All depends upon the poet, not upon ma- terials. It is his love for the thing, his interest in the fact, his distribution of values, his selection of details, which makes his work irresistibly comic or tender or pathetic. No poet in the United States has the same hold upon the minds of the people as Riley. He is the poet of the plain VIEW OF GREENFIELD FROM "IRVING'S SPRING," BRANDYWINE. " Whilse the old town, fur away 'Crost the hazy pastur-land, Dozed-like in the heat o' day Peaceful as a hired hand." Up and Down Old Brandyvntu A MORNING WITH BRET HARTE. '65 American. They bought thirty thousand dollars' worth of his verse last year ; and he is also one of the most successful lec- turers on the platform. He gives the lie to the old saying, for he is a prophet in his own country. The people of Indiana are justly proud of him, for he has written " Poems Here at Home." He is read by people who never before read poetry in their lives, and he appeals equally well to the man who is heart-sick of the hollow conventional verse in imitation of some classic. He is absolutely American in every line he writes. His schooling has been in the school of realities. He takes things at first-hand. He considers his success to be due to the fact that he is one of the peo- ple, and has written of the things he liked and they liked. The time will come when his work will be seen to be something more than the fancies of a humorist. As I walked on down the street, it all came upon me with great power this pro- duction of an American poet. Everything was familiar to me. All this life, the broad streets laid off in squares, the little cottages, the weedy gardens, the dusty fruit-trees, the young people sauntering in couples up and down the sidewalk, the snapping of jack-knives, and the low hum of talk from scattered groups. This was Riley's school. This was his material, apparently barren, dry, utterly hopeless in the eyes of the romantic writers of the East, and yet capable of becoming world- famous when dominated and mastered and transformed as it has been mastered and transformed by this poet of the people. In my estimation, this man is the most remarkable exemplification of the power of genius to transmute plain clods into gold that we have seen since the time of Burns. He has dominated stern and un- yielding conditions with equal success, and reflected the life of his kind with greater fidelity than Burns. This material, so apparently grim and barren of light and shade, waited only for a creative mind and a sympathetic intelli- gence ; then it grew beautiful and musi- cal, and radiant with color and light and life. Therein is the magnificent lesson to be drawn from the life and work of the " Hoosier poet." A MORNING WITH BRET HARTE. BY HENRY J. W. DAM. F I had been an artist I should have painted them," he says, referring to John Oakhurst and M'liss and Tennessee's Partner and all the other denizens of that strange literary land which he was the first to discover and describe to all the world. " If I had been an artist " is his phrase, and it sounds strange from his lips, for a more artistic personality, in thought, speech, sympathies, and methods, was never numbered among the creators of character or the observers of nature than that of the historian of the Golden Age of California, Mr. Bret Harte. It is one of those winter mornings in London when upon parks and lawns and all the architectural distances the cold gray mist lies heavily. The sun, a pre- posterous ruby set in fog, looms red and high. Through the study window its radi- ance comes balefully, as if fleeingthe dreari- ness of streets that stretch silent and de- serted under London's Sabbath spell. Within the room, however, all is cheerful- ness and warmth. The heaped-up coals make flickering traceries of shadow over walls covered with the originals of pict- ures and engravings which all the world has seen in certain famous books. Some of these originals will be found among the illustrations of this article, and are interesting exhibitions of the manner in which the English imagination endeavors to conceive the unfamiliar California types. The sides of the room are given up to high book-shelves. Bric-a-brac meets the eye in all directions, the mantel being cov- ered with pretty souvenirs of continental watering-places, those guide-posts on the highway of memory by which charming acquaintances are recalled and favorite spots revisited.' BRET HARTE IN PERSON. At the desk, surrounded by an incalcu- lable visitation of Christmas cards, sits Bret Harte, the Bret Harte of actuality, a HUMAN DOCUMENTS. BRET HARTE, FROM A PAINTING BY JOHN PETTIE, R.A. REPRODUCED BV THE KIND PERMISSION OF THE FINK ARTS SOCIETY, LONDON. PHOTOGRAPHED BY FRADELLE & YOUNG, LONDON. gentleman as far removed from the Bret Harte of popular fancy as is the St. James Club from Mount Shasta, or a Savoy Hotel supper from the cinder cuisine of a mining camp in the glorious days of '49. Instead of being, as the reader usually conceives, one of the long-bearded, loose-jointed heroes of his Western Walhalla, he is a polished gentleman of medium height, with a curling gray mustache. In lieu of the recklessness of Western methods in dress, his attire exhibits a nicety of detail which, in a man whose dignity and sincerity were less impressive, would seem foppish. This quality, like his handwriting and other characteristic trifles, perceptibly assists one in grasping the main elements of a personality which is as harmonious as it is peculiar, and as unconventional as it is sensitive to fine shades, of whatever kind they be. Over his cigar, with a gentle play of humor and a variety of unconscious gestures which are always graceful and never twice the same, he touches upon this very subject the impressions made upon him by his first sight of gold-hunting in A MORNING WITH BRET HARTE. 167 BRET HARTE IN 1869, WHILE EDITOR OF THE "OVERLAND MONTHLY." FROM A PHOTOGRAPH LOANED BY THE PRESENT PUBLISHERS OF THE " OVERLAND MONTHLY." California, and the eye and mind which he brought to bear upon the novel scene. BRET HARTE'S STORY OF HIS LIFE IN CALIFORNIA. " I left New York for California," says Mr. Harte, " when I was scarcely more than a boy, with no better equipment, I fear, than an imagination which had been expanded by reading Froissart's ' Chroni- cles of the Middle Ages,' ' Don Quixote,' the story of the Argonauts, and other books from the shelves of my father, who was a tutor of Greek. I went by way of Panama, and was at work for a few months in San Francisco in the spring of 1853, but felt no satisfaction with my surroundings until I reached the gold country, my par- ticular choice being Sonora, in Calaveras County. " Here I was thrown among the strangest social conditions that the latter-day world has perhaps seen. The setting was itself heroic. The great mountains of the Sierra Nevada lifted majestic snow-capped peaks against a sky of purest blue. Magnificent pine forests of trees which were themselves enormous, gave to the landscape a sense of largeness and greatness. It was a land of rugged canons, sharp declivities, and magnificent distances. Amid rushing wa- ters and wild-wood freedom, an army of strong men in red shirts and top boots were feverishly in search of the buried gold of earth. Nobody shaved, and hair, mus- taches, and beards were untouched by shears or razor. Weaklings and old men were unknown. It took a stout heart and a strong frame to dare the venture, to brave the journey of three thousand miles, and battle for life in the wilds. It was a civilization composed entirely of young men, for on one occasion, I remember, an elderly man he was fifty, perhaps, but he had a gray beard was pointed out as a curiosity in the city, and men turned in the street to look at him as they would have looked at any other unfamiliar ob- ject. " These men, generally speaking, were highly civilized, many of them being cul- tured and professionally trained. They were in strange and strong contrast with their surroundings, for all the trammels and conventionalities of settled civilization had been left thousands of miles behind. It was a land of perfect freedom, limited only by the instinct and the habit of law which prevailed in the mass. All its forms were original, rude, and picturesque. Woman was almost unknown, and enjoyed the high estimation of a rarity. The chiv- BRET HARTE IN 1871. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN BY SARONY, NEW YORK, SHORTLY AFTER THE PUBLICATION OF " THB HEATHEN CHINEE." i68 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. airy natural- to manhood invested her with ideal value when respect could supplement it, and with exceptional value even when it could not. Strong passions brought quick climaxes, all the better and worse forces of manhood being in unbridled play. To me it was like a strange, ever-varying panorama, so novel that it was difficult to grasp comprehensively. In fact, it was not till years afterwards that the great mass of primary impressions on my mind became sufficiently clarified for literary use. " The changes of scene were constant and unexpected. Here is one that I re- member very well. Clothing was hard to get in the early days, and everything that could serve was made use of. Our valley, in its ordinary aspect, had as many ' spring styles for gentle- men 'as there were men to be seen. One hot summer morning, how- ever, the old order changed. A large consignment of condemned navy outfits, purchased by a local store- keeper, had found ready sale, and the result was that the valley was filled with men, hard at work over their claims, and all dressed in white ' jumpers,' white duck trousers, and top boots. On their heads were yellow straw hats, and around their shoulders gaudy bandanna hand- kerchiefs of yel- low, blue, red, and green patterns. Perspiration was so profuse in the hot weather that a handkerchief was as necessary to a miner as a whiskey flask or a revol- ver. They wore them clung loose- ly around their necks and falling over their chests, like the collar of BRET HARTE IN 1871. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY SARONY, NEW YORK. some extraordinary order, and each man as he worked would now and then dab his forehead with the handkerchief and push it a little farther round. The white clothes and bright handkerchiefs against the wild background made a very novel picture, and I said something to this effect to a miner by my side. He took a look down the valley, the standpoint being one that had not occurred to him, and said : ' It does look kinder nice. Didn't know we gave ourselves away like that,' and sham- bled down the trail with a chuckle. Every day brought new scenes and new experi- ences, though I did not commit them to paper till many years afterward." MINER, EXPRESS MESSENGER, SCHOOLMASTER, EDITOR. " And were you taking notes for future literary work at this pe- riod ? " " Not at all. I had not the least idea at this time that any portion of literary fame awaited me. I lived their life, un- thinking. I took my pick and shov- el, and asked where I might dig. They said 'Any- where,' and it was true that you could get 'color,' that is, a few grains of gold, from any of the surface earth with which you chose to fill your pan. In an ordinary day's work you got enough to live on, or, as it was called, 'grub wages.' I was not a success as a gold-digger, and it was conceived that I would an- swer for a Wells Fargo messenger. A Wells Fargo messenger was a person who sat A MORNING WITH BRET HARTE. 169 beside the driver on the box-seat of a stage-coach, in charge of the letters and ' treasure ' which the Wells Fargo Ex- press Company took from a mining camp to the nearest town or city. Stage rob- bers were plentiful. My predecessor in the position had been shot through the arm, and my successor was killed. I held the post for some months, and then gave it up to become the schoolmaster near Sonora Sonora having by immigra- tion attained the size and population which called for a school. For several years after this I wandered about California from city to camp, and camp to city, without any special purpose. I became an editor, and learned to set type, the ability to earn my own living as a printer being a source of great satisfaction to me, for, strange to say, I had no confidence, until long after that period, in literature as a means of liveli- hood. I have never in my life had an arti- cle refused publication, and yet I never had any of that confidence which, in the case of many others, does not seem to have been impaired by repeated refusals. Nearly all my life I have held some political or edi- torial post, upon which I relied for an income. This has, no doubt, affected my work, since it gave me more liberty to write as pleased myself, instead of endeavoring to write for a purpose, or in accordance with the views of somebody else. " A great part of this distrust of lit- erature as a profession arose, 1 think," continues Mr. Harte, and he smiles at the reminiscence, "from my first literary effort. It was a poem called 'Autumn Musings.' It was written at the mature age of eleven. It was satirical in char- acter, and cast upon the fading year the cynical light of my repressed dissatis- faction with things in general. I ad- dressed the envelope to the New York ' Sunday Atlas,' at that time a journal of some literary repute in New York, where I was then living. I was not quite certain how the family would re- gard this venture on my part, and I posted the missive with the utmost secresy. After that I waited for over a week in a state of suspense that en- tirely absorbed me. Sunday came, and with it the newspapers. These were displayed on a stand in the street near our house, and held in their places I shall never forget them with stones. With an unmoved face, but a beating heart, I scanned the topmost copy of the ' Atlas.' To my dying day I shall remember the thrill that came from see- ing ' Autumn Musings,' a poem, on the first page. I don't know that the headline type was any longer than usual, but to me it was colossal. It had something of the tremendousness of a three-sheet poster. I bought the paper and took it home. I exhibited it to the family by slow and cautious stages. My hopes sank lower and lower. At last I realized the enormity of my offence. The lamentation was gen- eral. It was unanimously conceded that I was lost, and I fully believed it. My idea of a poet it was the family's idea also was the Hogarthian one, born of a book of Hogarth's drawings belonging to my father. In the lean and miserable and helpless guise of 'The Distressed Poet,' as therein pictured, I saw, aided by the family, my probable future. It was a terrible experience. I sometimes won- der that I ever wrote another line of verse." His natural tendency in that direction was too strong to be crushed, however. He has always, he says, had a weakness for humorous verse, and in that particular di- rection his pen is as playful as ever. All of which digression leads naturally to the " Heathen Chinee," concerning which he has several new facts to make pub- lic. RET HARTE. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY THOMAS FALL, LONDON. HUMAN DOCUMENTS. BRET HARTE AT THE PRESENT TIME. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY ELLIOTT AND FRY, LONDON. SOME NEW FACTS ABOUT THE " HEATHEN CHINEE." " I was always fond of satiric verse, and the instinct of parody has always possessed me. The ' Heathen Chinee ' is an instance of this, though I don't think I have told anybody, except a well-known English poet, who observed and taxed me with the fact, the story of its metrical origin. The ' Heathen Chinee ' was for a time the best known of any of my writings. It was written for the ' Overland Monthly,' of which I was editor", with a satirical politi- cal purpose, but with no thought of aught else than its local effect. It was born of a somewhat absurd state of things which appealed to the humorous eye. -The thrifty Oriental, who was invading Cali- fornia in large numbers, was as imitative as a monkey. He did as the Caucasian did in all respects, and, being more patient and frugal, did it a little better. From placer mining to card playing he industri- ously followed the example set him by his superiors, and took cheating at cards quite seriously, as a valuable addition to the in- teresting game. He cheated admirably, but, instead of winning praises for it, found himself, when caught at it, abused, con- temned, and occasionally mobbed by his teachers in a way that had not been dreamt of in his philosophy. This point I put into verse. I heard nothing of it for some time, until a friend told me it was making the rounds of the Eastern press. He him- self had heard a New York brakeman re- peating : * Yet he played it that day upon William and me in a way I despise.' Soon afterwards I began to hear from it frequently in a similar way. The lines were popular. The points seemed to catch A MORNING WITH ERET HARTE. 171 the ear and hold the memory. I never in- tended it as a contribution to contempo- rary poetry, but I doubt, from the evidence I received, if I ever wrote anything more catching. The verses had, however, the dignity of a high example. I have told you of the English poet who was first to question me regarding the metre, and ap- preciate its Greek source. Do you remem- ber the threnody in Swinburne's ' Atalanta in Calydon ' ? It occurred to me that the grand and beautiful sweep of that chorus was just the kind of thing which Truthful James would be the last man in the world to adopt in expressing his views. There- fore I used it. Listen," and he quotes, mark- ing the accents with an amused smile : " 'Atalanta, the fairest of women, whose name is a blessing to speak Yet he played it that day upon William and me in a way I despise. The narrowing Symplegades whitened the straits of Propontis with spray And we found on his nails, which were taper, what's frequent in tapers, that's wax.' " He laughs over the parody in metre and goes on quoting ; and. as he talks of his verse and his work in general, it is evident that the humorous is one of his most fully developed literary characteristics. He still takes delight in the " Condensed Novels," and is as much in the mood for writing them to-day, at fifty-three, as he was twenty years ago. They belonged, it seems, to a kind of chrysalis period in his development, when, living in San Francisco, he wrote various- ly for a number of local literary periodicals, the most widely known of which was the " Gold- en Era." These writings, and the position which he won through them, led to the editor- ship of the " California!! Week- ly," and finally of a magazine, the " Overland Monthly." The latter was the inducing cause of the first of that series of stories which carried his name all over the world. At the start he was most bitterly opposed. The first step was the one that cost, with him as with others. His narrative is full of interest, as a matter both of personal and of literary history. EDITORIAL CAUTION AND " THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP." " I was eventually offered the editor- ship of a new magazine, the ' Overland Monthly,' which was about to make its first issue, and it was through the accept- ance of this post that my career, generally speaking, began. As the editor of this magazine, I received for its initial number many contributions in the way of stories. After looking these over, it impressed me as a strange thing that not one of the writers had felt inspired to treat the fresh subjects which lay ready to his hand in California. All the stories were conven- tional, the kind of thing that would have been offered to an editor in the Atlantic States, stories of those localities and of Europe, in the customary form. I talked the matter over with Mr. Roman, the pro- prietor, and then wrote a story whose sole object was to give the first number a cer- tain amount of local coloring. It was called ' The Luck of Roaring Camp.' It was a BRET HARTE IN HIS STUDY. 172 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. MARIE'S "M'LISS." FROM A PAINTING BY EDWIN LONG. REPRODUCED BY KIND PERMISSION OF MESSRS. BROOKS AND SONS, LONDON. PHOTOGRAPHED BY FRADELLE * YOUNG, LONDON. single picture out of the panorama which had impressed me years before. It was put into type. The proof-reader and printer declared it was immoral and indecent. I read it over again in proof, at the request of the publisher, and was touched, I am afraid, only with my own pathos. I read it to my wife I had married in the meantime and it made her cry also. I am told that Mr. Roman also read it to his wife, with the same diabolically illogical result. Never- theless, the opposition was unshaken. " I had a serious talk with an intimate friend of mine, then the editor of the ' Alta California.' He was not personally op- posed to the story, but felt that that sort of thing might be injudicious and unfavor- ably affect immigration. I was without a sympathizer or defender. Even Mr. Roman felt that it might imperil the prospects of the magazine. I read the story again, thought the matter over, and told Mr. Ro- man that if ' The Luck of Roaring Camp ' was not a good and suitable story I was not a good and suitable editor for his mag- azine. I said that the chief value of an editor lay in the correctness of his judg- ment, and if his view was the true one, my judgment was clearly at fault. I am quite sure that if the decision had been left to San Francisco, the series of mining pictures that followed the first would not have been written at least, not in that city. But the editor remained, and the story appeared. It was received harshly. The religious papers were unanimous in declaring it im- moral, and they published columns in its disfavor. The local press, reflecting the pride of a young and new community, could not see why stories should be print- A MORNING WITH BRET HARTE. 173 ed by their representative magazine which put the community into such unfavorable contrast with the effete civilization of the East. They would have none of it ! " A month later, however, by return of mail from Boston, there came an important letter. It was from Fields & Osgood, the publishers, and was addressed to me as editor. It requested me to hand the en- closed note to the author of ' The Luck of Roaring Camp.' The note was their offer to publish anything he chose to write, upon his own terms. This became known, and it turned the tide of criticism. Since Bos- ton indorsed the story, San Francisco was properly proud of it. Thenceforth I had my own way without interruption. Other stories, the mining tales with which you are familiar, followed in quick succession. The numberless impressions of the earlier days were all vividly fixed in my mind, waiting to be worked up, and their success was made apparent to me in very substan- tial ways, though the religious press con- tinued to suffer from the most painful doubts, and certain local critics who had torn my first story to pieces, fell into a quiet routine of stating that each succeed- ing story was the worst thing that had yet appeared from my pen." *A PHYLLIS OF THE SIERRAS. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BV FRADELLE & YOUNG, LONDON, OF A DRAWING BY CATON WOODVILLE. 174 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. BRET HARTE S FIRST MEETING WITH MARK TWAIN. " Local color having been placed, through the dictum of the Atlantic States, at a premium," Mr. Harte continues, "the ' Overland ' be- came what it should have been from the start, truly Cali- fornian in tone. Other writers followed my 'trail,' and the freshness and vivid life of the country found a literary expres- sion. At that time I held a political office, the secretary- ship of the San Francisco Mint. The Mint was but a few steps from the leading newspaper es- tablishments, and as I had previously been the editor of ' The Califor- nian,' a literary weekly, my of- fice was a ren- dezvous for con- tributors and would-be con- tributors to the magazine. "Some months before the 'Overland* ap- peared, George Barnes, a well- known journal- ist and an inti- mate friend of mine, walked in- to my office one morning with a young man whose appearance was unmistakably inter- esting. His head was striking. He had the curly hair, the aquiline nose, and even the aquiline eye an eye so eagle-like that a second lid would not have surprised me of an unusual and dominant nature. His eyebrows were very thick and bushy. His THE ISLAND OF YERBA BUENA. PAINTED BY G. MONTBARD TO ILLUSTRATE BRET HARTE'S STORY, "A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE." PHOTO- GRAPHED BY FRADELLE & YOUNG, LONDON. dress was careless, and his general manner one of supreme indifference to surround- ings and circumstances. Barnes introduced him as Mr. Sam Clemens, and remarked that he had shown a very original talent in a number of newspaper contributions over the signa- ture of ' Mark Twain.' We talked on dif- ferent topics, and about a month after- wards Clemens dropped in upon me again. "He had been away in the min- ing district on some newspaper assignment in the meantime. In the course of conversation he remarked that the unearthly laziness that prevailed in the town he had been visiting was beyond anything in his previous experi- ence. He said the men did nothing all day long but sit around the bar- room stove, spit, and 'swop lies.' He spoke in a slow, rather sa- tirical, drawl which was in it- self irresistible. He went on to tell one of those extravagant stories, and half unconsciously dropped into the lazy tone and manner of the original narra- tor. It was as graphic as it was delicious. I asked him to tell it again to a friend who came in, and then asked him to write it out for ' The Californian.' He did so, and when published it was an emphatic success. It was the first work of his that attracted general .attention, and it crossed the Sierras. A MORNING WITH BRET HARTE. for an Eastern hearing. From that point his ' Bean pods are noisiest when dry, success was steady. The story was ' The And >' ou always wink with your weakest eye,' Jumping Frog of Calaveras.' It is now known and laughed over, I suppose, wher- I did not dream that an eminent Phila- ever the English language is spoken ; but delphia ophthalmologist would make this it will never be as funny to anybody in statement, which it appears is true, the print as it was to me, told for the first subject of an essay before his society, time by the unknown Twain himself, on Another eminent scientist who is interested that morning in the San Francisco. Mint." in the elementary conditions of human nature, and the prehensile tendencies of babies' fingers, seriously corroborated my statement about the baby in ' The Luck of Roaring Camp,' which ' wrastled ' with Whether or not there ever really existed Kentuck's finger. an innocent frog, wickedly filled with bird " My stories are true, however, not only shot, for speculative purposes, by a design- in phenomena, but in characters. I do not ing man, it now appears that there cer- pretend to say that many of my characters HOW MUCH IS REAL IN BRET HARTE S TALES. itainly did exist a John Oakhurst, and that all the Bret Harte charac- ters and incidents wer drawn from life to a greater or less extent. " ' Greater or less ' is perhaps the best way to answer the ques- tion," says their cre- ;ator, thoughtfully, and this statement, like .every other expres- sion of opinion from ihim, is very emphatic, ibut very polite, in ;fact, almost deferen- itial in tone. He is firm in his own con- clusions, but as gentle in differing with you .as an oriental poten- tate, who might beg you with tears in his BRET HARTE'S DAUGHTERS, JESSAMY AND ETHEL. