 | Cecil Dreeme |  |
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR.
By GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.
Theodore Winthrop's life, like a fire long smouldering,
suddenly blazed up into a clear, bright flame, and vanished.
Those of us who were his friends and neighbors, by whose
firesides he sat familiarly, and of whose life upon the pleasant
Staten Island, where he lived, he was so important a
part, were so impressed by his intense vitality, that his death
strikes us with peculiar strangeness, like sudden winter-silence
falling upon these humming fields of June.
As I look along the wooded brook-side by which he used
to come, I should not be surprised if I saw that knit, wiry,
light figure moving with quick, firm, leopard tread over the
grass, — the keen gray eye, the clustering fair hair, the kind,
serious smile, the mien of undaunted patience. If you did
not know him, you would have found his greeting a little
constrained, — not from shyness, but from genuine modesty
and the habit of society. You would have remarked that
he was silent and observant, rather than talkative; and
whatever he said, however gay or grave, would have had
the reserve of sadness upon which his whole character was
drawn. If it were a woman who saw him for the first time,
she would inevitably see him through a slight cloud of misapprehension;
for the man and his manner were a little at
variance. The chance is, that at the end of five minutes
months she would have known him as one of the simplest
and most truly modest of men.
And he had the heroic sincerity which belongs to such
modesty. Of a noble ambition, and sensitive to applause, —
as every delicate nature veined with genius always is, — he
would not provoke the applause by doing anything which,
although it lay easily within his power, was yet not wholly
approved by him as worthy. Many men are ambitious and
full of talent, and when the prize does not fairly come they
snatch at it unfairly. This was precisely what he could
not do. He would strive and deserve; but if the crown
were not laid upon his head in the clear light of day and by
confession of absolute merit, he could ride to his place again
and wait, looking with no envy, but in patient wonder and
with critical curiosity, upon the victors. It is this which he
expresses in the paper in the July number of the Atlantic
Monthly Magazine, “Washington as a Camp,” when he says,
“I have heretofore been proud of my individuality, and resisted,
so far as one may, all the world's attempts to merge
me in the mass.”
It was this which made many who knew him much, but
not truly, feel that he was purposeless and restless. They
knew his talent, his opportunities. Why does he not concentrate?
Why does he not bring himself to bear? He
did not plead his ill-health; nor would they have allowed
the plea. The difficulty was deeper. He felt that he had
shown his credentials, and they were not accepted. “I can
wait, I can wait,” was the answer his life made to the impatience
of his friends.
We are all fond of saying that a man of real gifts will fit
himself to the work of any time; and so he will. But it is
not necessarily to the first thing that offers. There is always
latent in civilized society a certain amount of what may be
listless and aimless enough until the congenial chance appears.
A plant may grow in a cellar; but it will flower only
under the due sun and warmth. Sir Philip Sidney was but
a lovely possibility, until he went to be Governor of Flushing.
What else was our friend, until he went to the war?
The age of Elizabeth did not monopolize the heroes, and
they are always essentially the same. When, for instance,
I read in a letter of Hubert Languet's to Sidney, “You are
not over-cheerful by nature,” or when, in another, he speaks
of the portrait that Paul Veronese painted of Sidney, and
says, “The painter has represented you sad and thoughtful,”
I can believe that he is speaking of my neighbor. Or
when I remember what Sidney wrote to his younger brother,
— “Being a gentleman born, you purpose to furnish yourself
with the knowledge of such things as may be serviceable
to your country and calling,” — or what he wrote to Languet,
— “Our Princes are enjoying too deep a slumber: I
cannot think there is any man possessed of common understanding
who does not see to what these rough storms are
driving by which all Christendom has been agitated now
these many years,” — I seem to hear my friend, as he used to
talk on the Sunday evenings when he sat in this huge cane-chair
at my side, in which I saw him last, and in which I shall
henceforth always see him.
Nor is it unfair to remember just here that he bore one
of the few really historic names in this country. He never
spoke of it; but we should all have been sorry not to feel
that he was glad to have sprung straight from that second
John Winthrop who was the first Governor of Connecticut,
the younger sister colony of Massachusetts Bay, — the John
Winthrop who obtained the charter of privileges for his
colony. How clearly the quality of the man has been
transmitted! How brightly the old name shines out again!
He was born in New Haven on the 22d of September,
1828, and was a grave, delicate, rather precocious child.
He was at school only in New Haven, and entered Yale
College just as he was sixteen. The pure, manly morality
which was the substance of his character, and his brilliant
exploits of scholarship, made him the idol of his college
friends, who saw in him the promise of the splendid career
which the fond faith of students allots to the favorite classmate.
