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Carlyle's Laugh, and Other Surprises

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Carlyle's Laugh, and Other Surprises Cbomac iyrntruovt!) I)ig;crin0on WORKS. Newly arranged, yvols. iamo, each, $2.00. 1. CHEERFUL YESTERDAYS. 2. CONTEMPORARIES. 3. ARMY LIFE IN A BLACK REGIMENT. 4. WOMEN AND THE ALPHABET. 5. STUDIES IN ROMANCE. 6. OUTDOOR STUDIES; AND POEMS. 7. STUDIES IN HISTORY AND LETTERS. THE PROCESSION OF THE FLOWERS. $1.25. THE AFTERNOON LANDSCAPE. Poems and Translations. $1.00. THE MONARCH OF DREAMS. i8mo, 50 cents. MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. In the American Men of Letters Series. i6mo, $1.50. HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. In American Men of Letters Series. i6mo, $1.10, net. Postage 10 cents. PART OF A MAN S LIFE. Illustrated. Large 8vo, $2.50, net. Postage 18 cents. LIFE AND TIMES OF STEPHEN HIGGINSON. Illustrated. Large crown 8vo, $2.00, net. Postage extra. CARLYLE S LAUGH AND OTHER SURPRISES. i2mo, $2.00, net. Postage 15 cents. EDITED WITH MRS. E. H. BIGELOW. AMERICAN SONNETS. i8mo, $1.25. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON AND NEW YORK CARLYLE S LAUGH AND OTHER SURPRISES CARLYLE S LAUGH AND OTHER SURPRISES BY THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY (fce Ctitersibe preii? Cambridge MDCCCCIX COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published October IQOQ 1-/3 NOTE THE two papers in this volume which bear the " titles " A Keats Manuscript and " A Shelley " Manuscript are reprinted by permission from " a work called Book and Heart," by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, copyright, 1897, by Harper and Brothers, with whose consent the essay entitled "One of Thackeray s Women" also is published. Leave has been obtained to reprint the papers on Brown, Cooper, and Thoreau, from Carpenter s "American Prose," copyrighted by the Macmillan Company, 1898. My thanks are also due to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for permission to reprint the papers on Scudder, Atkinson, and Cabot to the of " s ; proprietors Putnam Magazine" for the paper entitled "Emerson s Foot-Note Person " to the of the ; proprietors " New York " Evening Post for the article on " Bancroft from "The to George Nation ; the editor of the "Harvard Graduates Magazine" " for the on " Harvard paper Gottingen and ; " and to the editors of the " Outlook for the papers on Charles Eliot Norton, Julia Ward Howe, Edward Everett Hale, William J. Rolfe, and " of Old Newport Days." Most the remain " ing sketches appeared originally in the Atlan tic Monthly." T. W. H. CONTENTS i. CARLYLE S LAUGH i II. A SHELLEY MANUSCRIPT ... 13 III. A KEATS MANUSCRIPT .... 21 IV. MASSASOIT, INDIAN CHIEF . 31 . V. JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 1" . 45 VI. CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN . 55 VH. HENRY DAVID THOREAU .... 65 vm. EMERSON S "FOOT-NOTE PERSON," ALCOTT 75 IX. GEORGE BANCROFT .... 93 X. CHARLES ELIOT NORTON . .119 XI. EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN . 137 XII. EDWARD EVERETT HALE . -157 XIII. A MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL, RUFUS " SAXTON . 173 xrv. ONE OF THACKERAY S WOMEN . 183 XV. JOHN BARTLETT . 19! XVI. HORACE ELISHA SCUDDER 2OI viii CONTENTS XVII. EDWARD ATKINSON . .213 XVIII. JAMES ELLIOT CABOT . 23 1 XIX. EMILY DICKINSON 247 XX. WARD HOWE JULIA ... 28? XXI. WILLIAM ROLFE . JAMES . .313 XXH. GOTTINGEN AND HARVARD A CENTURY AGO 325 XXIII. OLD NEWPORT DAYS .... 349 XXIV. A HALF-CENTURY OF AMERICAN LITERA- . TURE 367 I CARLYLE S LAUGH CARLYLE S LAUGH NONE of the many sketches of Carlyle that have been published since his death have brought out quite distinctly enough the thing which struck me more forcibly than all else, when in the actual of the man the presence ; namely, peculiar quality and expression of his laugh. It need hardly be said that there is a great deal in a laugh. One of the most telling pieces of oratory that ever reached my ears was Victor Hugo s vindication, at the Voltaire Centenary in Paris, of that author s smile. To be sure, Carlyle s laugh was not like that smile, but it was something as inseparable from his person ality, and as essential to the account, when making up one s estimate of him. It was as in dividually characteristic as his face or his dress, or his way of talking or of writing. Indeed, it seemed indispensable for the explanation of all of these. I found in looking back upon my first interview with him, that all I had known of Carlyle through others, or through his own books, for twenty-five years, had been utterly defective, had left out, in fact, the key to his whole nature, inasmuch as nobody had ever described to me his laugh. 