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN SEVERAL YEARS AGO IN PLAINFIELD, N. J. existed exactly as they are described, but I believe there is not one of them who did not have a real human being as a sug- gesting and starting point. Some of them, indeed, had several. John Oakhurst, for instance, was drawn quite closely from life. On one occasion, how- ever, when a story in which he figures was being discussed, , a friend of mine said : ' I know the original of Oakhurst the man you took him from.' " ' Who ? ' said I. Young L- " I was astounded. As a matter of fact, eyes to agree with him, and complacently the gambler as portrayed was as good drown you if you didn't. a picture, even to the limp, of young " I may say with perfect truth," he adds, L , as of the actual original. The two "that there were never any natural phe- men, you see, belonged to a class which nomena made use of in my novels of which had strongly marked characteristics, and I had not been personally cognizant, ex- were generally alike in dress and manner, cept one, and that was the bursting of the And so with the others. Perhaps some of reservoir, in ' Gabriel Conroy.' But not a my heroes were slightly polished in the year had elapsed after the publication of setting, and perhaps some of my heroines the book before I received a letter from a were somewhat idealized, but they all had man in Shasta County, California, asking an original existence outside of my brain how I happened to know so much about and outside of my books. I know this, the flood that had occurred there, and stat- though I could not possibly tell you who ing that I had described many of its inci- the originals were or where they were dents to the very life. I have been cred- found." ited with great powers of observation, and As Mr. Harte talks his hands become not a few discoveries in natural phenomena, eloquent. The gestures are quiet and Whether I am entitled to the credit or not, graceful, but arms, wrist, hands, and fingers I cannot say. When I wrote, in ' The Tale come into continuous play. And when he ol a Pony,' finally lights upon his grievance like every I 7 6 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. other man of note, he has a grievance he becomes particularly earnest, and the gest- ures are slightly more emphatic. HOW BRET HARTE WORKS WORK. AND DOES NOT " I don't object to being written about as I am," he says, "but I particularly dis- like being described as I am not. And, for some strange journalistic or human reason, the inventions concerning me seem to have much greater currency and vitality than the truths. Here, for instance," and he examines a pile of newspaper cuttings on the desk, " are two interesting contri- butions to my public history which came this morning." The first, from " Galignani's Messenger," read as follows : "Bret Harte cannot work except in seclusion, and when he is busy on a story he will hide himself away in some suburban retreat known only to his closest friends. Here he will rise just after dawn, be at his desk several hours before breakfast, and remain there, with an interval of an hour for a walk, the whole day." "I meet this everywhere," said Mr. Harte, " and this," taking up a second cutting in its natural sequence : " Bret Harte has reached a point where literary work is impossible to him except in absolute solitude. When writing he leaves his own home for suburban lodgings, where no visitor is allowed to trouble him, and where he follows a severe routine of early rising, scant diet, and steady work. It has been generally remarked that one can see this laborious regi- men in his latter-day novels." This was from " The Argo- naut," San Francisco. " Now, what is diabolically ingenious in this," continues Mr. Harte, " is that those authoritative statements are untrue in every particular. I never seek seclusion. In fact, I could not work in se- clusion. I rise at a civilized hour, about half-past eight o'clock, and eat my breakfast like any other human being. I then go to work, if I have a piece of work in hand, and remain at my desk till noon. I never work after luncheon. I read my proofs with as much interest and, I think, as much care as any- body else, and yet the public is taught to believe that I never see my ' copy ' after it once leaves my hands. " If newspapers were as anxious to print facts about a man as they are to furnish information which their readers will pre- sumably enjoy repeating, it would be dif- ferent. I won, some years ' ago, without the slightest effort on my part, the reputa- tion of being the laziest man in America. At first the compliment took the form of an extended paragraph deploring my fatal facility, and telling in deprecating sen- tences how much I could probably do if I BRET HARTB. FROM A DRAWING BY ARTHUR JULK GOODMAN, 1894. A MORNING WITH BRET HARTE. 177 were not so indolent. This grew smaller and smaller, until it took a concise and easily annexable form, viz.: 'Bret Harte is the laziest man in America.' As an interesting adjunct to the personal column I read it, of course with extreme pleasure, in every paper that came habitually under my eye. Denial, of course, was of no earthly use, and the line travelled all over the country, and is doubtless still on its rounds. In the course of time, on a lect- uring tour, I reached St. Joe, Missouri. I had been lecturing by night and travelling by day for ten weeks, continuously. A reporter called and desired to know what kind of soap I used he had heard sinister rumors that it was a highly scented foreign article my opinion of Longfellow, and various other questions of moment. I as- sured him that I used the soap of the hotel, and concealed nothing from him with regard to Longfellow, but begged him particularly to note the fact of my preternatural activity. He managed these facts correctly in his half-column next morning, but adorned me with a glittering diamond stud of which I had no knowledge. And in the same paper, in another column, I found a pleasant variation from the usual line. There was no allusion to my late labors. It was simply : ' Bret Harte says he is not the laziest man in America.' Al- together, therefore, I should perhaps think well of my friend of St. Joe, Missouri. " Those lectures were an amusing ex- perience," he adds, laughing. " What the people expected in me I do not know. Possibly a six-foot mountaineer, with a voice and lecture in proportion. They always seemed to have mentally confused me with one of my own characters. I am not six feet high, and I do not wear a beard. Whenever I walked out before a strange audience there was a general sense of disappointment, a gasp of astonishment that I could feel, and it always took at least fifteen minutes before they recovered from their surprise sufficiently to listen to what I had to say. I think, even now, that if I had been more herculean in propor- tions, with a red shirt and top boots, many of those audiences would have felt a deeper thrill from my utterances and a deeper con- viction that they had obtained the worth of their money." A MAN CAREFUL OF DETAILS IN HIS WORK AND HIS PERSON. The conversation rambles. A polished critic, an epicurean, a man of the world, and carrying everywhere the independence of a distinct literary personality, Bret Harte talks as he writes, like a gentleman. This is a subtile attribute, but one which England never fails to recognize and value, and it is one prime cause of the popularity of his works in the United Kingdom. Con- tinually in evidence also is his distinguish- ing characteristic, one which is only de- scribed by the word " nicety " nicety in dress, nicety in speech, nicety in thought. This artistic precision and thoughtful atten- tion to details is the most marked attribute of the man, and from it you understand the plane and power of his work. Without it, the most impressive of his stories, " The Luck of Roaring Camp," for instance, could not possibly have been written. It is rather a singular quality to be found in combination with his emotional breadth and dramatic sweep as a writer, but it is the one which finishes and polishes the whole, and it is clearly natural and in- herent. THE CIVIL WAR A GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR AMERICAN NOVELISTS. Perhaps the most valuable of all Mr. Harte's ideas are his opinions concerning the literary field of to-day. His views of literature as a profession are now pleasantly optimistic, possibly through the business- like way in which his interests have long been handled by that most skilful of liter- ary agents, Mr. A. P. Watt. Contemporary life in its highest social aspects he looks upon, however, as most unpromising ma- terial for romantic treatment. " In America," he says, " the great field is the late war. The dramatists have found and utilized it, but the novelists, the romance writers, have in it the richest possible field, for works of serious import, and yet, outside of short stories, they seem to have passed it by. If I had time, nothing would please me better than to go over the ground, or portions of it, and make use of it for future work. Our war of the Revolution is not good material for cosmopolitan purposes. This country has never quite forgotten the way in which it ended. But the war of the Rebellion was our own and is our own ; its dramatic and emotional aspects are infinite; and while American writers are coming abroad for scenes to picture, I am in con- stant fear that some Englishman or French- man will go to America and reap the field in romance which we should now, all local feeling having passed away, be utilizing to our own fame and profit." GEORGE DU MAURIER. From a photograph by Fradelle & Young, taken for "McClure's Magazine "at Mr. Du Maurier's home. THE AUTHOR OF "TRILBY." AN AUTOBIOGRAPHIC INTERVIEW WITH MR. GEORGE DU MAURIER. The illustrations in this article are from photographs made especially for " McClure's Magazine." BY ROBERT H. SHERARD. crossed the heath, I passed a group of devout people to whom, standing among them, a Sal- vation Army girl, with an inspired face, was preaching with great fervor. I did not stay to listen to her, for George du Maurier had appointed me to meet him at his house at three on that Sunday after- noon. But as I went my way, I heard the words : " Never you envy even those who seem most to be envied in this world, for in even the hap- piest life . . ." and that was all. Du Maurier's house is in a quiet little street that leads from the open heath down to the township of Hampstead, a street of few houses and of high walls, with trees everywhere, and an air of seclu- sion and quiet over all. The house stands on the left hand as one walks away from the heath, and is in the angle formed by the quiet street and a lane which leads down to the high road. It is a house of bricks overgrown with ivy, with angles and protrusions, and in the little garden which is to the left of the entrance door stands a large tree. The front door, which opens straight on to the street, is painted white, and is fitted with brass knockers of polished brilliance. As one enters the house, one notices on the wall to the left, just after the threshold is crossed, the original of one of Du Maurier's drawings in " Punch," a drawing concerning two " millionnairesses," with the text written beneath the picture in careful, almost lithographic penmanship. " That was where I received my train- ing in literature," said Du Maurier. " So Anstey pointed out to me the other day, when I told him how surprised I was at the success of my books, considering that I had never written before. ' Never writ- ten ! ' he cried out. ' Why, my dear Du Maurier, you have been writing all your life, and the best of writing-practice at that. Those little dialogues of yours, which week after week you have fitted to your drawings in ' Punch,' have pre- pared you admirably. It was precis writ- ing, and gave you conciseness and repartee and appositeness, and the best qualities of the writer of fiction.' And," added Du Maurier, " I believe Anstey was quite right, now that I come to think of it." The waiting-room, or hall, is under an arch, to the right of the passage which leads from the door to the staircase, a cosy corner on which a large model of the Venus of Milo looks down. " There is my great admiration," said Du Maurier in the evening, as he pointed to the armless goddess, and went on to repeat what Heine has said, and mentioned Heine's desire for the Venus's armless embrace. DU MAURIER IN HIS STUDY. It was in his study that Du Maurier received me, a large room on the first floor, i8o HUMAN DOCUMENTS. with a square bay window overlooking the quiet street on the right, and a large win- dow almost reaching to the ceiling, and looking in the direction of the heath, fac- ing the door. It is under this window, the light from which is toned down by brown curtains, that Du Maurier's table stands, comfortably equipped and tidy. On a large blotting-pad lay a thin copy- book, open, and one could see that the right page was covered with large, round- hand writing, whilst on the left page there were, in smaller, more precise penmanship, corrections, emendations, addenda. In a frame stood a large photograph of Du Maurier, and on the other side of the ink- stand was a pile of thin copy-books, blue and red. " A fortnight's work on my new novel," said Du Maurier. A luxurious room it was, with thick car- pets and inviting arm-chairs, the walls cov- ered with stamped leather, and hung with many of the master's drawings in quiet frames. In one corner a water-color por- trait, by Du Maurier, of Canon Ainger, and, from the same brush, the picture of a lady with a violin, on the wall to the left of the decorative fireplace, from over which, in the place of honor, another, smaller, model of the armless Venus looks down. To the right is a grand piano, and elsewhere other furniture of noticeable style, and curtains, screens, and ornaments. A beautiful room, in fact, and within it is none of the litter of the man of letters or of the painter. It was here that I first saw Du Maurier, a quiet man of no great stature, who at the first sight of him impresses one as a man who has suffered greatly, haunted by some evil dream or disturbing apprehen- sion. His welcome is gentle and kindly, but he does not smile, even when he is say- ing a clever and smile-provoking thing. "You must smoke. One smokes here. It is a studio." Those were amongst the first words that Du Maurier said, and there was hospitality in them and the freemasonry, of letters. DU MAURIER'S FAMILY. " My full name is George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier, but we were of very small nobility. My name Palmella was given to me in remembrance of the great friendship between my father's sister and the Duchesse de Palmella, who was the wife of the Portuguese ambassador to France. Our real family name is Busson ; the ' Du Maurier ' comes from the Chateau le Maurier, built some time in the fifteenth century, and still standing in Anjou or Maine, but a brewery to-day. It belonged to our cousins the Auberys, and in the seventeenth century it was the Auberys who wore the title of Du Maurier ; and an Aubery du Maurier who distinguished him- self in that century was Louis of that name, who was French ambassador to Holland, and was well liked of the great king. The Auberys and the Bussons married and inter- married, and I cannot quite say without referring to family papers at present at my bank when the Bussons assumed the territorial name of Du Maurier ; but my grandfather's name was Robert Mathurin Busson du Maurier, and his name is always followed, in the papers which refer to him, by the title Gentilhomme verrier gentle- man glass-blower. For until the Revolu- tion glass-blowing was a monopoly of the gentilhommes ; that is to say, no commoner might engage in this industry, at that time considered an art. You know the old French saying : ' Pour souffler un verre II faut etre gentilhomme.' " "A year or two ago," continued Du Maurier, " I was over in Paris with Burnand and Furniss, and we went into Notre Dame, and as we were examining some of the gravestones with which one of the aisles is in places laid, I came upon a Busson who had been buried there, and on the stone was carved our coat-of-arms, but it was almost all effaced, and there only re- mained, clearly distinguishable, the black lion, my black lion." It may be added that the Busson genealogy dates from the twelfth century. Du Maurier, though, does not take the subject of descent too seri- ously. " One is never quite sure," he says, with the shadow of a smile, "about one's descent. So many accidents occur. I made use of many of the names which occur in the papers concerning my family history, in 'Peter Ibbetson.' " My father was a small rentier, whose income was derived from our glass-works in Anjou. He was born in England, for his father had fled to England to escape the guillotine when the Revolution broke out, and they returned to France in 1816. My grandmother was a bourgeoise. Her name was Bruaire, and she descended from Jean Bart, the admiral. My grandfather w-as not a rich man. Indeed, whilst he was in England he had mainly to depend on the liberality of the British Government, which allowed him a pension of twenty THE AUTHOR OF " TRILBY: 181 MR. Dir MAURIER'S HOUSE ON HAMPSTEAD HEATH. pounds a year for each member of his family. He died in the post of school- master at Tours. CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. " My mother was an Englishwoman, and was married to my father at the British Embassy in Paris, and I was born in Paris, on March 6, 1834, in a little house in the Champs- Elysees. It bore the number 80. It was afterwards sold by my father, and has since been pulled down. I often look at the spot when I am in Paris and am walking down the Champs-Elysees, and what I most -regret at such times are the pine trees which in my childhood used to be there very different from the miser- able, stumpy avenue of to-day. It is a dis- illusion which comes upon me with equal force at each new visit, for I remember the trees, and the trees only. Indeed, I only lived in the house of my birth for two years, for in 1836 my parents removed to Belgium, and here I remember with peculiar vivid- ness a Belgian man-servant of ours, called Francis. I used to ask him to take me in his arms and to carry me down-stairs to look at some beautiful birds. I used to think that these were real birds*each time that I looked at them, although, in fact, they were but painted on the panes, and I had been told so. I remember another childish hallucination. I used to sleep in my par- ents' room, and when I turned my face to the wall, a' door in the wall used to open, and a charbonnier, a coal-man, big and black, used to come and take me up and carry 102 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. me down a long, winding staircase, into a kitchen, where his wife and children were, and treated me very kindly. In truth, there was neither door, nor charbonnier, nor kitchen. It was an hallucination ; yet it possessed me again and again. " We stayed three years in Belgium, and when I was five years old I went with my parents to London, where my father took a house the house which a year later was taken by Charles Dickens i Devonshire Terrace, Marylebone Road. Of my life here I best remember that I used to go out riding in the park, on a little pony, escorted by a groom, who led my pony by a strap, and that I did not like to be held in leash this way, and tried to get away. One day when I was grumbling at the groom, he said I was to be a good boy, for there was the Queen surrounded by her lords ; and he added : ' Master Georgie, take off your hat to the Queen and all her lords.' And then cantered past a young woman surrounded by horsemen. I waved my hat, and the young woman smiled and kissed her hand to me. It was the Queen and her equer- ries. "We only stayed a year in Devonshire Terrace, for my father grew very poor. He was a man of scientific tastes, and lost his money in inventions which never came to anything. So we had to wander forth again, and this time we went to Boulogne, and there we lived in a beautiful house at the top of the Grande Rue. I had sunny hours there, and was very happy. It is a part of my life which I shall describe in one of my books. " Much of my childhood is related in ' Peter Ibbetson.' My favorite book was the ' Swiss Family Robinson,' and next, 'Robinson Crusoe.' I used to devour these books. DU MAURIER A LATE SPEAKER. " I was a late speaker. My parents must have thought me dumb. And one day I surprised them all by coming out with a long sentence. It was, ' Papa est altt chez le boucher pour acheter de la viande pour matnan,' and so astonished every- body." George du Maurier has recently again astonished everybody in a similar way, coming forth loud and articulate and strong, after a long silence, which one fancied was to be forever prolonged. " We used to speak both French and English at home, and I was brought up in both languages. "From Boulogne we went to Paris, to live in an apartment on the first floor of the house No. 108 in the Champs-Elys6es. The house still stands, but the ground floor is now a caf^ and the first floor is part of it. I feel sorry when I look up at the windows from which my dear mother's face used to watch for my return from school, and see waiters bustling about and my home invaded. "I went to school at the age of thirteen, in the Pension Froussard, in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne. It was kept by a man called Froussard, a splendid fellow, whom I admired immensely and remember with affection and gratitude. He became a deputy after the Revolution of 1848. He was assisted in the school-work by his son, who was also one of the heroes of my youthful days, another splendid fellow. I was a lazy lad, with no particular bent, and may say that I worked really hard for one year. I made a number of friends, of course, but of my comrades at the Pension Froussard, only one distinguished himself in after life. He was a big boy, two years my senior. His name was Louis Becque de Fouquiere. He distinguished himself in literature, and edited Andre Chenier's poems. His life has recently been written by Anatole France. "Yes, I am ashamed to say that I did not distinguish myself at school. I shall write my school life in my new novel ' The Martians.' At the age of seventeen I went up for my bachot, my baccalaureate degree, at the Sorbonne, and was plucked for my written Latin version. It is true that my nose began to bleed during the examination, and that upset me, and, besides, the professor who was in charge of the room had got an idea into his head that I had smuggled a ' crib ' in, and kept watching me so carefully that I got ner- vous and flurried. My poor mother was very vexed with me for my failure, for we were very poor at that time, and it was important that I should do well. My father was then in England, and shortly after my discomfiture he wrote for me to join him there. We had not informed him of my failure, and I felt very miser- able as I crossed, because I thought that he would be very angry with me. He met me at the landing at London Bridge, and, at the sight of my utterly woe-be- gone face, guessed the truth, and burst out into a roar of laughter.