He studied for the Clark scholarship, and gained it;
and his name, in the order of time, is first upon the roll of
that foundation. For the Berkeleian scholarship he and
another were judged equal, and, drawing lots, the other
gained the scholarship; but they divided the honor.
In college his favorite studies were Greek and mental
philosophy. He never lost the scholarly taste and habit.
A wide reader, he retained knowledge with little effort, and
often surprised his friends by the variety of his information.
Yet it was not strange, for he was born a scholar. His
mother was the great-granddaughter of old President Edwards;
and among his relations upon the maternal side,
Winthrop counted six Presidents of colleges. Perhaps also
in this learned descent we may find the secret of his
early seriousness. Thoughtful and self-criticising, he was
peculiarly sensible to religious influences, under which his
criticism easily became self-accusation, and his sensitive
seriousness grew sometimes morbid. He would have studied
for the ministry or a professorship, upon leaving college,
except for his failing health.
In the later days, when I knew him, the feverish ardor
of the first religious impulse was past. It had given place
to a faith much too deep and sacred to talk about, yet
holding him always with serene, steady poise in the purest
region of life and feeling. There was no franker or more
sympathetic companion for young men of his own age than
soul.
He graduated in 1848, when he was twenty years old;
and for the sake of his health, which was seriously shattered,
— an ill-health that colored all his life, — he set out
upon his travels. He went first to England, spending much
time at Oxford, where he made pleasant acquaintances, and
walking through Scotland. He then crossed over to France
and Germany, exploring Switzerland very thoroughly upon
foot, — once or twice escaping great dangers among the
mountains, — and pushed on to Italy and Greece, still walking
much of the way. In Italy he made the acquaintance
of Mr. W. H. Aspinwall, of New York, and upon his return
became tutor to Mr. Aspinwall's son. He presently accompanied
his pupil and a nephew of Mr. Aspinwall, who were
going to a school in Switzerland; and after a second short
tour of six months in Europe he returned to New York,
and entered Mr. Aspinwall's counting-house. In the employ
of the Pacific Steamship Company he went to Panama
and resided for about two years, travelling, and often ill of
the fevers of the country. Before his return he travelled
through California and Oregon, — went to Vancouver's
Island, Puget Sound, and the Hudson Bay Company's station
there. At the Dalles he was smitten with the small-pox,
and lay ill for six weeks. He often spoke with the
warmest gratitude of the kind care that was taken of him
there. But when only partially recovered he plunged off
again into the wilderness. At another time he fell very ill
upon the plains, and lay down, as he supposed, to die; but
after some time struggled up and on again.
He returned to the counting-room, but, unsated with
adventure, joined the disastrous expedition of Lieutenant
Strain. During the time he remained with it his health
was still more weakened, and he came home again in 1854.
the bar. In 1856 he entered heartily into the Fremont
campaign, and from the strongest conviction. He went
into some of the dark districts of Pennsylvania and spoke
incessantly. The roving life and its picturesque episodes,
with the earnest conviction which inspired him, made the
summer and autumn exciting and pleasant. The following
year he went to St. Louis to practise law. The climate was
unkind to him, and he returned and began the practice
in New York. But he could not be a lawyer. His health
was too uncertain, and his tastes and ambition allured him
elsewhere. His mind was brimming with the results of
observation. His fancy was alert and inventive, and he
wrote tales and novels. At the same time he delighted to
haunt the studio of his friend Church, the painter, and
watch day by day the progress of his picture, the Heart of
the Andes. It so fired his imagination that he wrote a
description of it, in which, as if rivalling the tropical and
tangled richness of the picture, he threw together such
heaps and masses of gorgeous words that the reader was
dazzled and bewildered.
The wild campaigning life was always a secret passion
with him. His stories of travel were so graphic and warm,
that I remember one evening, after we had been tracing
upon the map a route he had taken, and he had touched
the whole region into life with his description, my younger
brother, who had sat by and listened with wide eyes all the
evening, exclaimed with a sigh of regretful satisfaction, as
the door closed upon our story-teller, “It 's as good as Robinson
Crusoe!” Yet, with all his fondness and fitness for
that kind of life, or indeed any active administrative function,
his literary ambition seemed to be the deepest and
strongest.