4 CARLYLE S LAUGH It is impossible to follow the matter further without a little bit of personal narration. On vis iting England for the first time, in 1872, I was offered a letter to Carlyle, and declined it. Like all of my own generation, I had been under some personal obligations to him for his early writ ings, though in my case this debt was trifling compared with that due to Emerson, but his " " Latter-Day Pamphlets and his reported ut terances on American affairs had taken away all special desire to meet him, besides the un graciousness said to mark his demeanor toward visitors from the United States. Yet, when I was once fairly launched in that fascinating world of London society, where the American sees, as Willis used to say, whole shelves of his library walking about in coats and gowns, this disinclination rapidly softened. And when Mr. Froude kindly offered to take me with him for one of his afternoon calls on Carlyle, and fur ther proposed that I should join them in their habitual walk through the parks, it was not in human nature or at least in American nature to resist. We accordingly went after lunch, one day in May, to Carlyle s modest house in Chelsea, and found him in his study, reading by a chance very appropriate for me in Weiss s " Life of Parker." He received us kindly, but CARLYLE S LAUGH 5 at once began inveighing against the want of arrangement in the book he was reading, the defective grouping of the different parts, and the impossibility of finding anything in it, even by aid of the index. He then went on to speak of Parker himself, and of other Americans whom he had met. I do not recall the details of the conversation, but to my surprise he did not say a single really offensive or ungracious thing. If he did, it related less to my countrymen than to his own, for I remember his saying some rather stern things about Scotchmen. But that which saved these and all his sharpest words from be ing actually offensive was this, that, after the most vehement tirade, he would suddenly pause, throw his head back, and give as genuine and kindly a laugh as I ever heard from a human being. It was not the bitter laugh of the cynic, nor yet the big-bodied laugh of the burly joker; least of all was it the thin and rasping cackle of the dyspeptic satirist. It was a broad, honest, human laugh, which, beginning in the brain, took into its action the whole heart and dia phragm, and instantly changed the worn face into something frank and even winning, giv ing to it an expression that would have won the confidence of any child. Nor did it convey the impression of an exceptional thing that had occurred for the first time that day, and might 6 CARLYLE S LAUGH never happen again. Rather, it produced the effect of habitual of the something ; being chan nel, well worn for years, by which the overflow of a strong nature was discharged. It cleared the air like thunder, and left the atmosphere sweet. It seemed to say to himself, if not to us, "Do not let us take this too seriously; it is my way of putting things. What refuge is there for a man who looks below the surface in a " world like this, except to laugh now and then ? The in revealed the if laugh, short, humorist ; I said the genial humorist, wearing a mask of grimness, I should hardly go too far for the im pression it left. At any rate, it shifted the ground, and transferred the whole matter to that realm of thought where men play with things. The instant Carlyle laughed, he seemed to take the counsel of his old friend Emerson, and to write upon the lintels of his doorway, " Whim." Whether this interpretation be right or wrong, it is certain that the effect of this new point of view upon one of his visitors was wholly disarm The bitter and vision vanished ing. unlovely ; my armed neutrality went with it, and there I sat talking with Carlyle as fearlessly as if he were an old friend. The talk soon fell on the most dangerous of all ground, our Civil War, which was then near enough to inspire curi osity; and he put questions showing that he CARLYLE S LAUGH 7 had, after all, considered the matter in a sane and reasonable way. He was especially inter in the freed slaves and the colored ested troops ; he said but little, yet that was always to the point, and without one ungenerous word. On the contrary, he showed more readiness to compre hend the situation, as it existed after the war, than was to be found in most Englishmen at that time.
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