- I think that this roar of laughter gave me the great- est pleasure I ever experienced in all my life. THE AUTHOR OF " TRILBY." 183 A CONTEST FOR DU MAURIER BETWEEN SCIENCE AND THE ARTS. " You see my father was a scientific man, and hated everything that was not science, and despised all books, the classics not less than others, which were not on scientific subjects. I, on the other hand, was fond of books of some books, at least. When I was quite a boy, I was enthusiastic about Byron, and used to read out ' The Giaour ' and 'Don Juan' to my mother for hours together. I knew the shipwreck scene in ' Don Juan ' by heart, and recited it again and again ; and though my admiration for Byron has passed, I still greatly delight in that mag- nificent passage. I can recite every word" of it even now. Then came Shelley, for whom my love has lasted, and then Tenny- son, for whom my admiration has never wavered, and will last all my life, though now I qualify him with Browning. Swin- burne was a revelation to me. When his ' Poems and Ballads ' appeared, I was lit- erally frantic about him, but that has worn off. " My father, then, never reproached me for my failure in the bachot examination, indeed, never once alluded to it. He had made up his mind that I was intended for a scientist, and determined to make me one. So he put me as a pupil at the Birkbeck Chemical Laboratory of University Col- lege, where I studied chemistry under Dr. Williamson. I am afraid that I was a most unsatisfactory pupil, for I took no interest at all in the work, and spent almost all my time in drawing caricatures. I drew all my life, I may say ; it was my favorite occupation and pastime. Dr. Williamson thought me a very unsatisfac- tory student at chemistry, but he was greatly amused with my caricatures, and we got on very well together. " My ambition at that time was to go in for music and singing, but my father objected very strongly to this wish of mine, and invariably discouraged it. My father, I must tell you, possessed himself the sweetest, most beautiful voice that I have ever heard ; and, if he had taken up singing as a profession, would most certainly have been the greatest singer of his time. Indeed, in his youth he had studied music for some time at the Paris Conservatoire, THE DRAWING-ROOM IN MR. DU MAURIER's HOUSE. From a photograph by Fradelle & Young, London. 1 84 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. but his family objected to his following the profession, for they were Legitimists and strong Catholics, and you know in what contempt the stage was held at the beginning of this century. It is a pity, for there were millions in his throat. " We were all musical in our family : my father, my sis- ter (the sister who married Clement Scott, a most gifted pianiste), and then myself. I was at that time crazy about music, and used to practise my voice wherever and whenever I could, even on the tops of omnibuses. But my father al- ways discouraged me. I re- member one night we were crossing Smithfield Market to- gether, and I was talking to my father about music. ' I am sure that I could become a singer,' I said, 'and if you like I will prove it to you. I have my tuning-fork in my pocket. Shall I show you my A?' " ' Yes,' said my father, ' I should like to hear your idea of an A.' So I sang the note. My father laughed. ' Do you call that an A ? Let me show you how to sing it.' And then and there rang out a note of music, low and sweet at the outset, and swelling as it went, till it seemed to fill all Smith- field with divine melody. I can never for- get that scene, never ; the dark night, the lonely place, and that wave of the sweet- est sound that my ears have ever heard. " Sometime later my father relented and gave me a few music lessons. I won him over by showing him a drawing which I had produced in Williamson's class-room, in which I was represented bowing grace- fully in acknowledgment of the applause of an audience whom I had electrified with my musical talents. Music has always been a great delight to me, and until recently I could sing well. But I have spoiled my voice by cigarette-smoking. " My poor father, I may add, as I am speaking of his musical powers, died in my arms as he was singing one of Count de Segur's drinking songs. He left this world almost with .music on his lips. " I remained at the Birkbeck Laboratory for two years, that is to say till 1854, when MR. DU MAtlRIER AT HIS DRAWING-TABLE. From a photograph by Fradelle & Young, London. my father, who was still convinced that I had a great future before me in the pursuit of science, set me up on my account in a chemical laboratory in Bard's Yard, Bucklersbury, in the city. The house is still there ; I saw it a few days ago. It was a fine laboratory, for my father being a poor man naturally fitted it up in the most expensive style, with all sorts of instru- ments. In the midst of my brightly-pol- ished apparatus here I sat, and in the lo/ig intervals between business drew and drew. " The only occasion on which the sage of Bard's Yard was able to render any real service to humanity was when he was engaged by the directors of a company for working certain gold mines in Devonshire which were being greatly ' boomed,' and to which the public was subscribing heavily, to go down to Devonshire to assay the ore. I fancy they expected me to send them a report likely to further tempt the public. THE AUTHOR OF " TRILBY." 185 If this was their expectation they were mistaken ; for after a few experiments, I went back to town and told them that there was not a vestige of gold in the ore. The directors were of course very dissatis- fied with this statement, and insisted on my returning to Devonshire to make further investigation. I went and had a good time of it down in the country, for the miners were very jolly fellows ; but I was unable to satisfy my employers, and sent up a report which showed the public that the whole thing was a swindle, and so saved a good many people from loss. ADOPTS ART AS A PROFESSION THE LOSS OF HIS EYE. " My poor father died in 1856, and at the age of twenty-two I returned to Paris and went to live with my mother in the Rue Paradis-Poissonniere. We were very poor, and very dull and dismal it was. However, it was not long before I entered upon what was the best time of my life. That is when, having decided to follow art as a profession, I entered Gleyre's studio to study drawing and painting. Those were my joyous Quartier Latin days, spent in the charming society of Poynter, Whistler, Armstrong, Lament, and others. I have described Gleyre's studio in 'Trilby.' For Gleyre I had a great admiration, and at that time thought his ' Illusions Perdues ' a veritable masterpiece, though I hardly think so now. " My happy Quartier Latin life lasted only one year, for in 1857 we went to Antwerp, and here I worked at the Ant- werp Academy under De Keyser and Van Lerius. And it was on a day in Van Leri- us's studio that the great tragedy of my life occurred." The voice of Du Maurier, who till then had been chatting with animation, sudden- ly fell, and over the face came an indefin- able expression of mingled terror and anger and sorrow. " I was drawing from a model, when suddenly the girl's head seemed to me to dwindle to the size of a walnut. I clapped my hand over my left eye. Had I been mistaken ? I could see as well as ever. But when in its turn I covered my right eye, I learned what had happened. My left eye had failed me ; it might be alto- MR. DU MAURIER'S STUDIO IN HIS HOUSE AT HAMPSTEAD HEATH. From a photograph by Fradelle & Young, London. 1 86 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. gather lost. It was so sudden a blow that I was as thunderstruck. Seeing my dis- may, Van Lerius came up and asked me what might be the matter ; and when I told him, he said that it was nothing, that he had had that himself, and so on. And a doctor whom I anxiously consulted that same day comforted me, and said that the accident was a passing one. However, my eye grew worse and worse, and the fear of total blindness beset me con- stantly." It was with a movement akin to a shud- der that Du Maurier spoke these words, and my mind went back to what I had heard from the girl-preacher as I crossed the heath, as in the same low tones and with the same indefinable expression he continued : " That was the most tragic event of my life. It has poisoned all my existence." Du Maurier, as though to shake off a troubling obsession, rose from his chair, and walked about the room, cigarette in hand. "In the spring of 1859 we heard of a great specialist who lived in Diisseldorf, and we went to see him. He examined my eyes, and he said that though the left eye was certainly lost, I had no reason to fear losing the other, but that I must be very careful, and not drink beer, and not eat cheese, and so on. It was very com- forting to know that I was not to be blind, but I have never quite shaken off the ter- ror of that apprehension. MAKING HIS OWN WAY IN LIFE. " In the following year I felt that the time had come for me to earn my own living, and so one day I asked my mother to give me ten pounds to enable me to go to London, and told her that I should never ask her for any more money. She did not want me to go, and as to never asking for money, she begged me not to make any such resolution. Poor woman, she would have given me her last penny. But it happened that I never had occasion to ask her assistance ; on the contrary, the time came when I was able to add to the comforts of her existence. "My first lodging in London was in Newman Street, where I shared rooms with Whistler. I afterwards moved to rooms in Earl's Terrace, in the house where Walter Pater died. I began contributing to ' Once a Week ' and to ' Punch ' very soon after my arrival in London, and shockingly bad my drawing was at the time. My first draw- ing in ' Punch ' appeared in June, 1860, and represented Whistler and myself going into a photographer's studio. The photog- rapher is very angry with us for smoking, and says that his is not an ordinary studio, where one smokes and is disorderly. " My life was a very prosperous one from the outset in London. I was married in 1863, and my wife and I never once knew financial troubles. My only trouble has been my fear about my eyes. Apart from that I have been very happy." As Du Maurier was speaking, his second son, Charles, a tall, handsome youth of distinguished manners, entered the room. "Ah, that is the 'Mummer,' as we call him," said Du Maurier. " Charles is play- ing in ' Money ' at the Garrick, and doing well. He draws three pounds a week, and that's more than my eldest son, who is in the army, is earning." The conversation turned on the stage. "When I went to consult my old friend John Hare about letting Charles go on the stage," said Du Maurier, "Hare said that provided one can get to the top of the tree, the stage is the most delightful profession ; but that for the actor who only succeeds moderately, it is the most miser- able, pothouse existence imaginable. CONNECTION WITH "PUNCH A GLIMPSE OF THACKERAY. " Most of the jokes in ' Punch ' are my own, but a good many are sent to me, which I twist and turn into form. But Postlethwaite, Bunthorne, Mrs. Ponsonby Tomkyns, Sir Georgeous Midas, and the other characters associated with my draw- Ings, are all my own creations. " I have made many interesting friends during my long life in London, and the lecture which I have delivered all over England contains many anecdotes about them. I never met Charles Dickens to speak to him, and only saw him once ; that was at Leech's funeral. Thackeray I also met only once, at the house of Mrs. Sartoris. Mrs. Sartoris, who was Adelaide Kemble, and Hamilton Ai'de, who knew of my immense admiration for Thackeray, wanted to introduce me to him, but I re- fused. I was too diffident. I was so little, and he was so great. But all that evening I remained as close to him as possible, greedily listening to his words. I remember that during the evening an American came up to him rather a com- THE AUTHOR OF " TRILBY." 187 mon sort of man and claimed acquaint- ance. Thackeray received him most cordially, and invited him to dinner. I envied that American. And my admira- tion for Thackeray increased when, as it was getting late, he turned to his two daughters, Minnie and Annie, and said to them, ' Allans, mesdemoiselles, il est temps de s'en aller,' with the best French accent I have ever heard in an Englishman's mouth. " Leech was, of course, one of my inti- mates ; my mas- ter, I may say, for to some ex- tent my work was modelled on his. I spent the autumn of the year which preceded his death with him at Whitby. He was not very funny, but was kind, amiable, and genial, a delightful man. "I shall never forget the scene at his funeral. Dean Hole was- officiating, and as the first sod fell with a sounding thud on the coffin of our dear, dear friend, Millais, who was stand- ing on the edge of the grave, burst out sob- bing. It was as a signal, for, the moment after, each man in that great of mourners was sobbing also, memorable sight." NOVEL-WRITING THE PLOT OF " TRILBY OFFERED TO HENRY JAMES. Then, going on to speak of his literary work, Du Maurier said, " Nobody more than myself was surprised at the great success of my novels. I never expected anything of the sort. I did not know that I could write. I had no idea that I had had any experiences worth recording. The circumstances under which I came to write are curious. I was walking one evening with Henry James up and down the High Street in Bayswater I had made James's acquaintance much in tht same way as I have made yours. James said that he had great difficulty in finding plots for his stories. ' Plots ! ' I exclaimed, ' I am full of plots ; ' and I went on to tell him the plot of 'Trilby.' 'But you ought to write that story,' cried James. ' I can't write,' I said, ' I have never writ- ten. If you like the plot so much you may take it.' But James would not take it ; he said it was too valuable a pres- ent, and that I must write the story myself. "Well, on reaching home that night I set to work, and by the next morn- ing I had writ- ten the first two numbers of ' Peter Ibbet- son.' It seemed all to flow from my pen, with- out effort, in a full stream. But I thought it must be poor stuff, and I de- termined to look for an omen to learn whether any success would attend this new departure. So I walked out into the garden, and the very first thing that I saw was a large wheelbarrow, and that comforted me and reassured me ; for, as you will remem- ber, there is a wheelbarrow in the first chapter of ' Peter Ibbetson.' " Some time later I was dining with Osgood, and he said, ' I hear, Du Maurier, that you are writing stories,' and asked me to let him see something. So ' Peter Ibbetson ' was sent over to America and was accepted at once. Then ' Trilby ' followed, and the 'boom' came, a ' boom ' which surprised me immensely, for I never took myself au serieux as a novelist. In- deed, this ' boom ' rather distresses me AN ALCOVE IN THE DRAWING-ROOM OF DU MAURIER'S HOUSE. From a photograph by Fradelle & Young, London. concourse It was a 1 88 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. DU MAURIER'S "SIGNATURE" AS CARVED, ALONG WITH THE SIG- NATURES OF OTHER MEMBERS OF THE " PUNCH " STAFF, ON THE TABLE FROM WHICH THE WEEKLY " PUNCH " DINNER IS EATEN. when I reflect that Thack- eray never had a ' boom.' And I hold that a ' boom ' means nothing as a sign of literary excellence, nothing but money." Du Maurier writes at ir- regular intervals, and in such moments as he can snatch from his " Punch " work. " For," he says, " I am taking more pains than ever over my drawing." And so saying, he fetched an albumin which he showed me the elaborate prepara- tion, in the way of studies and sketches, for a cartoon which was to appear in a week or two in his paper. One figure, from a female model, had been drawn several times. There was here the infinite capacity for taking pains. " I usu- ally write on the top of the piano, standing, and I never look at my manuscript.as I write, partly to spare my eyes, and partly because the writing seems literally to flow from my pen. My best time is just after lunch. My writing is frequently inter- rupted, and I walk about the studio and smoke, and then back to the manuscript once more. Afterwards I revise, very care- fully now, for I am taking great pains with my new book. ' The Martians ' is to be a very long book, and I cannot say when it will be finished." A summons from Mrs. du Maurier. to the drawing-room, where tea was served, " Every book which is worth anything," said Du Maurier, " has had its original life." And again, " I think that the best years in a man's life are after he is forty. So Trol- lope used to say. Does Daudet say so too ? A man at forty has ceased to hunt the moon. I would add that in order to enjoy life after forty, it is perhaps necessary to have achieved, before reaching that age, at least some success." He spoke of the letters he has been receiving since the "boom," and said that on an average he received five letters a day from America, of a most flattering description. " Some of my corre- spondents, however, don't give a man his 'du'," he remarked, with a shadow of a smile. Du Maurier speaks willingly and enthu- siastically about literature. He is an ardent admirer of Stevenson, and quoted with gusto the passage in " Kidnapped " where the scene between David Balfour and Cluny is described. "One would have to look at one's guests," he said, " before inviting them, if not precisely satisfied with one's hospitality, to step outside and take their measure. Imagine me proposing such an arrangement to a giant like Val Prinsep." The day on which he is able to devote most time to writing is Thursday. " C'est here interrupted the conversation. Acorn- man grand jour." On Wednesdays he is fortable room, with amiable people whom engaged with a model ; a female model one seemed to recognize. Over the mantel three portraits of Du Maurier's children, by himself, out pride. " Les voila" he said, not with- Above these a water-color picture of the character of the drawings in " Punch." " It has been hawked round all over America and England," said Du Mau- rier of this picture, " at exhibitions and places, but nobody would buy it." A MAN AT HIS BEST AFTER FORTY. Over the fire in the comfortable room the conversation touched on many things. comes every Friday. It is characteristic of the man that he should work with such renewed applica- tion at his old craft, in spite of the fact that circumstances have thrown wide open to him the gates of a new career. He reminds one as to physique, and in certain manifestations of a very nervous temperament, o/ another giant worker, whose name is Emile Zola. But he is altogether original and him- self, a strong and striking individuality, a man altogether deserving of his past and present good fortune. A. CONAN DOYLE AND ROBERT BARR. ' REAL CONVERSATION BETWEEN THEM. RECORDED BY MR. BARR. IN the very beginning I wish to set down the fact that I am not a professional interviewer, but that I have some acquaint- ance with the principles of the art. The observant reader will notice that I under- stand the business, because I have managed to run in five capital " I's" in the first few lines of this article. There you have the whole secret of interviewing as practiced A.D. 1894, in England. The successful interviewer blazons forth as much of his own personality as possible, using his vic- BARR AND DOYLE AT DR. DOYLE'S HOUSE, SOUTH NORWOOD. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY FRADEI.T.E ft YOUNG, 246 REGENT STREET, LONDON, W. HUMAN DOCUMENTS. tim as a peg on wh.ich to hang his own opinions. If the interviewer could be in- duced to hang himself as well as his opin- ions, the world would be brighter and better. I loathe the English pompous interview. But the interview in England is an im- ported article ; it is not native to the soil, la America you get the real thing, and Tven the youngest newspaper man under- stands how it should be done. An inter- viewer should be like a clear sheet of plate glass that forms the front window of an attractive store, through which you can see the articles displayed, scarcely suspecting that anything stands between you and the interesting collection. Yet some people are never satisfied, and there arose a man in the United States who resolved to invent a new kind of interview. His name is S. S. McClure, and he is the owner and editor of this Magazine. I hope I may be allowed to praise or abuse a man in his own magazine, and I hereby give him warning that if he cuts out or changes a line of my copy I will never write another word for him. He may disclaim what I say in any other portion of this periodical, if he likes, but I alone am responsible for this section. He would have no hesitation in asking Gabriel to write him an article on the latest thing in trumpets, and the re- markable thing is, he would actually get the manuscript. So one day S. S. McClure invented what he thought was a new style of interview, which he patented under the title of " Real Conversations." The almanac of the fut- ure, which sprinkles choice bits of informa- tion among weather predictions and signs of the zodiac, will have this line: " April 14, 1893 Real Conversations invented by S. S. McClure." Yet the idea was not new ; we all have practiced it as boys. We got two dogs to- gether who held different opinions on social matters, and urged them to discuss the question, while we stood by and enjoyed the argument. This is what McClure now does with two writers, and the weapon in the Real Conversation, as in the dog-fight, is the jaw. The only fault that I have to find with these Real Conversations is that they are not conversations, and that they cannot be real. Try to imagine two sane men sitting down deliberately to talk for publication ! Only a master mind could have conceived such a situation a mind like that of Mr. McClure, accustomed to accomplishing the impossible. Now, if he were to station a shorthand reporter behind a screen, as Louis XI. placed Quentin Durward when the king interviewed the Count of Creve- cceur, he might perhaps get a Real Con- versation, but otherwise I don't see how it is to be done. To show the practical difficulties that meet a Real Conversationalist at the very beginning, I pulled out my note-book and pencil, and, looking across at my victim, solemnly said : " Now, Conan Doyle, talk." Instead of complying with my most rea- sonable request, the novelist threw back his head and laughed, and, impressed as I was with the momentousness of the occa- sion, so hearty and infectious is his laugh that after a few moments I was compelled to join him. We had looted two comfortable wicker chairs from the house, and were seated at the farther end of the long" lawn that stretches from the Doyle residence towards the city of London. It is one of those smooth, exceedingly green, velvety lawns to be found only in England, yet easy of manufacture there ; for, as the Oxford gardener said to the American visitor, all you have to do is to leave the lawn out- doors for five hundred years or so, cutting and rolling it frequently, and there you are. Little, white, hard rubber golf balls lay about on the grass, like croquet balls that had shrunk from exposure to the weather. Mr. Doyle is a golf inebriate, and practices on this lawn, landing the balls in a tub when he makes the right sort of a hit, and generally breaking a window when he doesn't. I put away my note-book and pencil. " I have a proposal to make," I said. " You and I have frequently set the world right, and solved all the problems, with no magazine editor to make us afraid. We have talked in your garden and in mine, at your hospitable board and at mine, at your club and at mine, on your golf ground and yes, I remember now, I haven't one of my own ; now I know your views on things pretty well, so I will ' fake ' a Real Con- versation, as we say in the States." " But that wouldn't be quite fair to Mc- Clure's readers, would it ? " objected Doyle, who is an honest man and has never had the advantage of a newspaper training. " I read all of those Real Conversations in the magazine, and I thought them most inter- esting. The idea seems to me a good one." " Now that ought to show you how easy it will be for me to make up a Real Conver- sation with you. Your opinion and mine A. CON AN DOYLE AND ROBERT BARR. 191 are always the opposite of each other. All I would have to do would be to re- member what I thought on any subject, then write something entirely different, and I would have Conan Doyle. That proves to me the hollowness of the other inter- views McClure has published. Howells agreed with Boyesen, Hamlin Garland agreed with James Whitcomb Riley, and so on all along the line. This isn't natural. No literary man ever agrees with any other literary man. He sometimes pretends to to attain ; his criticism, even if severe, would be helpful and intelligent. A schoolboy, on the other hand, seems to give his verdict on a book by intuition, but he rarely makes a mistake. See how the schoolboys of the world have made " Treas- ure Island " their own. Of course, I would not expect an accurate estimate of " Robert Elsmere " from a schoolboy. Barr. I suppose an author would hardly like to slate another author's work pub- licly. Besides, he would be compelled, as A CORNER OF DR. DOYLE'S DRAWING ROOM. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY ELLIOTT & FRY, BAKER STREET, LONDON, W. like the books another fellow has written, but that is all humbug. He doesn't in his heart ; he knows he could have done them better himself." " Oh, you're all wrong there ; all wrong entirely wrong! Now, if I had to choose my critics, I would choose my fellow- workers, or schoolboys." "Just what I said. You are placing the other authors on a level with schoolboys ! That is worse than " Doyle. Listen to me. A fellow- author knows the difficulties I have to contend with ; he appreciates the effect I am trying a matter of self-protection, to keep up the pretence that there is such a thing as lit- erature in England at the present moment. But there is Mr. Howells, who has no Eng- lish axe to grind, and he, from the calm, serene, unprejudiced atmosphere of New York, frankly admits that literature in England is a thing of the past, and that the authors of to-day do not understand even the rudiments of their business. Of course you agree with him? Doyle. I think there never was a time when there was a better promise. There are at least a dozen men and women who 192 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. have made a deep mark, and who are still young. No one can say how far they may go. Some of them are sure to develop, for the past shows us that fiction is an art which improves up to the age of fifty or so. With fuller knowledge of life comes greater power in describing it. Barr, A dozen ! You always were a generous man, Doyle. Who are the talented twelve, so that I may cable to Howells ? Doyle. There are more than a dozen Barrie, Kipling, Mrs. Olive Schrein- er, Sarah Grand, Miss Harraden, Gilbert Parker, Quiller-Couch, Hall Caine, Stevenson, Stanley Weyman, Anthony Hope, Crockett, Rider Hag- gard, Jerome, Zangwill, Clark Russell, George Moore many of them under thirty and few of them much over it. There are others, of course. These names just happen to occur to me. r < \ SHERLOCK HOLMES. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH OF A BUST BY WILKINS. <. JOSEPH BELL, THE ORIGINAL OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY A. SWAN WATSON, EDINBURGH. Barr. You think a man im- proves up to fifty ? Doyle. Certainly, if he keeps out of a groove and refuses to do his work in a mechanical way. Why, many of the greatest writers in our fiction did not begin until after forty. Thackeray was about forty. Scott was past forty. Charles Reade and George Eliot were as much. Richardson was fifty. To draw life, one must know it. Barr. My experience is that when a man is fifty he knows he will improve until he is sixty, and when he is sixty he feels that im- provement will keep right on until he is seventy ; whereas, when he is twenty he thinks that perhaps he will know more when he is thirty, but is not sure. Man is an amus- ing animal. Now I would like an American dozen, if you don't mind. Doyle. I have not read a book for a long time that has stirred me as much as Miss Wilkins's " Pembroke." I think she is a very great writer. It is always A. CON AN DOYLE AND ROBERT BARR. risky to call a recent book a this one really seems to me to characteristic of one. Barr. Well? Doyle. Well ! Barr. That is only one. read American fiction ? classic, but very superficial things, and good old human have every nature is always there under a coat of varnish. When one hears of a literature of the West or of the South, it sounds ag- gressively sectional. Don't you Barr. Sectional ? If it comes to that, who could be more sectional than Hardy or Doyle. Not as much as I should wish, Barrie the one giving us the literature of DR. DOYLE IN HIS STUDY. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY FRADELLE & YOUNG, 246 REGENT STREET, LONDON, W. but what I have read has, I hope, been fairly representative. I know Cable's work and Eugene Field's and Hamlin Garland's and Edgar Fawcett's and Richard Harding Davis's. I think Harold Frederic's " In the Valley " is one of the best of recent historical romances. The danger for Amer- ican fiction is, I think, that it should run in many brooks instead of one broad stream. There is a tendency to overaccentuate local peculiarities ; differences, after all, are a county and the other of a village ? You know that a person in a neighboring village said of Barrie, that he was " no sae bad fur a Kerrimuer man." When you speak of a section in America, you must not forget it may be a bit of land as big as France. Doyle. Barrie and Hardy have gained success by showing how the Scotch or Wessex peasant shares our common human nature, not by accentuating the points in which they differ from us. 194 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. DR. DOYLE'S ICELAND FALCON. Barr. Well, I think Howells is demol- ished. What do you think of him and of James ? Doyle. James, I think, has had a great and permanent influence upon fiction. His beautiful clear-cut style and his artistic restraint must affect every one who reads him. I'm sure his " Portrait of a Lady " was an education to me, though one has not always the wit te profit by one's edu- cation. Barr. Yes ; James is a writer of whom you English people ought to be proud. I wish we had an American like him. Still, thank goodness, we have our William Dean Howells. I love Howells so much that I feel sure you must have something to say against him ; what is it ? Doyle. I admire his honest, earnest work, but I do not admire his attitude towards all writers and critics who happen to differ , from his school. One can like Valdes and Bourget and Miss Austen without throwing stones at Scott and Thackeray and Dickens. There is plenty of room for all. Barr. But there is the question of art. Doyle. We talk so much about art, that we tend to forget what this art was ever invented for. It was to amuse mankind to help the sick and the dull and the weary. If Scott and Dickens have done this for millions, they have done well by their art. Barr. You don't think, then, that the object of all fiction is to draw life as it is ? Doyle. Where would Gulliver and Don Quixote and Dante and Goethe be, if that were so? No ; the object of fiction is to interest, and the best fiction is that which interests most. If you can inter- est by drawing life as it is, by all means do so. But there is no reason why you should object to your neighbor using other means. Barr. You do not approve of the theological novel then? Doyle. Oh yes, I do, if it is made interesting. I think the age of fiction is coming the age when religious and social and political changes will all be effected by means of the novelist. Look, within recent years, how much has been done by such books as "Looking Backward" or "Rob- ert Elsmere." Everybody is edu- cated now, but comparatively few are very educated. To get an idea to penetrate to the masses of the people, you must put fiction round it, like sugar round a pill. No statesman and no ecclesiastic will have the influence on public opinion which the novelist of the future will have. If he has strong convictions, he will have wonderful facilities for impressing them on others. Still his first business will always be to interest. If he can't get his sugar right, people will refuse his pill. At this point nature revolted. She thought the subject too dry, and she pro- ceeded to wet it down. A black thunder- cloud came up over the Crystal Palace, and the first thing we knew the shower was upon us. Both of us, luckily, knew enough to come in out of the rain. Two men hastily grasped two wicker chairs and bolted for the house, leaving litera- A. CON AN DOYLE AND ROBERT BARR. '95 ture to take care of itself in the back garden. Conan Doyle's study, workshop, and smoking-room is a nice place in a down- pour, and I can recommend the novelist's brand of cigarettes. Show me the room in which a man works, and I'll show you how to smoke his cigarettes. The work- bench stands in the corner one of those flat-topped desks so prevalent in England. The English author does not seem to take kindly to the haughty, roller-top American desk, covered with transparent varnish and twenty-three patents. There is a bookcase, filled with solid historical volumes for the most part. The most remarkable feature of the room is a series of water-color drawings done by Conan Doyle's father. The Doyle family has always been a family of artists, and the celebrated cover of " Punch " is, as everybody knows, the work of Dicky Doyle.^ ROBERT BARR AT HIS DESK IN THE " IDLER " OFFICE. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY FRADELLE & YOUNG, 246 REGENT STREET, LONDON, W. 196 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. The drawings by Mr. Doyle's father are most weird and imaginative, being in art something like what Edgar Allan Poe's stories are in fiction. There are harpoons on the wall, for Doyle has been a whale fisher in his time, and has the skull of a polar bear and the stuffed body of an Iceland falcon to show that his aim was accurate. There are but two other Iceland falcons in England. The novelist came nearer to the North Pole than New York is to Chicago, and it has always struck me as strange that he did not take a sleeping-car and go through to the Pole and spend a night there. But he was young then and let opportunities slip. He spent his twenty-first birthday within the Arctic Circle. Here are three stories of his Arctic ex- periences. You see, I am going to sugar- coat the Real Conversation. The whaler sailed from Peterhead, and the crew were Scotsmen with one excep- tion. Doyle was supposed to be the sur- geon of the craft. He brought two pairs of boxing-gloves with him, and one of the men, who was handy with his fists, was ambitious to have a bout. Doyle accom- modated him. The man was strong, but had no science. Finding himself hard pressed, Doyle struck out, and the cabin table being fastened to the floor with no give to it, the sailor, when he struck it after the blow, found his feet in the air and his head on the floor behind the table. The man was heard afterwards to say to a companion in tones of great admiration : " Man ! McAlpine, yen's the best sur- geon we've ever had. He knocked me clean ower th' table an' blacked ma e'e." Few men have had such a compliment paid to their medical qualifications. The man who was not a Scotsman was a gloomy, taciturn person, popularly sup- posed to be a fugitive from justice, and held in deep respect on that account. He went on the principle that deeds speak louder than words. On one occasion the cook took the liberty of being drunk for three days. On the third day the mur- derer thought this had gone far, just far, enough. The cooking was something awful. He rose without a word, seized a long-handled saucepan and brought it down on the cook's head. The bottom of the pan broke like glass, and the iron rim remained around the astonished cook's neck like a collar. The man, still without a word, walked gloomily to his seat. There was no more bad cooking on that voyage. They used to throw an ice-anchor on a berg when they lay for some hours beside an ice-field, and then was the time to take a rise out of the innocent polar bear, who is not accustomed to the Peterhead brand of humor. They would put all the grease, bones, and galley refuse into the furnace, and the scent of the burning spread along the Arctic Circle for miles. In a few hours all the bears between there and the Pole would come trooping along with noses high in the air, wondering where the banquet was. When they read the signal, "April Fool," flagged from the mast-head, the bears grunted and trudged off home again. Conan Doyle is not a man who goes to extremes, but it seems to me that he did in the matter of his voyaging. He came home from the Arctic Circle, took his de- gree at Edinburgh, and at once shipped for the west African coast. Here is a tragedy of the sea which oc- curred when Doyle was a boy. He read an account of it at the time, and it made a powerful impression on his young mind. An American ship called the " Marie Ce- leste " was found abandoned off the west coast. Nothing on her was disturbed, and there were no signs of a struggle. Her cargo was untouched, and there was no evi- dence that she had come through a storm. On the cabin table was screwed a sewing machine, and on the arm of the sewing machine was a spool of silk thread, which would have fallen off if there had been any motion of the vessel. She was loaded with clocks, and her papers showed that she left Baltimore for Lisbon. She was taken to Gibraltar, but from that day to this no one knows what became' of the captain and crew of the " Marie Celeste." This mystery of the sea set the future Sherlock Holmes at work trying to find a solution for it. There was no clew to go on, except an old Spanish sword found in the forecastle, which showed signs of hav- ing been recently cleaned. Doyle's solu- tion of the problem appeared in the form of a story for the "Cornhill Magazine," entitled, " J. Habbakuk Jephson's State- ment." Jephson was supposed to be an American doctor who had taken passage on the ship for his health. Shortly after the story appeared, the following telegram was printed in all the London papers : " Solly Flood, Her Majesty's advocate- general at Gibraltar, telegraphs that the statement of J. Habbakuk Jephson is noth- ing less than a fabrication." Which indeed it was ; but the telegram was a compliment to the realism of the story, to say the least. A. CON AN DOYLE AND ROBERT BARR. 197 On the bookcase in the study there stands a bust of a man with a keen, shrewd face. " Who is the statesman ?" I asked. "Oh, that is Sherlock Holmes," said Doyle. "A young sculptor named Wil- kins, from Birmingham, sent it to me. Isn't it good?" " Excellent. By the way, is Sherlock Holmes really dead ? " " Doyle, I have known you now for seven years, and I know you thoroughly. I am going to say something to you that you will remember in after life. Doyle, you will never come to any good ! " The making of an historical novel in- volves much hard reading. The results of this hard reading, Doyle sets down in a note-book. Sometimes all he gets out of several volumes is represented by a couple Robert Barr. Miss Doyle. Conan Doyle. A GROUP IN DR. DOYLE'S GARDEN. Mrs. Doyle. Robert McClure. "Yes; I shall never write another Holmes story." Dr. Conan Doyle is a methodical worker, and a hard worker. He pastes up over his mantel-shelf a list of the things he in- tends to do in the coming six months, and he sticks to his task until it is done. He must be a great disappointment to his old teacher. When he had finished school the teacher called the boy up before him and said solemnly : of pages in this book. In turning over the most recent pages I saw much about Na- poleon, and I knew that some marvellously good short stories which Doyle has re- cently written, are set in the stormy period of Napoleon's time. "I suppose you are an admirer of that unscrupulous ruffian? " I said gently. " He was a wonderful man perhaps the most wonderful man who ever lived. What strikes me is the lack of finality in his HUMAN DOCUMENTS. CONAN DOYLE AT 4 YEARS OF AGE. CONAN DOYLE AT 14. CONAN DOYLE AT 22. CONAN DOYLE AT 28. A. CON AN DOYLE AND ROBERT BARR. 199 character. When you make up your mind that he is a complete villain, you come on some noble trait ; and then your admiration of this is lost in some act of incredible meanness. But just think of it ! Here was a young fellow of thirty, a man who had had no social advantages and but slight edu- cational training, a member of a pov- erty-stricken family, entering a room with a troop of kings at his heels, and all the rest of them jealous if he spoke a moment longer to one than to the others. Then, there must have been a great personal charm about the man, for some of those intimate with him loved him. His secretary, Meneval, writes of him with al- most doting affection." " Yes ; and then a dealer in fiction must bow down to Napoleon as the most accom- plished liar that ever lived." " Oh, no one could ever compete with him in that line. If he intended to invade Africa, he would give out that he was go- ing to Russia ; then he would tell his inti- CONAN UOVLE AT THE PRESENT TIME. mates in strict con- fidence that Ger- many was the spot he had his eye on ; and finally he would whisper in the ear of his most confidential secretary'that Spain was the point of at- tack. He. was cer- tainly an amazing and talented liar." " Do you think his power in this di- rection was the se- cret of his success, and is lying a virtue you would advise us all to cultivate ? " " The secret of his success seems to me to have been his ability to originate gigantic schemes that seemed fantas- tic and impossible, while his mastery of de- tail enabled him to bring his projects to completion where any other man would have failed." At the time this appears in print, Dr. Conan Doyle will be in America. He goes there ostensibly to deliver the series of lectures that has been so successful in Eng- land, but the real object of his visit is to see the country. This is a laudable ambi- tion, and I hope the United States and Conan Doyle will mutually like each other. EUGENE FIELD AND HAMLIN GARLAND. A CONVERSATION". RECORDED BY HAMLIX GARLAND. ONE afternoon quite recently two men sat in an attic study in one of the most interesting homes in the city of Chi- cago, a home that was a museum of old books, rare books, Indian relics, dramatic souvenirs and bric-a-brac indescribable, but each piece with a history. It was a beautiful June day, and the study window looked out upon a lawn of large trees where children were rioting. It was a part of Chicago which the traveller never sees, green and restful and dignified, the lake not far off. The host was a tall, thin-haired man with a New England face of the Scotch type, rugged, smoothly shaven, and generally very solemn suspiciously solemn in ex- pression. His infrequent smile curled his wide, expressive mouth in fantastic gri- maces which seemed not to affect the steady gravity of the blue-gray eyes. He was stripped to his shirt-sleeves and sat with feet on a small stand. He chewed reflec- tively upon a cigar during the opening of the talk. His voice was deep, but rather dry in quality. The other man was a rather heavily built man, with brown hair and beard cut rather close. He listened, mainly, going off into gusts of laughter occasionally as the other man gave a quaint turn to some very frank phrase. The tall host was Eugene Field, the interviewer a Western writer by the name of Garland. "Well, now, brother Field," said Garland, interrupting his host as he was about to open an- other case of rare books, " you remember I'm to interview you to-day." Field scowled savagely. " Oh, say, Garland, can't we put that thing off ?" " No. Must be did," replied his friend decisively. " Now, there are two ways to do this thing. We can be as literary and as delicious- ly select in our dialogue as Mr. Howells and Professor Boyesen were, or we can be wild and woolly. How would it do to be as wild and 14 woolly as those Eastern fellers expect us to be ?" " All right," said Field, taking his seat well up on the smal 1 of his back. " What does it all mean, anyway ? What you goin' to do ? " " I'm goin' to take notes while we talk, and I'm goin' to put this thing down pretty close to the fact, now, you bet," said Gar- land, sharpening a pencil. "Where you wan' to begin ?" " Oh, we'll have to begin with your an- cestry, though it's a good deal like the introductory chapter to the old-fashioned novels. We'll start early ; with your birth, for instance." " Well, I was born in St. Louis." " Is that so ? " The interviewer showed an unprofessional surprise. "Why, I thought you were born in Massachusetts." "No," said Field, reflectively. "No. I'm sorry, of course, but I was born in St. Louis ; but my parents were Vermont people." He mentioned this as an extenuating circum- stance, evidently. "My father was a law- yer. He was a precocious boy, graduated from Middlebury College when he was fifteen, and when he was nineteen was made State's Attorney by special act of the legis- lature; without that he would have had to wait until he was twenty-one. He married and came West, and I was born in 1850." " So you're forty-three ? Where does the New England life come in ?" THE FIELD HOMESTEAD AT FAYETTEVILLE, VERMONT. 202 HUMAN DOCUMENTS, " When I was seven years old my mother died, and father packed us boys right off to Massachusetts and put us under the care of a maiden cousin, a Miss French, she was a fine woman, too." Garland looked up from his scratch-pad to ask, " This was at Amherst ? " " Yes. I stayed there until I was nine- teen, and they were the sweetest and finest days of my life. I like old Amherst." He paused a moment, and his long face slowly lightened up. " By the way, here's some- thing you'll like. When I was nine years old father sent us up to Fayetteville, Ver- mont, to the old homestead where my grandmother lived. We stayed there seven months," he said with a grim curl of his lips, " and the old lady got all the grand- son she wanted. She didn't want the visit repeated." He sat a moment in silence, and his face softened and his eyes grew tender. " I tell you, Garland, a man's got to have a layer of country experience somewhere in him. My love for nature dates from that visit, because I had never lived in the country before. Sooner or later a man rots if he lives too far away from the grass and the trees." "You're right there, Field, only I didn't know you felt it so deeply. I supposed you hated farm life." " I do ; but farm life is not nature. I'd like to live in the country without the effects of work and dirt and flies.'' The word " flies " started him off on a side-track. " Say ! You should see my boys. I go up to a farm near Fox Lake and stay a week every year, suffering all sorts of tortures, in order to give my boys a chance to see farm life. I sit there nights trying to read by a vile-smelling old kero- sene lamp, the flies trooping in so that you can't keep the window down, you know, and those boys lying there all the time on a hot husk bed, faces spattered with mosquito bites, and sweating like pigs and happy as angels. The roar of the flies and mos- quitoes is sweetest lullaby to a tired boy." " Well, now, going back to that visit," said the interviewer with persistency to his plan. " Oh, yes. Well, my grandmother was a regular old New England Congregation- alist. Say, I've got a sermon I wrote when I was nine. The old lady used to give me ten cents for every sermon I'd write. Like to see it ? " " Well, I should say. A sermon at nine years ! Field, you started in well." "Didn't I?" he replied, while getting the book. " And you bet it's a corker." He produced the volume, which was a small bundle of note-paper bound beauti- fully. It was written in a boy's formal hand. He sat down to read it : " I would remark secondly that conscience makes the way of transgressors hard ; for every act of pleas- ure, every act of Guilt his conscience smites him. The last of his stay on earth will appear horrible to the beholder. Some times, however, he will be stayed in his guilt. A death in a family of some favorite object or be attacked by Some disease him- self is brought to the portals of the grave. Then for a little time perhaps he is stayed in his wickedness, but before long he returns to his worldly lust. Oh, it is indeed bad for sinners to go down into perdition over all the obstacles which God has placed in his path. But many I am afraid do go down into perdi- ti^n, for wide gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction and many there be that go in thereat." He stopped occasionally to look at Gar- land gravely, as he read some particularly comical phrase : " ' I secondly remark '- ain't that great ? ' that the wise man re- members even how near he is to the por- tals of death.' ' Portals of death ' is good. ' One should strive to walk the narrow way and not the one which leads to perdi- tion.' I was heavy on quotations, you notice." " Is this the first and last of your ser- mons ? " queried Garland, with an amused smile. " The first and last. Grandmother soon gave me up as bad material for a preacher. She paid me five dollars for learning the Ten Commandments. I used to be very slow at ' committing to memory.' I recall that while I was thus committing the book of Acts, my brother committed that book and the Gospel of Matthew, part of John,, the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians,, and the Westminster Catechism. I would not now exchange for any amount of money the acquaintance with the Bible that was drummed into me when I was a boy. At learning ' pieces to speak ' I was, how- ever, unusually quick, and my favorites were : ' Marco Bozzaris,' ' Psalm of Life,' Drake's ' American Flag,' Longfellow's ' Launching of the Ship,' Webster's 'Action,' Shakespeare's 'Clarence's Dream' (Rich- ard III.), and 'Wolsey to Cromwell,' ' Death of Virginia,' ' Horatius at the Bridge,' ' Hymn of the Moravian Nuns,' 'Absalom,' ' Lochiel's Warning,' 'Mac- lean's Revenge,' Bulwer's translation of Schiller's 'The Diver,' 'Landing of the Pilgrims,' Bryant's 'Melancholy Days,' ' Burial of Sir John Moore,' and ' Hohen- linden.' " I remember when I was thirteen our EUGENE FIELD AND HAMLIN GARLAND. 