He had always been writing. In college and upon his
novels, tales, sketches of travel, and journals. The first
published writing of his which is well known is his description,
in the June (1861) number of the Atlantic Monthly
Magazine, of the March of the Seventh Regiment of New
York to Washington. It was charming by its graceful,
sparkling, crisp, off-hand dash and ease. But it is only the
practised hand that can “dash off” effectively. Let any
other clever member of the clever regiment, who has never
written, try to dash off the story of a day or a week in the
life of the regiment, and he will see that the writer did that
little thing well because he had done large things carefully.
Yet, amid all the hurry and brilliant bustle of the articles,
the author is, as he was in the most bustling moment of the
life they described, a spectator, an artist. He looks on at
himself and the scene of which he is part. He is willing to
merge his individuality; but he does not merge it, for he
could not.
So, wandering, hoping, trying, waiting, thirty-two years
of his life went by, and they left him true, sympathetic,
patient. The sharp private griefs that sting the heart so
deeply, and leave a little poison behind, did not spare him.
But he bore everything so bravely, so silently, — often silent
for a whole evening in the midst of pleasant talkers, but not
impertinently sad, nor ever sullen, — that we all loved him
a little more at such times. The ill-health from which he
always suffered, and a flower-like delicacy of temperament,
the yearning desire to be of some service in the world,
coupled with the curious, critical introspection which marks
every sensitive and refined nature and paralyzes action,
overcast his life and manner to the common eye with pensiveness
and even sternness. He wrote verses in which his
heart seems to exhale in a sigh of sadness. But he was not
in the least a sentimentalist. The womanly grace of temperament
character and impression. It was like a delicate carnation
upon the cheek of a robust man. For his humor was exuberant.
He seldom laughed loud, but his smile was sweet
and appreciative. Then the range of his sympathies was
so large, that he enjoyed every kind of life and person, and
was everywhere at home. In walking and riding, in skating
and running, in games out of doors and in, no one of us
all in the neighborhood was so expert, so agile as he. For,
above all things, he had what we Yankees call faculty, —
the knack of doing everything. If he rode with a neighbor
who was a good horseman, Theodore, who was a Centaur,
when he mounted, would put any horse at any gate or
fence; for it did not occur to him that he could not do
whatever was to be done. Often, after writing for a few
hours in the morning, he stepped out of doors, and, from pure
love of the fun, leaped and turned summersaults on the
grass, before going up to town. In walking about the island,
he constantly stopped by the road-side fences, and, grasping
the highest rail, swung himself swiftly and neatly over and
back again, resuming the walk and the talk without delay.
I do not wish to make him too much a hero. “Death,”
says Bacon, “openeth the gate to good fame.” When a
neighbor dies, his form and quality appear clearly, as if he
had been dead a thousand years. Then we see what we
only felt before. Heroes in history seem to us poetic because
they are there. But if we should tell the simple
truth of some of our neighbors, it would sound like poetry.
Winthrop was one of the men who represent the manly
and poetic qualities that always exist around us, — not great
genius, which is ever salient, but the fine fibre of manhood
that makes the worth of the race.
Closely engaged with his literary employments, and more
quiet than ever, he took less active part in the last election.
he saw very clearly the inevitable necessity of arms. We
all talked of it constantly, — watching the news, — chafing
at the sad necessity of delay, which was sure to confuse
foreign opinion and alienate sympathy, as has proved to be
the case. As matters advanced and the war-cloud rolled
up thicker and blacker, he looked at it with the secret
satisfaction that war for such a cause opened his career both
as thinker and actor. The admirable coolness, the promptness,
the cheerful patience, the heroic ardor, the intelligence,
the tough experience of campaigning, the profound conviction
that the cause was in truth “the good old cause,”
which was now to come to the death-grapple with its old
enemy, Justice against Injustice, Order against Anarchy, —
all these should now have their turn, and the wanderer
and waiter “settle himself” at last.
We took a long walk together on the Sunday that brought
the news of the capture of Fort Sumter. He was thoroughly
alive with a bright, earnest forecast of his part in the coming
work. Returning home with me, he sat until late in
the evening talking with an unwonted spirit, saying playfully,
I remember, that, if his friends would only give him
a horse, he would ride straight to victory. Especially he
wished that some competent person would keep a careful
record of events as they passed; “for we are making our
history,” he said, “hand over hand.” He sat quietly in the
great chair while he spoke, and at last rose to go. We
went together to the door, and stood for a little while upon
the piazza, where we had sat peacefully through so many
golden summer-hours. The last hour for us had come, but
we did not know it. We shook hands, and he left me,
passing rapidly along the brook-side under the trees, and so
in the soft spring starlight vanished from my sight forever.