203 EUGENE FIELD'S HOME AT BUENA PARK, CHICAGO. cousin said she'd give us a Christmas tree. So we went down into Patrick's swamp I suppose the names are all changed now and dug up a little pine tree about as tall as we were, and planted it in a tub. On the night of Christmas Day, just when we were dancing around the tree^ making merry and having a high-old-jinks of a time, the way children will, grandma came in and looked at us. ' Will this popery never cease ? ' was all she said, and out she flounced." " Yes, that was the old Puritan idea of it. But did live " " Now, hold on," he interrupted. " I want to finish. We planted that tree near the corner of Sunset Avenue and Amity Street, and it's there now, a magnificent tree. Some time when I'm East I'm going to go up there with my brother and put a tablet on it ' Pause, busy traveller, and give a thought to the happy days of two Western boys who lived in old New Eng- land, and make resolve to render the boy- hood near you happier and brighter,' or something like that." " That's a pretty idea," Garland agreed. He felt something fine and tender in the man's voice, which was generally hard and dry, but wonderfully expressive. " Now, this sermon I had bound just for the sake of old times. If I didn't have it right here, I wouldn't believe I ever wrote such stuff. I tell you, a boy's a queer combination," he ended, referring to the book again. " You'll see that I signed my name, those days, ' E. P. Field.' The ' P.' stands for Phillips. "As I grew old enough to realize it, I was much chagrined to find I had no mid- dle name like the rest of the boys, so I took the name of Phillips. I was a great admirer of Wendell Phillips, am yet, though I'm not a reformer. You'll see here," he pointed at the top of the pages, " I wrote the word ' sensual.' Evidently I was .struck with the word, and was seeking a chance to ring it in somewhere, but failed." They both laughed over the matter while Field put the book back. "Are you a college man? "asked Gar- land. " I've noticed your deplorable ten- dency toward the classics." " I fitted for college when I was sixteen. My health was bad, or I should have en- tered right off. I had pretty nearly every- thing that was going in the way of dis- eases," this was said with a comical twist of the voice " so I didn't get to Williams till I was eighteen. My health improved right along, but I'm sorry to say that of the col- lege did not." He smiled again, a smile that meant a very great deal. "What happened then ?" "Well, my father died, and I returned West. I went to live with my guardian, Professor Burgess of Knox College. This college is situated at Galesburg, Illinois. This is the college that has lately conferred A. M. upon me. The professor's guardian- ship was merely nominal, however. I did about as I pleased. " I next went to the State University at Columbia, Missouri. It was an old slave- holding town, but I liked it. I've got a streak of Southern feeling in me." He said abruptly, " I'm an aristocrat. I'm looking for a Maecenas. I have mighty little in common with most of the wealthy, 204 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. money but I like the idea of wealth in the ab- stract." He failed to make the distinction quite clear, but he went on as if realizing that this might be a thin spot of ice. " At twenty-one I came into sixty thousand dollars, and I went to Europe, taking a friend, a young fellow of about my own age, with me. I had a lovely time ! " he added, and again the smile con- veyed vast meaning. Garland looked up from his pad. " You must have had. Did you ' blow in the whole business ' ? " " Pretty near. I swatted the around. Just think of it !" he ex- claimed, warming with the reco.l- lection. " A boy of twenty-one, without father or mother, and sixty thousand dollars. Oh, it was a lovely combination ! I saw more things and did more things than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio," he paraphrased, looking at his friend with a strange ex- pression of amusement and pleas- ure and regret. " I had money. I paid it out for experience it was plenty. Experience was lying around loose." " Came home when the money gave out, I reckon ? " " Yes. Came back to St. Louis, and went to work on the 'Journal.' I had previously tried to ' enter journalism,' as I called it then. About the time I was twenty-one I went to Stilson Hutchins, and told him who I was, and he said : " ' All right. I'll give you a chance, but we don't pay much.' Of course I told him pay didn't matter. "'Well!' he said, 'go down to the Olympia, and write up the play there to-night.' I went down, and I brought most of my critical acumen to bear upon an actor by the name of Charley Pope, who was playing Mercutio for Mrs. D. P. Bowers. His wig didn't fit, and all my best writing centred about that wig. I sent the critique in, blame fine as I thought, with illuminated initial letters, and all that. Oh, it was lovely ! and the next morning I was deeply pained and dis- gusted to find it mutilated, all that about the wig, the choicest part, was cut out. I thought I'd quit journalism forever. I don't suppose Hutchins connects Eugene Field with the fool that wrote that critique. I don't myself," he added with a quick half-smile lifting again the corner of his solemn mouth. It was like a ripple on a still pool. " Well, when did you really get into the work?" his friend asked, for he seemed about to go off into another by-path. " Oh, after 1 came back from Europe I was ' busted,' and had to go to work. I met Stanley Waterloo about that time, and his talk induced me to go to work for the ' Journal ' as a reporter. I soon got to be city editor, but I didn't like it. I liked to have fun with people. I liked to have my fun as I went along. About this time I married the sister of the friend who went THE HAI.L. with me to Europe, and, feeling my new responsibilities, I went up to St. Joseph as city editor." He mused for a moment in silence. " It was terrific hard work, but I wouldn't give a good deal for those two years." "Have you ever drawn upon them for material ? " asked Garland with a novelist's perception of their possibilities. " No, but I may some time. Things have to get pretty misty before I can use 'em. I'm not like you fellows," he said, referring to the realists. "I got thirty dollars a week ; wasn't that princely ?" " Nothing else ; but you earned it, no doubt." "Earned it ? Why, Great Scott ! I did EUGENE FIELD AND HAMLIN GARLAND. 205 the whole business, except turning the han- dle of the press. "Well, in 1877 I was called back to the ' Journal ' in St. Louis as editorial writer of paragraphs. That was the beginning of my own line of work." " When did you do your first work in verse ? " asked Garland. The tall man brought his feet down to the floor with a bang, and thrust his hand out toward his friend. " There ! I'm glad you said verse. For heaven's sake don't ever say I call my stuff poetry. I never do. I don't pass judgment on it like that." After a little he resumed: "The first that I wrote was ' Christmas Treas- ures.' I wrote that one night to fill in a chink in the paper." " Give me a touch of it ? " asked his friend. He chewed his cigar in the effort to re- member. "I don't read it much. I put it with the collection for the sake of old times." He read a few lines of it, and read it extremely well, before returning to his history. CHRISTMAS TREASURES. I count my treasures o'er with care, The little toy my darling knew, A little sock of faded hue, A little lock of golden hair. Long years ago this holy time, My little one my all to me Sat robed in white upon my knee, And heard the merry Christmas chime. " Tell me, my little golden-head, If Santa Claus should come to-night, What shall he bring my baby bright, What treasure for my boy ? " I said. THE DINING-ROOM. A CORNER IN THE LIBRARY. Then he named this little toy, While in his round and mournful eyes There came a look of sweet surprise That spake his quiet, trustful joy. And as he lisped his evening prayer, He asked the boon with childish grace, Then, toddling to the chimney-place, He hung this little stocking there. That night, while lengthening shadows crept, I saw the white-winged angels come With singing to our lowly home, And kiss my darling as he slept. They must have heard his little prayer, P'or in the morn, with rapturous face He toddled to the chimney-place, And found this little treasure there. They came again one Christmas-tide, That angel host so fair and white ! And, singing all that glorious night, They lured my darling from my side. A little sock, a little toy, A little lock of golden hair, The Christmas music on the air, A watching for my baby boy. But if again that angel train And golden head come back to me, To bear me to Eternity, My watching will not be in vain. " I went next to the Kansas City ' Times ' as managing editor. I wrote there that ' Little Peach,' which still chases me around the country." THE LITTLE PEACH. A little peach in the orchard grew, A little peach of emerald hue ; Warmed by the sun and wet by the dew, It grew. One day, passing that orchard through, That little peach dawned on the view Of Johnny Jones and his sister Sue, Them two. 206 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. Up at that peach a club they threw, Down from the stem on which it grew Fell that peach of emerald hue. Man Dieit ! John took a bite and Sue a chew, And then the trouble began to brew, Trouble the doctor couldn't subdue. Too true ! Under the turf where the daisies grew They planted John and his sister Sue, And their little souls to the angels flew, Boo hoo ! What of that peach of the emerald hue, Warmed by the sun and wet by the dew ? Ah, well, its mission on earth is through. Adieu ! " I went to the Denver ' Tribune ' next, and stayed there till 1883. The most con- spicuous thing I did there was the bur- lesque primer series. ' See the po-lice-man. Has he a club? Yes, he has a club,' etc. These were so widely copied and pirated that I put them into a little book which is very rare, thank heaven ! I hope I have the only copy of it. The other thing which rose above the level of my ordinary work was a bit of verse, ' The Wanderer,' which I credited to Modjeska, and which has given her no little annoyance." THE WANDERER. Upon a mountain height, far from the sea, I found a shell ; And to my listening ear the lonely thing Ever a song of ocean seemed to sing, Ever a tale of ocean seemed to tell. How came the shell upon that mountain height ? Ah, who can say Whether there dropped by some too careless hand, Or whether there cast when ocean swept the land, Ere the Eternal had ordained the day ? Strange, was it not ? Far from its native deep, One song it sang Sang of the awful mysteries of the tide, Sang of the misty sea, profound and wide, Ever with echoes of the ocean rang. And as the shell upon the mountain height Sings of the sea, So do I ever, leagues and leagues away, So do I ever, wandering where I may, Sing, O my home ! sing, O my home ! of thee. "That brings you up to Chicago, doesn't it?" "In 1883 Melville Stone asked me to join him on the 'News,' and I did. Since then my life has been uneventful." "I might not think so. Did you estab- lish the column ' Sharps and Flats ' at once?" " Yes. I told Stone I'd write a good deal of musical matter, and the name seemed appropriate. We tried to change it several times, but no go." "I first saw your work in the 'News.' I was attracted by your satirical studies of Chicago. I don't always like what you write, but I liked your war against sham." Field became serious at once, and leaned towards the other man in an attitude of great earnestness. The deepest note in the man's voice came out. " I hate a sham or a fraud ; not so much a fraud, for a fraud means brains very often, but a sham makes me mad clear through," he said savagely. His fighting quality came out in the thrust of the chin. Here was the man whom the frauds and shams fear. " That is evident. But I don't think the people make the broadest application of your satires. They apply them to Chicago. There is quite a feeling. I suppose you know about this. They say you've hurt Chicago art." " I hope I have, so far as the bogus art and imitation culture of my city is con- cerned. As a matter of fact the same kind of thing exists in Boston and New York, only they're used to it there. I've jumped on that crowd of faddists, I'll admit, as hard as I could ; but I don't think any one can say I've ever willingly done any real man or woman an injury. If I have, I've always tried to square the thing up." Here was the man's fairness, kindliness of heart, coming to the surface in good simple way. The other man was visibly impressed with his friend's earnestness, but he pur- sued his course. "You've had offers to go East, according to the papers." "Yes, but I'm not going why should I ? I'm in my element here. They haven't any element there. They've got atmos- phere there, and it's pretty thin sometimes, I call it." He uttered "atmosphere" with a drawling, attenuated nasal, to express his contempt. " I don't want literary atmos- phere. I want to be in an element where I can tumble around and yell without falling in a fit for lack of breath." The interviewer was scratching away like mad this was his chance. Field's mind took a sudden turn now, and he said emphatically : "Garland, I'm a newspaper man. I don't claim to be anything else. I've never written a thing for the magazines, and I never was asked to, till about four years ago. I never have put a high estimate upon my verse. That it's popular is because my sympathies and the public's happen to run on parallel lines EUGENE FIELD AND HAMLIN GARLAND. 20J just now. That's all. Not much of it will live." " I don't know about that, brother Field," said Garland, pausing to rest. " I think you underestimate some of that work. Your reminiscent boy-life poems and your songs of childhood are thoroughly Ameri- can, and fine and tender. They'll take care of themselves." " Yes, but my best work has been along lines of satire. I've consistently made war upon shams. I've stood always in my work for decency and manliness and honesty. I think that'll remain true, you'll find. I'm not much physically, but morally I'm not a coward. I don't pretend to be a reformer ; I leave that to others. I hate logarithms. life," pursued Garland, who called himself a veritist, and enjoyed getting his friend as nearly on his ground as possible. " Yes, that's so, but that's in the far past," Field admitted. Garland took the thought up. " Time helps you, then. Time is a romancer. He halves the fact, but we veritists find the present fact haloed with significance, if not beauty." Field dodged the point. " Yes, I like to do those boy-life verses. I like to live over the joys and tragedies because we had our tragedies." " Didn't we ! Weeding the onion-bed on circus day, for example." "Yes, or gettin' a terrible strappin' for THE DRAWING-ROOM. I like speculative astronomy. I am natu- rally a lover of romance. My mind turns towards the far past or future. I like to illustrate the foolery of these society folks by stories which I invent. The present don't interest me at least not taken as it is. Possibilities interest me." " That's a good way to put it," said the other man. " It's a question of the impos- sible, the possible, and the probable. I like the probable. I like the near-at-hand. I feel the most vital interest in the average fact." ' I know you do ; and I like it after you get through with it, but I don't care to deal with the raw material myself. I like the archaic." " Yet some of your finest things, I re- peat, are your reminiscent verses of boy- goin' swimming without permission. Oh, it all comes back to me, all sweet and fine, somehow. I've forgotten all the unpleas- ant things. I remember only the best of it all. I like boy-life. I like children. I like young men. I like the buoyancy of youth and its freshness. It's a God's pity that every young child can't get a taste of country life at some time. It's a fund of inspiration to a' man." Again the finer quality in the man came out in his face and voice. "Your life in New England and the South, and also in the West, has been of great help to you, I think." "Yes, and a big disadvantage. When I go East Stedman calls me a typical West- erner, and when I come West they call me a Yankee so there I am ! " 208 HUMAN DOCUMENTS, " Now you touch a great theme. You're right, Field. The next ten years will see literary horizons change mightily. The West is dead sure to be in the game from this time on. A man can't be out here a week without feeling the thrill of latent powers. The West is coming to its man- hood. The West is the place for enthusi- asm. Her history is making." Field took up the note. " I've got faith in it. I love New England for her heri- tage to me. I like her old stone walls and meadows, but when I get back West well, I'm home, that's all. My love for the West has got blood in it." Garland laughed in sudden perception of their earnestness. " We're both talking like a couple of ' boomers.' It' might be characteristic, however, to apply the methods of the ' boomers ' of town lots to the development of art and literature. What say ? " " It can be done. It will come in the course of events." " In our enthusiasm we have skated away from the subject. You are forty- MR. FIELD'S TREASURES: THE GLADSTONE AXE, c. A. DANA'S SHEARS, THE HORACES. " There's no doubt of your being a Westerner." "I hope not. I believe in the West. I tell you, brother Garland, the West is the coming country. We ought to have a big magazine to develop the West. It's absurd to suppose we're going on always being tributary to the East ! " Garland laid down his pad and lifted his big fist in the air like a maul. His enthu- siasm rose like a flood. three, then ; you realize there's a lot of work before you, I hope." " Yes, yes, my serious work is just begun. I'm a man of slow development. I feel that. I know my faults and my weak- nesses. I'm getting myself in hand. Now, Garland, I'm with you in your purposes, but I go a different way. You go into things direct. I'm naturally allusive. My work is almost always allusive, if you've noticed." EUGENE FIELD AND HAMLIN GARLAND. 209 " Do you write rapidly ? " " I write my verse easily, but my prose I sweat over. Don't you ?" " I toil in revision, even when I have what the other fellows call an inspira- tion." " I tell you, Garland, genius is not in it. It's work and patience, and staying with a thing. Inspiration is all right and pretty and a suggestion, but it's when a man gets a pen in his hand and sweats blood that inspiration begins to enter in." " Well, what are your plans for the fut- ure ? Your readers want to know that. " His face glowed as he replied : " I'm going to write a sentimental life of Hor- ace. We know mighty little of him, but what I don't know I'll make up. I'll write such a life as he must have lived ; the life we all live when boys." The younger man put up his notes, and they walked down and out under the trees, with the gibbous moon shining through the gently moving leaves. They passed a couple of young people walking slow his voice a murmur, hers a whisper. " There they go. Youth ! Youth ! " said Field. PORTRAITS OF EUGENE FIELD. AGE SIX MONTHS. PORTRAITS OF EUGENE FIELD. 211 AGE 3 =. AGE 34. PORTRAITS OF DWIGHT LYMAN MOODY. 1854. AGE 17. MR. MOODY AS HE APPEARED AT THE TIME HE REMOVED FROM THE FAMILY FARM TO BOSTON. MR. MOODY IN 1882. AGE 45. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY PIERRE LETIT, PARIS, MR. MOODY: SOME IMPRESSIONS AND FACTS. BY HENRY DRUMMOND, LL.D., F.R.S.E., F.G.S. Author of " Natural Law in the Spiritual World," " The Greatest Thing in the World," " The Ascent of Man," etc. TO gain just the right impression of Mr. Moody you must make a pilgrimage to Northfield. Take the train to the way- side depot in Massachusetts which bears that name, or, better still, to South Vernon, where the fast trains stop. Northfield, his birthplace and his present home, is distant about a couple of miles, but at certain sea- sons of the year you will find awaiting trains a two-horse buggy, not conspicuous for varnish, but famous for pace, driven by a stout farmer-like person in a slouch hat. As he drives you to the spacious hotel a creation of Mr. Moody's he will answer your questions about the place in a brusque, business-like way ; indulge, probably, in a few laconic witticisms, or discuss the polit- ical situation or the last strike with a shrewdness which convinces you that, if the Northfield people are of this level-headed type, they are at least a worthy field for the great preacher's energies. Presently, on the other side of the river, on one of those luscious, grassy slopes, framed in with forest and bounded with the blue re- ceding hills, which give the Connecticut Valley its dream-like beauty, the great halls and colleges of the new Northfield which Mr. Moody has built, begin to ap- pear. Your astonishment is great, not so much to find a New England hamlet pos- sessing a dozen of the finest educational buildings in America for the neighbor- ing townships of Amherst and Northamp- ton are already famous for their collegiate institutions but to discover that these owe their existence to a man whose name is, perhaps, associated in the minds of three-fourths of his countrymen, not with education, but with the want of it. But presently, when you are deposited at the door of the hotel, a more astounding dis- covery greets you. For when you ask the clerk whether the great man himself is at home, and where you can see him, he will point to your coachman, now disappearing like lightning down the drive, and too much accustomed to Mr. Moody's humor to smile at his latest jest whisper, " That's him." If this does not actually happen in your HENRY DRUMMOND. case, it is certain it has happened ;* and nothing could more fittingly introduce you to the man, or make you realize the natu- ralness, the simplicity, the genuine and unaffected humanity of this great unspoilt and unspoilable personality. MR. MOODY MUCH MISUNDERSTOOD. Simple as this man is, and homely as are his surroundings, probably America possesses at this moment no more extra- ordinary personage ; nor even amongst the most brilliant of her sons has any * At the beginning of each of the terms, hundreds of stu- dents, many of them strangers, arrive to attend those semi- naries. At such times Mr. Moody literally haunts the depots, to meet them the moment they most need a friend, and give them that personal welcome which is more to many of them than half their education. When casual visitors, mistaking perhaps the only vehicle in waiting for a public conveyance, have taken possession for themselves and their luggage, the driver, circumstances permitting, has duly risen to the occasion. The fact, by the way, that he so es- capes recognition, illustrates a peculiarity. Mr. Moody, owing to a life-long resistance to the self-advertisement of the camera, is probably less known by photographs than any public man. 214 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. rendered more stupendous or more endur- ing service to his country or his time. No public man is less understood, especially by the thinking world, than D. L. Moody. It is not that it is unaware of his existence, or even that it does not respect him. But his line is so special, his work has lain so apart from what it conceives to be the rational channels of progress, that it has never felt called upon to take him seri- ously. So little, indeed, is the true stature of this man known to the mass of his generation, that the preliminary estimate recorded here must seem both extravagant and ill-considered. To whole sections of the community the mere word evangelical is a synonym for whatever is narrow, strained, superficial, and unreal. Assumed to be heir to all that is hectic in religion, and sensational in the methods of propa- gating it, men who, like Mr. Moody, earn this name are unconsciously credited with the worst traditions of their class. It will surprise many to know that Mr. Moody is as different from the supposed type of his class as light is from dark ; that while he would be the last to repudiate the name, indeed, while glorying more and more each day he lives in the work of the evangelist, he sees the weaknesses, the narrownesses, and the limitations of that order with as clear an eye as the most unsparing of its critics. But especially will it surprise many to know that while preaching to the masses has been the main outward work of Mr. Moody's life, he has, perhaps, more, and more varied, irons in the fire educational, philanthropic, religious than almost any living man ; and that vast as has been his public service as a preacher to the masses, it is probably true that his personal in- fluence and private character have done as much as his preaching to affect his day and generation. Discussion has abounded lately as to the standards by which a country shall judge its great men. And the verdict has been given unanimously on behalf of moral in- fluence. Whether estimated by the moral qualities which go to the making up of his personal character, or the extent to which he has impressed these upon whole com- munities of men on both sides of the Atlantic, there is, perhaps, no more truly great man living than D. L. Moody. By moral influences in this connection I do not mean in any restricted sense religious in- fluence. I mean the influence which, with whatever doctrinal accompaniments, or under whatever ecclesiastical flag, leads men to better lives and higher ideals ; the influence which makes for noble character, personal enthusiasm, social well-being, and national righteousness. I have never heard Mr. Moody defend any particular church ; I have never heard him quoted as a theo- logian. But I have met