The next morning came the President's proclamation.
in the artillery corps of the Seventh Regiment. During
the two or three following days he was very busy and very
happy. On Friday afternoon, the 19th of April, 1861, I
stood at the corner of Courtland Street and saw the regiment
as it marched away. Two days before, I had seen
the Massachusetts troops going down the same street. During
the day the news had come that they were already
engaged, that some were already dead in Baltimore. And
the Seventh, as they went, blessed and wept over by a
great city, went, as we all believed, to terrible battle.
The setting sun in a clear April sky shone full up the street.
Mothers' eyes glistened at the windows upon the glistening
bayonets of their boys below. I knew that Winthrop and
other dear friends were there, but I did not see them. I
saw only a thousand men marching like one hero. The
music beat and rang and clashed in the air. Marching to
death or victory or defeat, it mattered not. They marched
for Justice, and God was their captain.
From that moment he has told his own story until he
went to Fortress Monroe, and was made acting military
secretary and aid by General Butler. Before he went, he
wrote the most copious and gayest letters from the camp.
He was thoroughly aroused, and all his powers happily at
play. In a letter to me soon after his arrival in Washington,
he says: —
“I see no present end to this business. We must conquer
the South. Afterward we must be prepared to do its police
in its own behalf, and in behalf of its black population,
whom this war must, without precipitation, emancipate.
We must hold the South as the metropolitan police holds
New York. All this is inevitable. Now I wish to enroll
myself at once in the Police of the Nation, and for life, if
the nation will take me. I do not see that I can put myself
..... My experience in this short campaign with the Seventh
assures me that volunteers are for one purpose and
regular soldiers entirely another. We want regular soldiers
for the cause of order in these anarchical countries, and we
want men in command who, though they may be valuable
as temporary satraps or proconsuls to make liberty possible
where it is now impossible, will never under any circumstances
be disloyal to Liberty, will always oppose any scheme
of any one to constitute a military government, and will be
ready, when the time comes, to imitate Washington. We
must think of these things, and prepare for them......
Love to all the dear friends...... This trip has been all
a lark to an old tramper like myself.”
Later he writes: —
“It is the loveliest day of fullest spring. An aspen under
the window whispers to me in a chorus of all its leaves, and
when I look out, every leaf turns a sunbeam at me. I am
writing in Viele's quarters in the villa of Somebody Stone,
upon whose place or farm we are encamped. The man
who built and set down these four great granite pillars in
front of his house, for a carriage-porch, had an eye or two
for a fine site. This seems to be the finest possible about
Washington. It is a terrace called Meridian Hill, two miles
north of Pennsylvania Avenue. The house commands the
vista of the Potomac, all the plain of the city, and a charming
lawn of delicious green, with oaks of first dignity just
coming into leaf. It is lovely Nature, and the spot has
snatched a grace from Art. The grounds are laid out after
a fashion, and planted with shrubbery. The snowballs are
at their snowballiest...... Have you heard or — how
many times have you used the simile of some one, Bad-muss
or Cadmus, or another hero, who sowed the dragon's teeth,
and they came up dragoons a hundred-fold and infantry
mind; but I own astonishment at the crop of soldiers.
They must ripen awhile, perhaps, before they are to be
named quite soldiers. Ripening takes care of itself; and
by the harvest-time they will be ready to cut down.
“I find that the men best informed about the South do
not anticipate much severe fighting. Scott's Fabian policy
will demoralize their armies. If the people do not bother
the great Cunctator to death before he is ready to move to
assured victory, he will make defeat impossible. Meanwhile
there will be enough outwork going on, like those neat jobs
in Missouri, to keep us all interested...... Know, O comrade,
that I am already a corporal, — an acting corporal,
selected by our commanding officer for my general effect
of pipe-clay, my rapidity of heel and toe, my present arms,
etc., but liable to be ousted by suffrage any moment. Quod
faustum sit,..... I had already been introduced to the
Secretary of War...... I called at —'s and saw, with
two or three others, — on the sofa. Him my prophetic
soul named my uncle Abe...... But in my uncle's house
are many nephews, and whether nepotism or my transcendent
merit will prevail we shall see. I have fun, — I get
experience, — I see much, — it pays. Ah, yes! But in
these fair days of May I miss my Staten Island. War stirs
the pulse, but it wounds a little all the time.
“Compliment for me Tib [a little dog] and the Wisterias,
— also the mares and the billiard-table. Ask — to
give you t' other lump of sugar in my behalf...... Should
— return, say that I regret not being present with an
unpremeditated compliment, as thus, — `Ah! the first rose
of summer!'..... I will try to get an enemy's button for
—, should the enemy attack. If the Seventh returns
presently, I am afraid I shall be obliged to return with them
for a time. But I mean to see this job through, somehow.”