multitudes, and personally know, in large numbers, men and women of all churches and creeds, of many countries and ranks, from the poorest to the richest, and from the most ignorant to the most wise, upon whom he has placed an ineffaceable moral mark. There is no large town in Great Britain or THE MOODY HOMESTEAD AT NORTHFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS, WHERE D. L. MOODY WAS BORN. MR. MOODY : SOME IMPRESSIONS AND FACTS. MRS. BETSEY MOODY, MOTHER OF D. L. MOODY. Ireland, and I perceive there are few in America, where this man has not gone, where he has not lived for days, weeks, or months, and where he has not left behind him personal inspirations which live to this day ; inspirations which, from the moment of their birth, have not ceased to evidence themselves in practical ways in further- ing domestic happiness and peace ; in charities and philanthropies ; in social, re- ligious, and even municipal and national service. It is no part of the present object to give a detailed account of Mr. Moody's career, still less of his private life. The sacred character of much of his work also forbids allusion in this brief sketch to much that those more deeply interested in him, and in the message which he pro- claims, would like to have expressed or analyzed. All that is designed is to give the outside reader some few particulars to introduce him to, and interest him in, the man. BOYHOOD ON A NEW ENGLAND FARM. Fifty-seven years ago (February 5, 1837) Dwight Lyman Moody was born in the same New England valley where, as al- ready said, he lives to-day. Four years later his father died, leaving a widow, nine children the eldest but thirteen years of age a little home on the mountain side, and an acre or two of mortgaged land. How this widow shouldered her burden of poverty, debt, and care ; how she brought up her helpless flock, keeping all together in the old home, educating them, and sending them out into life stamped with her own indomitable courage and lofty principle, is one of those unrecorded his- tories whose page, when time unfolds it, will be found to contain the secret of nearly all that is greatest in the world's past. It is delightful to think that this mother has survived to see her labors crowned, and still lives, a venerable and beautiful figure, near the scene of her early 2l6 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. D. L. MOODY'S RESIDENCE AT NORTHFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS, LOOKING SOUTH. battles. There, in a sunny room of the little farm, she sits with faculties unim- paired, cherished by an entire community, and surrounded with all the love and grati- tude which her children and her children's children can heap upon her. One has only to look at the strong, wise face, or listen to the firm yet gentle tones, to behold the source of those qualities of sagacity, en- ergy, self-unconsciousness, and faith which have made the greatest of her sons what he is. Until his seventeenth year Mr. Moody's boyhood was spent at home. What a merry, adventurous, rough - and - tumble boyhood it must have been, how much fuller of escapade than of education, those who know Mr. Moody's irrepressible tem- perament and buoyant humor will not require the traditions of his Northfield schoolmates to recall. The village school was the only seminary he ever attended, and his course was constantly interrupted by the duties of the home and of the farm. He learned little about books, but much about horses, crops, and men ; his mind ran wild, and his memory stored up noth- ing but the alphabet of knowledge. But in these early country days his bodily form strengthened to iron, and he built up that constitution which in after life enabled him not only to do the work of ten, but to sustain without a break through four decades as arduous and exhausting work as was ever given to man to do. Innocent at this stage of " religion," he was known in the neighborhood simply as a raw lad, high-spirited, generous, daring, with a will of his own, and a certain audacious orig- inality which, added to the fiery energy of his disposition, foreboded a probable future either in the ranks of the incorrigibles or, if fate were kind, perchance of the im- mortals. Somewhere about his eighteenth year the turning point came. Vast as were the issues, the circumstances- were in no way eventful. Leaving school, the boy had set out for Boston, where he had an uncle, to push his fortune. His uncle, with some trepidation, offered him a place in his store ; but, seeing the kind of nature he had to deal with, laid down certain condi- tions which the astute man thought might at least minimize explosions. One of these conditions was, that the lad should attend church and Sunday school. These influences and it is interesting to note that they are simply the normal influences of a Christian society did their work. On the surface what appears is this : that he attended church to order, and listened with more or less attention ; that he went to Sunday school, and, when he recovered his breath, asked awkward questions of his teacher ; that, by and by, when he applied for membership in the congregation, he was summarily rejected, and told to wait six months until he learned a little more about it ; and, lastly, that said period of probation having expired, he was duly re- ceived into communion. The decisive in- strument during this period seems to have been his Sunday-school teacher, Mr. Ed- ward Kimball, whose influence upon his charge was not merely professional, but personal and direct. In private friendship he urged young Moody to the supreme decision, and Mr. Moody never ceased to express his gratitude to the layman who MR. MOODY : SOME IMPRESSIONS AND FACTS. 217 met him at the parting of the ways, and led his thoughts and energies in the direction in which they have done such service to the world. REMOVAL TO CHICAGO RARE GIFT FOR BUSINESS. The immediate fruit of this change was not specially apparent. The ambitions of the lad chiefly lay in the line of mercantile success ; and his next move was to find a larger and freer field for the abilities for business which he began to discover in him- self. This he found in the then new world of Chicago. Arriving there, with due introductions, he was soon engaged as salesman in a large and busy store, with possibilities of work and promotion which suited his taste. That he distinguished himself almost at once, goes without saying. In a year or two he was earning a salary considerable for one of his years, and his business capacity became speedily so proved that his future prosperity was as- sured. " He would never sit down in the store," writes one of his fellows, " to chat or read the paper, as the other clerks did when there were no customers ; but as soon as he had served one buyer, he was on the- lookout for another. If none appeared, he would start off to the hotels or depots, or walk the streets in search of one. He would sometimes stand on the sidewalk in front of his place of business, looking ea- gerly up and down for a man who had the appearance of a merchant from the country, and some of his fellow-clerks were accus- tomed laughingly to say : ' There is the spider again, watching for a fly.'" The taunt is sometimes levelled at relig- ion, that mainly those become religious teachers who are not fit for anything else. The charge is not worth answering ; but it is worth recording that in the case of Mr. Moody the very reverse is the case. If Mr. Moody had remained in business, there is almost no question that he would have been to-day one of the wealthiest men in the United States. His enterprise, his or- ganizing power, his knowledge and man- agement of men are admitted by friend and foe to be of the highest order ; while such is his generalship as proved, for ex- ample, in the great religious campaign in Great Britain in 1873-75 that, had he VIEW FROM THE PORCH OF MR. MOODY's HOUSE AT NORTHFIELD. 2l8 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. MR. MOODV'S HOUSE AT NORTHFIELD IN WINTER, LOOKING EAST. chosen a military career, he would have risen to the first rank among leaders. One of the merchant princes of Britain, the well-known director of one of the largest steamship companies in the world, assured the writer lately that in the course of a life-long commercial experience he had never met a man with more business capa- city and sheer executive ability than D. L. Moody. Let any one visit Northfield, with its noble piles of institutions, or study the history of the work conceived, directed, financed, and carried out on such a colossal scale by Mr. Moody during the time of the World's Fair at Chicago, and he will dis- cover for himself the size, the mere intel- lectual quality, creative power, and organ- izing skill of the brain behind them. Undiverted, however, from a deeper pur- pose even by the glamor of a successful business life, Mr. Moody's moral and relig- ious instincts led him almost from the day of his arrival in Chicago to devote what spare time he had to the work of the Church. He began by hiring four pews in the church to which he had attached him- self, and these he attempted to fill every Sunday with young men like himself. This work for a temperament like his soon proved too slow, and he sought fuller out- lets for his enthusiasm. Applying for the post of teacher in an obscure Sunday school, he was told by the superintendent that it was scholars he wanted, not teach- ers, but that he would let him try his hand if he could find the scholars. Next Sun- day the new candidate appeared with a procession of eighteen urchins, ragged, rowdy, and barefooted, on whom he straightway proceeded to operate. Hunt- ing up children and general recruiting for mission halls remained favorite pursuits for years to come, and his success was sig- nal. In all this class of work he was a natural adept, and his early experiences as a scout were full of adventure. This was probably the most picturesque period of Mr. Moody's life, and not the least useful. Now we find him tract-distributing in the slums; again, visit ing among the docks; and, finally, he started a mission of his own in one of the lowest haunts of the city. There he saw life in all its phases ; he learned what practical religion was ; he tried in succession every known method of Chris- tian work ; and when any of the conven- tional methods failed, invented new ones. Opposition, discouragement, failure, he met at every turn and in every form ; but one thing he never learned how to give up man or scheme he had once set his heart on. For years this guerilla work, hand to hand, and heart to heart, went on. He ran through the whole gamut of mission expe- rience, tackling the most difficult districts and the most adverse circumstances, doing all the odd jobs and menial work himself, never attempting much in the way of public speaking, but employing others whom he thought more fit ; making friends especially with children, and through them with their dissolute fathers and starving mothers. MR. MOODY : SOME IMPRESSIONS AND FACTS. 219 Great as was his success, the main reward achieved was to the worker himself. Here he was broken in, moulded, toned down, disciplined, in a dozen needed directions, and in this long and severe apprenticeship he unconsciously qualified himself to be- come the teacher of the Church in all methods of reaching the masses and win- ning men. He found out where his strength lay, and where his weakness ; he learned that saving men was no child's play^ but meant practically giving a life for a life ; that regeneration was no milk and water experience ; that, as Mrs. Browning says : " It takes a high-soul'd man To move the masses even to a cleaner sty." But for this personal discipline it is doubtful if Mr. Moody would ever have been heard of outside the purlieus of Chicago. The clergy, bewildered by his eccentric genius, and suspicious of his un- conventional ways, looked askance at him; and it was only as time mellowed his head- strong youth into a soberer, yet not less zealous, manhood that the solitary worker found influential friends to countenance and guide him. His activity, especially during the years of the war, when he served with almost superhuman devotion in the Christian Commission, led many of his fellow-laborers to know his worth ; and the war over, he became at last a recognized factor in' the religious life of Chicago. The mission which he had slowly built up was elevated to the rank of a church, with Mr. Moody, who had long since given up busi- ness in order to devote his entire time to, what lay nearer his heart, as its pastor, MR. MOODY'S SLOW DEVELOPMENT AS A PUBLIC SPEAKER. As a public speaker up to this time Mr. Moody was the reverse of celebrated. When he first attempted speaking, in Boston, he was promptly told to hold his tongue, and further efforts in Chicago were not less dis- couraging. " He had never heard," writes Mr. Daniells, in his well-known biography, " of Talleyrand's famous doctrine, that speech is useful for concealing one's thoughts. Like Antony, he only spoke ' right on.' There was frequently a pun- gency in his exhortation which his brethren did not altogether relish. Sometimes in his prayers he would express opinions to the Lord concerning them which were by no means flattering ; and it was not long before he received the same fatherly advice which had been given him at Boston to the effect that he should keep his four pews full of young men, and leave the speaking and praying to those who could do it better." Undaunted by such pleasantries, Mr. Moody did, on occasion, continue to use his tongue no doubt much ashamed of himself. He spoke not because he thought DINING-ROOM, MR. MOODY's HOUSE AT NORTHFIELD. 22O HUMAN DOCUMENTS. he could speak, but because he could not be silent. The ragged children whom he gathered round him in the empty saloon near the North Side Market, had to be talked, to somehow, and among such audi- ences, with neither premeditation nor prep- aration, he laid the foundations of that amazingly direct anecdotal style and ex- plosive delivery which became such a splendid instrument of his future service. Training for the public platform, this man, who has done more platform work than any man of hi-s generation, had none. He knew only two books, the Bible and Human Nat- ure. Out of these he spoke; and because both are books of life, his words were afire with life ; and the people to whom he spoke, being real people, listened and understood. When Mr. Moody first began to be in de- mand on public platforms, it was not because he could speak. It was his experi- ence that was wanted, not his eloquence. As a practical man in work among the masses, his advice and enthusiasm were called for at Sunday school and other con- ventions, and he soon became known in this connection throughout the surrounding States. It was at one of these conventions that he had the good fortune to meet Mr. Ira D. Sankey, whose name must ever be associated with his, and who henceforth shared his labors at home and abroad, and contributed, in ways the value of which it is impossible to exaggerate, to the success of his after work. Were one asked what, on the human side, were the effect- ive ingredients in Mr. Moody's ser- mons, one would find the answer dif- ficult. Probably the foremost is the tre- mendous conviction with which they are uttered. Next to that is their point and direction. Every blow is straightfrom the shoulder, and every stroke tells. Whatever canons they violate, what- ever fault the critics may find with their art, their rhetoric, or even with their theology, as appeals to the people they do their work, and with extraordinary power. If eloquence is measured by its effects upon an audience, and not by its bal- anced sentences and cumulative periods, then here is eloquence of the highest order. In sheer persuasiveness Mr. Moody has few equals, and rugged as his preaching may seem to some, there is in it a pathos of a quality which few orators have ever reached, an appealing tenderness which not only wholly redeems it, but raises it, not unseldom almost to sublimity. No report can do the faintest justice to this or to the other most characteristic qualities of his public speech, but here is a specimen taken almost at ran- dom: "I can imagine when Christ said to the little band around Him, ' Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel,' Peter said, ' Lord, do you really mean that we are to go back to Jerusalem and preach the gos- pel to those men that murdered you?' ' Yes,' said Christ, ' go, hunt up that man that spat in my face, tell him he may have a seat in my kingdom yet. Yes, Peter, go find that man that made that cruel crown of thorns and placed it on my brow, and tell him I will have a crown ready for him when he comes into my kingdom, and there will be no thorns in it. Hunt up that man that took a reed and brought it down over the cruel thorns, driving them into my brow, and tell him I will put a sceptre in his hand, and he shall rule over the nations of the earth, if he will accept salvation. Search for the man that drove the spear into my side, and tell him there is a nearer way to my heart than that. Tell him I forgive MR. MOODV'S STUDY. f 222 HUMAN DOCUMENTS, him freely, and that he can be saved if he will accept salvation as a gift.' " 1 'ell him there is a nearer way to my heart than that prepared or impromptu, what dramatist could surpass the touch ? MR. MOODV'S MANNER OF PREPARING A SERMON. His method of sermon-making is original. In reality his sermons are never made, they are always still in the making. Suppose the subject is Paul : he takes a monstrous envelope capable of holding some hundreds of slips of paper, labels it " Paul," and slow- ly stocks it with original notes, cuttings from papers, extracts from books, illustra- tions, scraps of all kinds, nearly or remote- ly referring to the subject. After accumu- lating these, it may be for years, he wades novelty both in the subject matter and in the arrangement, for the particular seventy varies with each time of delivery. No greater mistake could be made than to im- agine that Mr. Moody does not study for his sermons. On the contrary he is always studying. When in the evangelistic field, the batch of envelopes, bursting with fat- ness, appears the moment breakfast is over ; and the stranger who enters at almost any time of the day, except at the hours of platform work, will find him with his litter of notes, either stuffing himself or his port- folios with the new " points" he has picked up through the day. His search for these " points," and especially for light upon texts, Bible ideas, or characters, is cease- less, and he has an eye like an eagle for anything really good. Possessing a con- siderable library, he browses over it when at home ; but his books are chiefly HOTEL NORTHFIELD: OCCUPIED FROM OCTOBER TO MARCH BY THE NORTHFIELD TRAINING SCHOOL. through the mass, selects a number of the most striking points, arranges them, and, finally, makes a few jottings in a large hand, and these he carries with him to the platform. The process of looking through the whole envelope is repeated each time the sermon is preached. Partly on this account, and partly because in delivery he forgets some points, or disproportionately amplifies others, no two sermons are ever exactly the same. By this method also a matter of much more importance the de- livery is always fresh to himself. Thus, to make this clearer, suppose that after a thorough sifting, one hundred eligible points remain in the envelope. Every time the sermon is preached, these hundred are overhauled. But no single sermon, by a mere limitation of time, can contain, say, more than seventy. Hence, though the general scheme is the same, there is always men, and no student ever read the ever- open page more diligently, more intelli- gently, or to more immediate practical purpose. To Mr. Moody himself, it has always been a standing marvel that people should come to hear him. He honestly believes that ten thousand sermons are made every week, in obscure towns, and by unknown men, vastly better than anything he can do. All he knows about his own productions is that somehow they achieve the result in- tended. No man is more willing to stand aside and let others speak. His search for men to whom the people will listen, for men who, whatever the meagreness of their message, can yet hold an audience, has been life-long, and whenever and wher- ever he finds such men he instantly seeks to employ them. The word jealousy he has never heard. At one of his own con- MR. MOODY: SOME IMPRESSIONS AND FACTS. 223 ventions at Northfield, he has been known to keep silent but for the exercise of the duties of chairman during almost the whole ten days' sederunt, while medi- ocre men I speak comparatively, not disrespectfully were pushed to the front. It is at such conferences, by the way, no matter in what part of the world they are held, that one discovers Mr. Moody 's size. He gathers round him the best men he can find, and very good men most of them are ; but when one comes away it is always Mr. Moody that one remembers. It is he who leaves the impress upon us ; his word and spirit live ; the rest of us are forgotten and forget one another. It is the same story when on the evangelis- tic round. In every city the prominent workers in that field for leagues around are all in evidence. They crowd round the central figure like bees ; you can review the whole army at once. And it is no dis- paragement to the others to say what each probably feels for himself that so high is the stature and commanding per- sonality of Mr. Moody that there seems to be but one real man among them, one char- acter untarnished by intolerance or petti- ness, pretentiousness, or self-seeking. The man who should judge Mr. Moody by the rest of us who support his cause would do a great injustice. He makes mistakes like other men ; but in largeness of heart, in breadth of view, in single-eyedness and humility, in teachableness and self-obliter- ation, in sheer goodness and love, none can stand beside him. MR. MOODY S FIRST VISIT TO GREAT BRITAIN. After the early Chicago days the most remarkable episode in Mr. Moody's career was his preaching tour in Great Britain. The burning down of his church in Chicago severed the tie which bound him to the city, and though he still retained a con- nection with it, his ministry henceforth belonged to the world. Leaving his mark on Chicago, in many directions on missions, churches, and, not least, on the Young Men's Christian Association and already famous in the West for his success in evangelical work, he arrived in England, with his colleague Mr. Sankey, in June, 1873. The opening of their work there was not auspicious. Two of the friends who had invited them had died, and the strangers had an uphill fight. No one had heard of them; the clergy received them coldly ; Mr. Moody's so-called American- isms prejudiced the super-refined against him; the organ and the solos of Mr. Sankey were an innovation sufficient to ruin almost any cause. For some time the prospect was bleak enough. In the town of New- castle finally some faint show of public in- terest was awakened. One or two earnest ministers in Edinburgh went to see for themselves. On returning they reported cautiously, but on the whole favorably, to their brethren. The immediate result was an invitation to visit the capital of Scot- land ; and the final result was the starting of a religious movement, quiet, deep, and THE NORTHFIELD AUDITORIUM: COMPLETED DURING THE PRESENT YEAR, AND THE NEWEST IN THE GROUP OF SEMINARY BUILDINGS. IT HAS A SKATING CAPACITY OF THREE THOUSAND. 22 4 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. lasting, which moved the country from shore to shore, spread to England, Wales, and Ireland, and reached a climax two years later in London itself. This is not the place, as already said, to enter either into criticism or into details of such a work. Like all popular movements, it had its mistakes, its exaggerations, even its grave dangers ; but these were probably never less in any equally wide-spread move- ment of history, nor was the balance of good upon the whole ever greater, more solid, or more enduring. People who understand by a religious movement only a promiscuous carnival of hysterical natures, beginning in excitement and ending in moral exhaustion and fanaticism, will probably be assured in vain that whatever were the lasting charac- teristics of this movement, these were not. That such elements were wholly absent may not be asserted ; human nature is human nature ; but always the first to fight them, on the rare occasions when they appeared, was Mr. Moody himself. He, above all popular preachers, worked for solid results. Even the mere harvest- ing his own special department was a secondary thing to him compared with the garnering of the fruits by the Church and their subsequent growth and further fruit- fulness. It was the writer's privilege as a humble camp-follower to follow the for- tunes of this campaign personally from town to town, and from city to city, throughout the three kingdoms, for over a year. And time has only deepened the impression not only of the magnitude of the results im- mediately secured, but equally of the per- manence of the after effects upon every field of social, philanthropic, and religious activity. It is not too much to say that Scotland one can speak with less knowl- edge of England and Ireland would not have been the same to-day but for the visit of Mr. Moody and Mr. Sankey ; and that so far-reaching was, and is, the in- fluence of their work, that any one who knows the inner religious history of the country must regard this time as nothing short of a national epoch. If this is a specimen of what has been effected even in less degree elsewhere, it represents a fact of commanding importance. Those who can speak with authority of the long series of campaigns which succeeded this in America, testify in many cases with almost equal assurance of the results achieved both throughout the United States and Canada. After his return from Great Britain, in 1875, Mr. Moody made his home at North- field, his house in Chicago having beer* swept away by the fire. And from this- point onward his activity assumed a new and extraordinary development. Continu- ing his evangelistic, work in America, and even on one occasion revisiting England,, he spent his intervals of repose in planning; and founding the great educational institu- tions of which Northfield is now the centre.. MR. MOODY S SCHOOLS AT NORTHFIELD. There is no stronger proof of Mr. Moody'sbreadthof mind than thatheshould have inaugurated this work. For an evan- gelist seriously to concern himself with such, matters is unusual; but that the greatest, evangelist of his day, not when his powers, were failing, but in the prime of life, and in the zenith of his success, should divert so great a measure of his strength into- educational channels, is a phenomenal cir- cumstance. The explanation is manifold. No man sees so much slip-shod, unsatisfac- tory and half-done work as the evangelist;, no man so learns the worth of solidity, the necessity for a firm basis for religion to work upon, the importance to the Kingdom of God of men who "weigh." The value, above all things, of character, of the sound mind and disciplined judgment, are borne in upon him every day he lives. Converts without these are weak-kneed and useless ; Christian workers inefficient, if not danger- ous. Mr. Moody saw that the object of Christianity was to make good men and good women ; good men and good women who would serve their God and their country not only with all their heart, but with all their mind and all their strength. Hence he would found institutions for turn- ing out such characters. His pupils should be committed to nothing as regards a future- profession. They might become ministers- or missionaries, evangelists or teachers, farmers or politicians, business men or lawyers. All that he would secure would be that they should have a chance, a chance- of becoming useful, educated, God-fearing men. A favorite aphorism with him is, that "it is better to set ten men to work than to do the work of ten men." His institutions- were founded to equip other men to work, not in the precise line, but in the same- broad interest as himself. He himself had had the scantiest equipment for his life- work, and he daily lamented though per- haps no one else ever did the deficiency. In his journeys he constantly met young; men and young women of earnest spirit, f 226 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. with circumstances against them, who were in danger of being lost to themselves and to the community. These especially it was his desire to help, and afford a chance in life. "The motive," says the "Official Hand- book," " presented for the pursuit of an education is the power it confers for Chris- tian life and usefulness, not the means it affords to social distinction, or the grati- fication of selfish ambition. It is designed to combine, with other instruction, an un- usual amount of instruction in the Bible, and it is intended that all the training given shall exhibit a thoroughly Christian spirit. . . . No constraint is placed on the religious views of any one. . . . The chief emphasis of the instruction given is placed upon the life." The plan, of course, developed by de- grees, but once resolved upon, the be- ginning was made with characteristic decision ; for the years other men spend in criticising a project, Mr. Moody spends in executing it. One day in his own house, talking with Mr. H. N. F. Marshall about the advisability of immediately securing a piece of property some sixteen acres close to his door his friend expressed his assent. The words were scarcely uttered when the owner of the land was seen walk- ing along the road. He was invited in, the price fixed, and, to the astonishment of the owner, the papers made out on the spot. Next winter a second lot was bought, the building of a seminary for female stu- dents commenced, and at the present mo- ment the land in connection with this one institution amounts to over two hundred and seventy acres. The current expense of this one school per annum is over fifty- one thousand dollars, thirty thousand dol- lars of which comes from the students themselves ; and the existing endowment, the most of which, however, is not yet available, reaches one hundred and four thousand dollars. Dotted over the noble campus thus secured, and clustered es- pecially near Mr. Moody's home, stand ten spacious buildings and a number of smaller size, all connected with the Ladies' Sem- inary. The education, up to the standard aimed at, is of first-rate quality, and pre- pares students for entrance into Wellesley and other institutions of similar high rank. Four miles distant from the Ladies' Sem- inary, on the rising ground on the opposite side of the river, are the no less imposing buildings of the Mount Hermon School for Young Men. Conceived earlier than the former, but carried out later, this institu- tion is similar in character, though many of the details are different. Its three or four hundred students are housed in ten fine buildings, with a score of smaller ones. Surrounding the whole is a great farm of two hundred and seventy acres, farmed by the pupils themselves. This economic addition to the educational training of the students is an inspiration of Mr. Moody's. Nearly every pupil is required to do from an hour and a half to two hours and a half of farm or industrial work each day, and much of the domestic work is similarly distributed. The lads work on the roads, in the fields, in the woods ; in the refectory, laundry, and kitchen ; they take charge of the horses, the cattle, the hogs, and the hens for the advantage of all which the sceptical may be referred to Mr. Ruskin. Once or twice a year nearly everyone's work is changed ; the indoor lads go out, the farm lads come in. Those who before entering the school had already learned trades, have the opportunity of pursuing them in leisure hours, and though the industrial department is strongly sub- ordinated to the educational, many in this way help to pay the fee of one hun- dred dollars exacted annually from each pupil, which pays for tuition, board, rooms, etc.* THE LARGE PROFITS OF THE MOODY AND SANKEY HYMN-BOOK. The mention of this fee which, it may be said in passing, only covers half the cost suggests the question as to how the vast expenses of these and other institu- tions, such as the new Bible Institute in Chicago, and the Bible, sewing and cook- ing school into which the Northfield Hotel is converted in winter, are defrayed. The buildings themselves and the land have been largely the gift of friends, but much of the cost of maintenance is paid out of Mr. Moody's own pocket. The fact that Mr. Moody has a pocket has been largely dwelt upon by his enemies, and the amount and source of its contents are subjects of curious speculation. I shall suppose the critic to be honest, and divulge to him a fact which the world has been slow to learn the secret of Mr. Moody's pocket. It is, briefly, that Mr. Moody is the owner of one of the most paying literary proper- ties in existence. It is the hymn-book * An extensive literature, up to date and fully describing all the Northfield institutions, splendidly edited by Mr. Henry W. Rankin. one of Mr. Moody's most wise and accom- plished coadjutors, may be had at Revell's, 112 Fifth Avenue, New York. MR. MOODY: SOME IMPRESSIONS AND FACTS. 227 which, first used at his meetings in con- junction with Mr. Sankey, whose genius created it, is now in universal use through- out the civilized world. Twenty years ago he offered it for nothing to a dozen differ- ent publishers, but none of them would look at it. Failing to find a publisher, Mr. Moody, with almost the last few dollars he possessed, had it printed in London in 1873. The copyright stood in his name ; any loss that might have been suffered was his ; and to any gain, by all the laws of busi- ness, he was justly entitled. The success, slow at first, presently became gigantic. The two evangelists saw a fortune in their hymn-book. But they saw something which was more vital to them than a fortune that the busybody and the evil tongue would accuse them, if they but touched one cent of it, of preaching the gospel for gain. What did they do ? They refused to touch it literally even to touch it. The royalty was handed direct from the publishers to a committee of well- known business men in London, who dis- tributed it to various charities. When the evangelists left London, a similar commit- tee, with Mr. W. E. Dodge at its head, was formed in New York. For many years this committee faithfully disbursed the trust, and finally handed over its responsibility to a committee of no less weight and honor the trustees of the Northfield seminaries, to be used henceforth in their behalf. Such is the history of Mr. Moody's pocket. In the year 1889 Mr. Moody broke out in a new place. Not content with having founded two great schools at Northfield, he turned his attention to Chicago, and inaugurated there one of his most success- ful enterprises the Bible Institute. This scheme grew out of many years' thought. The general idea was to equip lay workers men and women for work among the poor, the outcast, the churchless, and the illiterate. In every centre of population there is a call for such help. The demand for city missionaries, Bible readers, evan- gelists, superintendents of Christian and philanthropic institutions, is unlimited. In the foreign field it is equally claimant. Mr. Moody saw that aU over the country were those who, with a little special training, might become effective workers in these various spheres some whose early oppor- tunities had been neglected ; some who were too old or too poor to go to college ; and others who, half their time, had to earn their living. To meet such workers and such work the Institute was conceived. The heart of Chicago, both morally and physically, offered a suitable site ; and here, adjoining the Chicago Avenue Church, a preliminary purchase cf land was made at a cost of fifty-five thousand dollars. On part of this land, for a similar sum, a three- storied building was put up to accommo- date male students, while three houses, already standing on the property, were transformed into a ladies' department. No sooner were the doors opened than some ninety men and fifty women began work. So immediate was the response that all the available accommodation was used up, and important enlargements have had to be made since. The mornings at the In- stitute are largely given up to Bible study and music, the afternoons to private study and visitation, and the evenings to evan- gelistic work. In the second year of its existence no fewer than two hundred and forty-eight students were on the roll-book. In addition to private study, these con- ducted over three thousand meetings, large and small, in the city and neighborhood, paid ten thousand visits to the homes of the poor, and " called in " at more than a thousand saloons. As to the ultimate destination of the workers, the statistics for this same year record the following : At work in India are three, one man and two women ; in China, three men and one woman, with four more (sexes equally divided) waiting appointment there; in Africa, two men and two women, with two men and one woman waiting appointment ; in Turkey, one man and five women ; in South America, one man and one woman ; in Bulgaria, Persia, Burma, and Japan, one woman to each ; among the North American Indians, three women and one man. In the home field, in America, are thirty-seven men and nine women employed in evangelistic work, thirty-one in pastoral work (including many ministers who had come for further study), and twenty-nine in other schools and colleges. Sunday- school missions employ five men ; home missions, two ; the Young Men's Christian Association, seven ; the Young Women's Christian Association, two. Five men and one woman are "singing evangelists." Several have positions in charitable in- stitutions, others are evangelists, and twenty are teachers. This is a pretty fair record for a two years old institute. Not quite on the same lines, but with certain features in common, is still a fourth institution founded by the evangelist at Northfield about the same time. This is, perhaps, one of his most original develop- 228 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. merits the Northfield Training School for Women. In his own work at Chicago, and in his evangelistic rounds among the churches, he had learned to appreciate the exceptional value of women in ministering to the poor. He saw, however, that women of the right stamp were not always to be found where they were needed most, and in many cases where they were to be found, their work was marred by inexperience and lack of training. He determined, therefore, to start a novel species of train- ing school, which city churches and mission fields could draw upon, not for highly edu- cated missionaries, but for Christian women who had undergone a measure of special instruction, especially in Bible knowledge and domestic economy the latter being the special feature. The initial obstacle of a building in which to start his institute was no difficulty to Mr. Moody. Among the many great buildings of Northfield there was one which, every winter, was an eye- sore to him. It was the Northfield Hotel, and it was an eye-sore because it was empty. After the busy season in summer, it was shut up from October till the end of March, and Mr. Moody resolved that he would turn its halls into lecture rooms, its bedrooms into dormitories, stock the first with teachers and the second with schol- ars, and start the work of the Training School as soon as the last guest was off the premises. In October, 1890, the first term opened. Six instructors were provided, and fifty- six students took up residence at once. Next year the numbers were almost doub- led, and the hotel college to-day is in a fair way to become a large and important institution. In addition to systematic Bible study, which forms the backbone" of the curriculum, the pupils are taught those branches of domestic economy which are most likely to be useful in their work among the homes of the poor. Much stress is laid upon cooking, especially the preparation of foods for the sick, and a distinct department is also devoted to dressmaking. An objection was raised at the outset that the students, during their term of residence, were isolated from the active Christian work in which their lives were to be spent, and that hence the most important part of their training must be merely theoretical. But this difficulty has solved itself. Though not contemplated at the founding of the school, the living energy and enthusiasm of the students have sought their own outlets ; and now, all through the winter, flying columns may be found scouring the country-side in all directions, visiting the homesteads, and holding services in hamlets, cottages, and schoolhouses. MR. MOODY UNDENOMINATIONAL AND UNSECTARIAN IN HIS WORKS. Like all Mr. Moody's institutions, the winter Training Home is undenomina- tional and unsectarian. It is a peculiarity of Northfield, that every door is open not only to the Church Universal, but to the world. Every State in the Union is repre- sented among the students of his two grea< colleges, and almost every nation and race On the college books are, or have been Africans, Armenians, Turks, Syrians, Aus- trians, Hungarians, Canadians, Danes, Dutch, English, French, German, Indian, Irish, Japanese, Chinese, Norwegians, Russians, Scotch, Swedish, Alaskans, and Bulgarians. These include every type of Christianity, members of every Christian denomination, and disciples of every Chris- tian creed. Twenty-two denominations, at least, have shared the hospitality of the schools. This, for a religious educational institution, is itself a liberal education ; and that Mr. Moody should not only have permitted, but encouraged, this cosmopoli- tan and unsectarian character, is a witness at once to his sagacity and to his breadth. With everything in his special career, in his habitual environment, and in the tradi- tions of his special work, to make him intolerant, Mr. Moody's sympathies have only broadened with time. Some years ago the Roman Catholics in Northfield determined to build a church. They went round the township collecting subscript ions, and by and by approached Mr. Moody's door. How did he receive them ? The narrower evangelical would have shut the door in their faces, or opened it only to give them a lecture on the blasphemies of the Pope or the iniquities of the Scarlet Woman. Mr. Moody gave them one of the handsomest subscriptions on their list. Not content with that, when their little chapel was finished, he presented them with an organ. " Why," he exclaimed, when some one challenged the action, " if they are Roman Catholics, it is better they should be good Roman Catholics than bad. It is surely better to have a Catholic Church than none ; and as for the organ, if they are to have music in their church, it is better to have good music. Besides," he added, " these are my own townspeople. If ever I am to be of the least use to them, MR. MOODY : SOME IMPRESSIONS AND FACTS. 229 surely I must help them." What the kindly feeling did for them, it is difficult to say ; but what it did for Mr. Moody, is matter of local history. For, a short time after, it was rumored that he was going to build a church, and the site was pointed out by the villagers a rocky knoll close by the present hotel. One day Mr. Moody found the summit of this knoll covered with great piles of stones. The Roman Catholics had taken their teams up the mountain, and brought down, as a return present, enough building-stone to-form the foundations of his church. Mr. Moody's relations with the North- field people and with all the people for miles and miles around are of the same type. So far from being without honor in his own country, it is there he is honored most. This fact and nothing more truly decisive of character can be said may be verified even by the stranger on the cars. The nearer he approaches Northfield, the more thorough and genuine will he find the appreciation of Mr. Moody ; and when he passes under Mr. Moody's own roof, he will find it truest, surest, and most affec- tionate of all. It is forbidden here to invade the privacy of Mr. Moody's home. Suffice it to say that no more perfect home- life exists in the world, and that one only begins to know the greatness, the tender- ness, and the simple beauty of this man's character when one sees him at his own fireside. One evidence of this greatness it is difficult to omit recording. If you were to ask Mr. Moody which it would never occur to you to do what, apart from the inspirations of his personal faith, was the secret of his success, of his happi- ness and usefulness in life, he would assur- edly answer, "Mrs. Moody." THE WIDE REACH OF MR. MOODY'S LABORS. When one has recorded the rise and progress of the four institutions which have been named, one but stands on the thresh- old of the history of the tangible memo- rials of Mr. Moody's career. To realize even partially the intangible results of his life, is not within the compass of man's power ; but even the tangible results the results which have definite visible out- come, which are capable of statistical ex- pression, which can be seen in action in different parts of the world to-day it would tax a diligent historian to tabulate. The sympathies and activities of men like D. L. Moody are supposed by many to be wasted on the empty air. It will surprise them to be told that he is probably respon- sible for more actual stone and lime than almost any man in the world. There is scarcely a great city in England where he has not left behind him some visible memorial. His progress through Great Britain and Ireland, now nearly twenty years ago, is marked to-day by halls, churches, institutes, and other buildings which owe their existence directly to his influence. In the capital qf each of these countries in London, Edinburgh, and Dublin great buildings stand to-day which, but for him, had had no existence. In the city where these words are written, at least three important institutions, each the centre of much work and of a multi- tude of workers, Christian philanthropy owes to him. Young Men's Christian As- sociations all over the land have been housed, and in many cases sumptuously housed, not only largely by his initiative, but by his personal actions in raising funds. Mr. Moody is the most magnificent beggar Great Britain has ever known. He will talk over a millionnaire in less time than it takes other men to apologize for intruding upon his time. His gift for ex- tracting money amounts to genius. The hard, the sordid, the miserly, positively melt before him. But his power to deal with refractory ones is not the best of it. His supreme success is with the already liberal, with those who give, or think they give, handsomely already. These he some- how convinces that their givings are noth- ing at all ; and there are multitudes of rich men in the world who would confess that Mr. Moody inaugurated for them, and for their churches and cities, the day of large subscriptions. The process by which he works is, of course, a secret, but one half of it probably depends upon two things. In the first place, his appeals are wholly for others ; for places I am speak- ing of England in which he would never set foot again; for causes in which he had no personal stake. In the second place, he always knew the right moment to strike. HOW MR. MOODY ORGANIZED A GREAT CHARITY IN TEN MINUTES. On one occasion, to recall an illustration of the last he had convened a great con- ference in Liverpool. The theme for dis- cussion was a favorite one " How to reach the masses." One of the speakers, the Rev. Charles Garrett, in a powerful speech, expressed his conviction that the chief want of the masses in Liverpool was the HUMAN DOCUMENTS. institution of cheap houses of refreshment to counteract the saloons. When he had finished, Mr. Moody called upon him to speak for ten minutes more. That ten minutes might almost be said to have been a crisis in the social history of Liverpool. Mr. Moody spent it in whispered conversa- tion with gentlemen on the platform. No sooner was the speaker done than Mr. Moody sprang to his feet and announced that a company had been formed to carry out the objects Mr. Garrett had advocated; that various gentlemen, whom he named (Mr. Alexander Balfour, Mr. Samuel Smith, M. P., Mr. Lockhart, and others), had each taken one thousand shares of five dollars each, and that the subscription list would be open till the end of the meeting. The capital was gathered almost before the ad- journment, and a company floated under the name of the " British Workman Com- pany, Limited," which has not only worked a small revolution in Liverpool, but what was not contemplated or wished for, ex- cept as an index of healthy business paid a handsome dividend to the shareholders. For twenty years this company has gone on increasing ; its ramifications are in every quarter of the city ; it has returned ten per cent, throughout the whole period, except for one (strike) year, when it re- turned seven ; and, above all, it has been copied by cities and towns innumerable all over Great Britain. To Mr. Garrett, who unconsciously set the ball a-rolling, the personal consequences were as curious as they were unexpected. "You must take charge of this thing," said Mr. Moody to him, " or at least you must keep your eye on it." " That cannot be," was the reply. " I am a Wesleyan ; my three years in Liver- pool have expired ; I must pass to another circuit." "No," said Mr. Moody, "you must stay here." Mr. Garrett assured him it was quite impossible, the Methodist Con- ference made no exceptions. But Mr. Moody would not be beaten. He got up a petition to the Conference. It was granted an almost unheard-of thing and Mr. Garrett remains in his Liverpool church to this day. This last incident proves at least one thing that Mr. Moody's audacity is at least equalled by his influence. THE CHARACTER OF MR. MOODY S GREAT- NESS. That I have not told one tithe that is due to the subject of this sketch, I pain- fully realize now that my space has nar- rowed to its close. It is of small signifi- cance that one should make out this or the other man to be numbered among the world's great. But it is of importance to national ideals, that standards of worthi- ness should be truly drawn, and, when those who answer to them in real life ap- pear, that they should be held up for the world's instruction. Mr. .Moody himself has never asked for justice, and never for homage. The criticism which sours, and the adulation an adulation at epochs in his life amounting to worship which spoils, have left him alike untouched. The way he turned aside from applause