In such an airy, sportive vein he wrote, with the firm
purpose and the distinct thought visible under the sparkle.
Before the regiment left Washington, as he has recorded,
he said good-by and went down the bay to Fortress Monroe.
Of his unshrinking and sprightly industry, his good
head, his warm heart, and cool hand, as a soldier, General
Butler has given precious testimony to his family. “I loved
him as a brother,” the General writes of his young aid.
The last days of his life at Fortress Monroe were doubtless
also the happiest. His energy and enthusiasm, and
kind, winning ways, and the deep satisfaction of feeling
that all his gifts could now be used as he would have them,
showed him and his friends that his day had at length
dawned. He was especially interested in the condition and
fate of the slaves who escaped from the neighboring region
and sought refuge at the fort. He had never for an instant
forgotten the secret root of the treason which was desolating
the land with war; and in his view there would be no peace
until that root was destroyed. In his letters written from
the fort he suggests plans of relief and comfort for the
refugees; and one of his last requests was to a lady in New
York for clothes for these poor pensioners. They were
promptly sent, but reached the fort too late.
As I look over these last letters, which gush and throb
with the fulness of his activity, and are so tenderly streaked
with touches of constant affection and remembrance, yet
are so calm and duly mindful of every detail, I do not think
with an elder friend, in whom the wisdom of years has only
deepened sympathy for all generous youthful impulse, of
Virgil's Marcellus, “Heu, miserande puer!” but I recall
rather, still haunted by Philip Sidney, what he wrote, just
before his death, to his father-in-law, Walsingham, — “I
think a wise and constant man ought never to grieve while
he doth play, as a man may say, his own part truly.”
The sketches of the campaign in Virginia, which Winthrop
had commenced in the Atlantic Monthly Magazine, would
have been continued, and have formed an invaluable memoir
of the places, the men, and the operations of which he
was a witness and a part. As a piece of vivid pictorial
description, which gives the spirit as well as the spectacle,
his “Washington as a Camp” is masterly. He knew not
only what to see and to describe, but what to think; so that
in his papers you are not at the mercy of a multitudinous
mass of facts, but understand their value and relation.
The disastrous day of the 10th of June, at Great Bethel,
need not be described here. It is already written with
tears and vain regrets in our history. It is useless to prolong
the debate as to where the blame of the defeat, if
blame there were, should rest. But there is an impression
somewhat prevalent that Winthrop planned the expedition,
which is incorrect. As military secretary of the commanding
general, he made a memorandum of the outline of the
plan as it had been finally settled. Precisely what that
memorandum (which has been published) was, he explains
in the last letter he wrote, a few hours before leaving the
fort. He says: “If I come back safe, I will send you
my notes of the plan of attack, part made up from the
General's hints, part my own fancies.” This defines
exactly his responsibility. His position as aid and military
secretary, his admirable qualities as adviser under the circumstances,
and his personal friendship for the General,
brought him intimately into the council of war. He embarked
in the plan all the interest of a brave soldier contemplating
his first battle. He probably made suggestions
some of which were adopted. The expedition was the
first move from Fort Monroe, to which the country had
been long looking in expectation. These were the reasons
after the melancholy events of the earlier part of the day,
he saw that its fortunes could be retrieved only by a dash
of heroic enthusiasm. Fired himself, he sought to kindle
others. For one moment that brave, inspiring form is
plainly visible to his whole country, rapt and calm, standing
upon the log nearest the enemy's battery, the mark of their
sharpshooters, the admiration of their leaders, waving his
sword, cheering his fellow-soldiers with his bugle voice of
victory, — young, brave, beautiful, for one moment erect
and glowing in the wild whirl of battle, the next falling
forward toward the foe, dead, but triumphant.
On the 19th of April, 1861, he left the armory-door of the
Seventh, with his hand upon a howitzer; on the 21st of
June his body lay upon the same howitzer at the same
door, wrapped in the flag for which he gladly died as the
symbol of human freedom. And so, drawn by the hands
of young men lately strangers to him, but of whose bravery
and loyalty he had been the laureate, and who fitly mourned
him who had honored them, with long, pealing dirges and
muffled drums, he moved forward.
Yet such was the electric vitality of this friend of ours,
that those of us who followed him could only think of him
as approving the funeral pageant, not the object of it, but
still the spectator and critic of every scene in which he was
a part. We did not think of him as dead. We never shall.
In the moist, warm midsummer morning, he was alert, alive,
immortal.
| Cecil Dreeme | |