in England struck multitudes with wonder. To be courted was to him not merely a thing to be discouraged on general prin- ciples ; it simply made him miserable. At the close of a great meeting, when crowds, not of the base, but of the worthy, thronged the platform to press his hand, somehow he had always disappeared. When they followed him to his hotel, its doors were barred. When they wrote him, as they did in thousands, they got no re- sponse. This man would not be praised. Yet, partly for this very reason, those who love him love to praise him. And I may as well confess what has induced me, against keen personal dislike to all that is personal, to write these articles. One day, travelling in America last summer, a high dignitary of the Church in my presence made a contemptuous reference to Mr. Moody. A score of times in my life I have sailed in on such occasions, and at least taught the detractor some facts. On this occasion, with due humility, I asked the speaker if he had ever met him ? He had not ; and the reply elicited that the name which he had used so lightly was to him no more than an echo. I determined that, time being then denied, I would take the first opportunity of bringing that echo nearer him. It is for him these words were written. WHITTIER'S OPINION OF MR. MOODY. In the Life of W T hittier, just published, the patronizing reference to Mr. Moody but too plainly confirms the statement with which the first article opened that few men were less known to their con- temporaries. " Moody and Sankey," writes the poet, " are busy in Boston. The papers give the discourses of Mr. Moody, which seem rather commonplace and poor, but the man is in earnest. ... I hope he will do MR, MOODY: SOME IMPRESSIONS AND FACTS. good, and believe that he will reach and move some who could not be touched by James Freeman Clarke or Phillips Brooks. I cannot accept his theology, or part of it at least, and his methods are not to my taste. But if he can make the drunkard, the gambler, and the debauchee into de- cent men, and make the lot of their weari- ful wives and children less bitter, I bid him God-speed." I have called these words patronizing, but the expression should be withdrawn. Whittier was incapable of that. They are broad, large-hearted, even kind. But they are not the right words. They are the stereotyped charities which sweet natures apply to anything not absolutely harmful, and contain no more impression of the tremendous intellectual and moral force of the man behind than if the reference were to the obscurest Salvation Army zealot. I shall not indorse, for it could only give offence, the remark of a certain author of world-wide repute when he read the words : " Moody ! Why, he could have put half a dozen Whittiers in his pocket, and they would never have been noticed ; " but I shall indorse, and with hearty good-will, a judgment which he further added. "I have always held," he said and he is a man who has met every great contempo- rary thinker from Carlyle downward " that in sheer brain-size, in the mere raw material of intellect, Moody stands among the first three or four great men I have ever known." I believe Great Britain is credited with having " discovered " Mr. Moody. It may or may not be ; but if it be, it was men of the quality and the ex- perience of my friend who made the dis- covery ; and that so many distinguished men in America have failed to appreciate him is a circumstance which has only one explanation that they have never had the opportunity. An American estimate, nevertheless, meets my eye as I lay down the pen, which I gladly plead space for, as it proves that in Mr. Moody's own country there are not wanting those who discern how much he stands for. They are the notes, slightly condensed, of one whose opportunities for judging of his life and work have been ex- ceptionally wide. In his opinion : 1. " No other living man has done so much directly in the way of uniting man to God, and in restoring men to their true centre. 2. " No other living man has done so much to unite man with man, to break down personal grudges and ecclesiastical barriers, bringing into united worship and harmonious cooperation men of diverse views and dispositions. 3. " No other living man has set so many other people to work, and developed, by awakening the sense of responsibility, latent talents and powers which would otherwise have lain dormant. 4. " No other living man, by precept and example, has so vindicated the rights, privileges, and duties of laymen. 5. " No other living man has raised more money for other people's enterprises. 6. " No other evangelist has kept him- self so aloof from fads, religious or other- wise ; from isms, from special reforms, from- running specific doctrines, or attack- ing specific sins ; has so concentrated his life upon the one supreme endeavor." If one-fourth of this be true, it is a unique and noble record ; if all be true, which of us is worthy even to charac- terize it ? PORTRAITS OF PROFESSOR HENRY DRUMMONJ3 Born at Stirling, Scotland, 1851. WHEN' A FRESHMAN IN COLLEGE. FROM A PHOTON. ,. . By CROWE AND RODGERS, STIRLING. AS A TRAVELLER IN CENTRAL AFRICA. AGE 35 OR 36. PORTRAITS OF PROFESSOR HENRY DRUMMOND. 233 AGE 37. 1888. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY I.AFAVETTE, DUBLIN. AGE 39. 1 8 IN 1893. FROM A SNAP SHOT IN QUEBEC. 234 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. PORTRAITS OF GEORGE W. CABLE. Boni at New Orleans October 12, 1844. AGE 9. 1853. AGE ig. 1863. AGE 24. 1808. 1882. ''DOCTOR SEVIER." 236 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. AGE 40. lS8}. '' BONAVENTURE. j MR. CABLE IN 1892. PORTRAITS OF ALPHONSE DAUDET. AGE 21, PARIS, l86l. " LETTERS FROM MY MILL. AGE 30, PARIS, 1870. AGE 35, PARIS, 1875. " FROMONT JEUNE ET RISLER AINE 1 ." HUMAN DOCUMENTS. DAUDET AT THE PRESENT DAY. ALPHONSE DAUDET AT HOME. HIS OWN A'C COUNT OF HIS LIFE AND WORK REPORTED BY R. H. SlIKRARD. 1 CHOUGH now grown wealthy, and one of the first personages in Parisian society, being the most welcome guest in such exclusive drawing-rooms as that of the Princess Mathilde, the simple and good- hearted Alphonse Daudet is the most acces- sible man in Paris. I don't believe that any one is ever turned away from his door. He lives in the fashionable Faubourg St. Germain quarter, on the fourth floor of a house in the Rue de Bellechasse which is reputed to possess the most elegant stair- case of any apartment house in Paris. His apartment is simply furnished, and is in great contrast to that of Zola or of Dumas. Still there are not wanting for its decora- tion objects of art, and especially may be mentioned some fine old oak furniture. To the right of the table on which he writes is a Normandy farmhouse cupboard of carved oak which is a treasure in itself. The table, like that of many other successful men of letters in Paris, is a very large and highly ornamental one, reminding one of an altar ; while the chair which is set against it, though less throne-like than that of Emile Zola, is stately and decorative. Daudet's study is the most comfortable room in the house. The three windows look out on a pleasant garden, and, as they face the south,' the sun streams through the red-embroid- ered lace curtains nearly all the day. The doors are draped with Oriental portieres; a heavy carpet covers the floor, and the furniture, apart from the work-table and chair, is for comfort and not for show. Daudet's favorite place, when not writing, is on a little sofa which stands by the fire- place. When the master is seated here, his back is to the light. His visitor sits op- posite to him on another couch, and between them is a small round table, on which may usually be seen the latest book of the day, and for Daudet is a great smoker cigars and cigarettes. There are few pictures in the room, but there is a fine portrait of Flaubert to be noticed, whilst over the bookshelf which lines the wall behind the writing-table is a portrait of the lady to whom Daudet confesses that he owes all the success as well as all the happiness of his life, the portrait of Madame Daudet. Nothing can be more charming than the welcome which the master of the house ex- tends to even the stranger who calls upon him for the first time. The free-masonry of letters or of Bohemia is nowhere in Paris so graciously encouraged as here. His in- timates he calls "my sons," and it is this term that he applies also to his secretary and confidant, the excellent Monsieur Hebner. His good humor and unvarying kindness to one and all are the more admirable that, always a nervous sufferer, he has of late years been almost a confirmed invalid. He cannot move about the room but with the help of his stick ; he has many nights when, racked with pain, he is unable to sleep ; and it is consequently with surprise that those who know him see that he never lets an impatient word or gesture escape him, even under circumstances when one or the other would be perfectly justifiable. The consequence is, that Daudet has not a single enemy in the world. There are many who do not admire his work ; but none who do not love the man for his sweetness, just as all are fascinated with his brilliant wit. It is one of the rarest of intellectual treats to hear Daudet talk as he talks at his table, or at his wife's " at- 240 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. homes" on Wednesday evenings, or on Sunday mornings, when from ten to twelve he receives his literary friends. He has a very free way of speech, and when alone with men uses whatever expressions best suit his purpose ; but every sentence is an epigram or an anecdote, a souvenir or a criticism. It is a sight that one must re- member who has seen Alphonse Daudet sitting at his table } or on the couch by the fireside, in an attitude which always be- trays how ill at ease he is, and yet showing himself superior to this, and with eyes fixed, rarely on the person whom he is addressing, but on something, pen or cigarette, which he turns and turns in his nervous fingers, conversing on whatever may be the topic of the day. He takes a keen interest in politics, and, indeed, seems to prefer to speak on these rather than on any other topic except literature. HARDSHIPS OF CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. When, the other day, I asked him to tell me of his life, he said, speaking of his early youth, " I have often tried to col- lect the memories of my childhood, to write them out in Proven9al, the language of my native land ; but my youth was such a sad one that these are all resumed in the title of a book of my souvenirs de jeunesse, 1 Mi Poou,' which means, in Provenfal, 'My Fears.' Yes, fears and tears ; that is what my youth consisted of. I was born at Nimes, where my father was a small trades- man. My youth at home was a lamentable one. I have no recollection of home which is not a sorrowful one, a recollection of tears. The baker who refuses bread ; the servant whose wages could not be paid, and who declares that she will stay on without wages, and becomes familiar in consequence, and says ' thou ' to her mas- ter ; the mother always in tears ; the father always scolding. My country is a country of monuments. I played at marbles in the ruins of the temple of Diana, and raced with my little comrades in the devastated Roman arena. It is a beautiful country, however, and I am proud of my relation to it. My name seems to indicate that I de- scend from the Moorish settlers of Prov- ence ; for, as you know, the Provencal people is largely of Moorish extraction. Indeed, it is from that circumstance that I have drawn* much of the humor of my books, such as ' Tartarin.' It is funny, you know, to hear of men with bushy black hair and flaring eyes, like bandits and wild warriors, who are, fhe one a peaceful baker, the other the least offensive of apotheca- ries. I myself have the Moorish type, and my name Daudet, according to the ver- sion which I like best, is the Moorish for David. Half my family is called David. Others say that Daudet means ' Deodat,' which is a very common name in Provence, and which, derived from Deo datus, means ' Given by God.' " I know little of my predecessors, ex- cept that in 1720 there was a Chevalier Daudet, who wrote poetry and had a dec- ade of celebrity in the South. But my brother Ernest, who used to be ambitious, in his book ' Mon Frere et Moi,' has tried to trace our genealogy from a noble fam- ily. Whatever we were at one time, we had come very low down in the world when I came into existence, and my child- hood was as miserable a one as can b( fancied. I have to some extent related it< unhappiness in my book ' Le Petit Chose.' Oh ! and apropos of ' Le Petit Chose,' let me declare, on my word of honor, that I had never read a line of Dickens when I wrote that book. People have said that I was inspired by Dickens, but that is not true. It was an English friend of mine, whom I had at Nimes, a boy called Ben- asset, who first told me that I was very like Dickens in personal appearance. Perhaps that is the reason why people trace a re- semblance in our work also. " My most vivid recollection of youth is the terrible fear that I had of the mad dog. I was brought up at nurse in a village called Fons, which must have been called so because there was no fountain, and in- deed no water, within eight miles. It was the most arid of places, and doubtless this was to some extent the reason why there were so many mad dogs in the district. I remember that the washerwomen of the village used to take train to the Rhone to wash their linen, and that, when they re- turned in the evenings, all the people of the village used to line the road, as they passed with their wet clothes, to get a whiff of cool air and the scent of the water. Perhaps it was because there was no water anywhere that, when I was a child, I so longed for the sea ; and that, when I did not wish to be a poet, I prayed that I might become a sailor. But to tell you of the mad dogs that haunted my earliest days. My foster-father was an innkeeper. His name was Garrimon, which is Provencal for ' Mountain Rat.' Is not that a splendid name Garrimon ? Why have I never used it in any of my books! Well, Garrimon's tavern was the rendez- ALPHONSE DAUDET AT HOME. vous of the village. The caft was on the first floor, and I can remember how, at nightfall, the black -bearded, dark -eyed men of the village, armed to the teeth, one with a sword, another with a gun, and most with scythes, used to come in from all parts of the district, talking of noth- ing but the Chin Foil, the mad dog, that was scouring the land, and against whom they had armed themselves. Then I ran to Neno, my foster-mother, and clung to her skirts, and lay awake at nights, trem- bling, as I thought of the Chin Foil and of the terrible weapons that the men carried Because they, strong, black-bearded men, were as frightened at him as the quaking little wretch who started at every sound that the wind made in the eaves of the old house. Where I lay in bed, I could hear rough voices, as they sat round the inn- tables, drinking lemonade for the Pro- vencal is so excitable by nature that mere lemonade acts upon him like strong drink and it was the Chin Foil, and nothing but the Chin Foil, which they talked about. But what brought my horror to a climax, and left an ineffaceable impression on me, was, that one day I nearly met the mad dog. It was a summer evening, I re- member, and I was walking home, carry- ing a little basket, along a path white with dust, through thick vines. Suddenly I heard wild cries, ' Aou Chin Foil! Aou Chin Foil!' Then came a discharge of DAUDET AND HIS ELDEST SON, LEON, IN DAUDET'S STUDY. From a photograph taken especially for McClure's Magazine. HUMAN DOCUMENTS. guns. Mad with terror I jumped into the vines, rolling head over ears ; and, as I lay there, unable to stir a finger, I heard the dog go by as if a hurricane were pass- ing ; heard his fierce breath, and the thunder of the stones that in his mad course he rolled before him ; and my heart stopped beating, in a paroxysm of terror, which is the strongest emotion that I have ever felt in all my life. Since then I have an absolute horror of dogs, and, by exten- sion, indeed, of all animals. People have reproached me for this, and say that a poet cannot dislike animals. I can't help it. I hate them all. I think that they are what is ugly and vile in nature. They are caricatures of all that is most loath- some and base in man ; they are the latrines of humanity. And, curiously enough, all my children have inherited this same horror of dogs. " I remember that at nineteen, when I was down in the valley of Chev- reuse, not far from Madame Adam's place at Gif, the recollec- tion of that afternoon came upon me so strongly, that, borrowing Victor Hugo's title, I wrote the ' Forty Days of a Condemned Man,' in which I essayed to depict, day by day, the sensations of a man who has been bitten by a mad dog. This work made me ill, a neuropath. Before I had finished writing it, I had grown to believe that I had indeed been bitten, and the result was that my hor- ror and dread were confirmed The sight of a dog is to-day still enough to distress me exceedingly. This phenomenon makes me think, what I have noticed before and repeatedly, that, comparing man to a book, he is set up in type at a very early age, and, in after life, it is only new editions of him that are printed ; by which I mean that a man's character and habits are crystallized whilst he is still a very young man, and in after life he only goes through the same phases of emotion over and over again. "Other memories of my youth ? "Well, the Homeric battles that we children of the town used to have. Nirnes is divided into Huguenots and Roman Catholics, and each party hated the other as keenly as they did in France on the day of Saint Bartholomew, which dawned on that san- guinary eve. The feud was as keen be- tween the children of the town, and many were the battles with stones that we fought in the streets. I have on my forehead to this day the cicatrice of a wound which I received from a Huguenot stone in one of those fights. I have described these fights in ' Numa Roumestan ; ' and here let me tell you that Numa Roumestan is Alphonse Daudet. It was said that he was Gam- betta. Nothing of the sort. Numa Rou- mestan is Alphonse Daudet, with all his foibles and what strength he may have. " My father had seventeen children, but only three lived to grow up : Ernest, a sister who married the brother of my wife, and myself. I knew only one of the others, being myself one of the younger. That was my brother Henri. I shall never forget the day when the news of his death reached home. It MADAME DAUDET ANU HER DAUGH1EK. came by telegram : ' He is dead. Pray God for him.' My father rose from the table, and cried, ' He is dead ! He is dead ! He is dead ! ' His gesture, his intonation, which had something of ancient tragedy about it, impressed me profoundly, and I remem- ber that all that night I lay awake, trying to imitate my father's voice, to find the tragic ring of his voice, repeating ' He is dead ! He is dead ! ' over and over again until I found it. " I have told you that I longed for the sea. How I devoured the first novels that I read, ' Midshipman Easy,' by Marryat, ' Robinson Crusoe,' and ' The Pilot ' ! How I used to dream of all that water, and of the cold winds blowing across the brine ! I dare say it was from this love of the water that I felt quite happy when I was sent to Lyons to school, because there I saw water and boats, and it was in some way a reali- zation of my longings. I was ten when I was sent to school, and I remained at school until I was fifteen and a half. 1 delighted in Latin, and became a good Latin scholar, ALPHONSE DAUDET AT HOME. 243 so that I was afterwards able to help my son Leon in his studies, going over all his books with him. I loved Tacitus ; disliked Cicero, Tacitus has had a great influence on French literature since Chateaubriand. What I best remember of my school-days is the handwriting of every one of my little comrades. Often, in my nights of fever, lying awake, I have seen, as in hieroglyphs upon a huge wall, the writings of all those boys, and have passed hours, as it seemed, in attributing to its author each varied piece of penmanship. I made only one friend, whose name was Garrison, a man of the most extraordinary inconsequen- tiality. He called on me not long ago, for the first time since we parted at school, and I then heard that, though he had been in Paris almost as long as I had, he had never ventured to come near me. He told me, after much hesitation, that he was a manufacturer of dolls' boots, in a street near La Roquette; but that business was bad, and he wanted me to help him to do something else. I also learned that he had a son, who, he told me, was a comic actor at the Beaumarchais Theatre. " It was on leaving the Lycee at Lyons that I entered upon what was the worst year of my life. It was only during that horrible period that I ever thought of sui- cide. But I had not the courage to finish with existence. It requires a great deal of courage to be a suicide. From the age of fifteen and a half to the age of sixteen and a half I was an usher in a school at Alais. The children at the school were very cruel to me. They laughed at me for my short-sightedness. They played imp- ish tricks upon me because I was short- sighted. Yet I tried to conciliate them. I remember that I used to tell them stories, which I made up as I went along. The misery that I afterwards suffered in Paris was nothing compared to that year. I was free in Paris. There I was a slave, a butt. How horrible it was, and I was so sensi- tive a lad ! I have told of this in the pre- face to ' Petit Chose,' which, by the way, I wrote too early. There was a child to whom I had been especially attentive, and who had promised me that he would take me to his parents' house during the vaca- tion. I was so pleased, and did so look forward to this treat ! Well, on the day of the prizes, in the distribution of which my young friend had received quite a number, which he owed to my coaching, he led me up to his parents, who were standing, waiting for him, by a grand landau, and said : ' Papa, mamma, here is Monsieur Daudet, who has been so good to me, and to whom I owe all these books.' Well, papa and mamma, stout bourgeois people in Sunday clothes, simply turned their backs on me, and drove off with my young pupil, without a single word. And I had- so looked forward to a holiday in the country with the lad, whom I loved sincerely. I could not stand the life more than a year, and at the age of seventeen went to Paris, without prospects of any kind, determined to starve rather than to continue a life of suffering drudgery. My brother Ernest was in Paris at the time as secretary to an old gentleman, and he gave me a shelter. I had two francs in my pocket when I arrived in Paris, and I had to share my brother's bed. I brought some rubbishy manuscripts with me, poetry, chiefly of a religious character. LITERARY LIFE IN PARIS. " My first poem, indeed the first thing of mine that was printed, was published in the 'Gazette de Lyon,' in 1855. I was at that time fifteen years old. It was not long after my arrival in Paris that I was left entirely to my own resources ; for my brother, losing his place as secretary, was forced to leave the capital, going into the country to edit a provincial paper. I then entered upon a period of the blackest mis- ery, of the most doleful Bohemianism. I have suffered in the way of privation all that a man could suffer. I have known days without bread ; I have spent days in bed because I had no boots to go out in. 244 HUMAN DOCUMENTS. I have had boots which made a squashy sound each step that I took. But what made me suffer most was, that I had often to wear dirty linen, because I could not pay a washerwoman. Often I had to fail to keep appointments given me by the fair 1 was a handsome lad and liked by ladies because I was too dirty and shabby to go. I spent three years of my life in this way from the age of eighteen, when my brother left Paris, to twenty-one. " At that moment Due de Morny offered me employment. His offer came to me in the midst of horror, shame, and distress. He had heard of me in this way : Some time before, I had published my first book of poems, a small volume of eighty pages, entitled ' Les Amoureuses.' This book made my fortune. De Morny had heard the brothers Lyonnet reciting one of my poems out of this book, a poem called ' Les Prunes,' at the empress's, and I be- lieve the empress asked him to make some inquiries about the poet. He sent to ask me what I needed to live on, and, accept- ing his patronage, I entered his service as attach^ de cabinet. I passed at once from the most dingy Bohemianism to a butter- fly life, learning all that there is of pleas- ure and luxury in existence. But somehow the legend of my Bohemianism clung to me, as it has clung to me all my life. Some people could never take me au se'rieux. I remember that I once dined with the Due Decazes for the purpose of one of my novels. I had written to tell him that I wanted to make use of his ex- periences, and he had asked me to dinner. Well, during the whole meal he related anecdotes of his career ; but, thinking that he had to deal with a Bohemian, he ar- ranged his anecdotes, as he thought, to interest me most. Thus he always began each story with ' I was taking a bock.' I suppose he thought that my idea of life was of beer-drinking in a caf