Chapter VIII: Part 8

The old homestead where Whittier was born, in 1807, is still standing, and although built more than two hundred years ago, it is in good condition. It is on a high table-land, surrounded by what in the late fall and winter seems a dreary landscape. Carlyle’s Craigenputtock, the Burns cottage, the Whittier homestead, all have a certain correlation, each of them the home of genius and of comparative poverty, and each so bleak and bare as to send the imagination of the dwellers out on strong wings to lovelier scenes. Little boxes and paper-weights are made from the boards of the garret-floor of the Whittier homestead, as they are from the Burns belongings; and twigs of the overshadowing elm are varnished and sold for pen-holders. But the whole house would have to go to the lathe to meet the demand, if it were answered generally, for it is the old farmhouse celebrated by “Snowbound,” our one national idyll, the perfect poem of New England winter life. An allusion to that strange and powerful character, Harriet Livermore, in this poem, has brought down upon the poet’s head the wrath of one of her collateral descendants, who has written a book to prove that nothing which was said of that fantastic being in her lifetime was true, and that so far from quarreling with Lady Hester Stanhope as to which of them was to ride beside the Lord on his reëntry into Jerusalem, she never even saw Lady Hester. But why any one, descendant or otherwise, should take offence at the tender feeling and beauty of the poet’s mention of her is as much a mystery as her life.

It was in the fields about this homestead that fame first found our poet. For there he bought, from the pack of a traveling peddler, the first copy of Burns that he had ever seen, and that snatched him away from hard realities into a land of music; and here the mail-man brought him the copy of that paper containing his earliest poem, one whose subject was the presence of the Deity in the still small whisper in the soul; and here Garrison came with the words of praise and found him in the furrow, and began that friendship which Death alone severed, as the two fought shoulder to shoulder in the great fight of the century.

Although he had been for some time contributing to the press, Mr. Whittier was but twenty-three years old when he was thunderstruck by a request to take the place of Mr. George D. Prentice, in editing _The New England Weekly Review_ for a time; of which request he has said that he could not have been more astonished had he been told he was appointed Prime Minister to the Khan of Tartary. In 1835 and in 1836 he was elected to the State Legislature of Massachusetts, and he was engaged, during all this period, in active politics in a manner that seems totally at variance with the possibilities of the singer of sweet songs as we know him to-day. He declined reëlection to the Legislature, upon being appointed Secretary to the American Anti-Slavery Society, removing to Philadelphia, and remaining there two years, at the end of which time the office of _The Pennsylvania Freeman_, which he edited, was sacked and burned by a mob.

Few men in the world had a closer acquaintance with this same many-headed monster than our gentle poet, for he has been followed by mobs, hustled by them, assailed by them, carrying himself with defiant courage through them all; and it is a tremendous range of experience that a man finds, as Mr. Whittier was able to do, between being assaulted by a midnight mob and being chosen the Presidential Elector for a sovereign State.

After the suppression of his paper--this was at a time when the Legislature of Georgia had offered a reward of five thousand dollars for the arrest of the editor of _The Liberator_,--Mr. Whittier sold the old Haverhill homestead and removed to Amesbury, a lovely town, the descendant of Queen Guinevere’s Almbresbury, neighbor of Stonehenge and old Sarum, which seems a proper spot for him as for a new Sir Galahad; and from this time he began to send out those periodical volumes of verses which have won him the heart of the world. Here his lovely sister Elizabeth, herself a poet, with his mother, and his Aunt Mercy--the three loved of all “Snowbound’s” lovers,--brightened the home for years, one by one withdrawing from it at last for their long home, and leaving him alone, but for the subsequent sweet companionship of his nieces, who themselves went away in their turn for homes of their own.

The poet’s dwelling in Amesbury was exceedingly simple and exquisitely neat, the exterior of a pale cream color, with many trees and shrubs about it, while, within, one room opens into another till you reach the study that should be haunted by the echoes of all sweet sounds, for here have been written the most of those verses full of the fitful music,

Of winds that out of dreamland blew.

Here, in the proper season, the flames of a cheerful fire dance upon the brass andirons of the open hearth, in the centre of a wall lined with books; water-colors by Harry Fenn and Lucy Larcom and Celia Thaxter, together with interesting prints, hang on the other walls, rivaled, it may be, by the window that looks down a sunny little orchard, and by the glass-topped door through which you see the green dome of Powow Hill. What worthies have been entertained in this enticing place! Garrison, and Phillips, and Higginson, and Wasson, and Emerson, and Fields, and Bayard Taylor, and Alice and Phœbe Cary, and Gail Hamilton, and Anna Dickinson, are only a few of the names that one first remembers, to say nothing of countless sweet souls, unknown to any other roll of fame than heaven’s, who have found the atmosphere there kindred to their own.

The people of Amesbury, and of the adjoining villages and towns, felt a peculiar ownership of their poet; there is scarcely a legend of all the region round which he has not woven into his song, and the neighborhood feel not only as if Whittier were their poet, but in some way the guardian spirit, the genius of the place. Perhaps in his stern and sweet life he has been so, even as much as in his song. “There is no charge to Mr. Whittier,” once said a shopman of whom he had made a small purchase; and there is no doubt that the example would have been contagious if the independent spirit of the poet would have allowed it.

The Indian summer days of the poet’s life were spent not all in the places that knew him of old. The greater part of the winter was passed in Boston; a share of the summer always went to the White Hills, of which he was passionately fond, and the remainder of the time found him in the house of his cousins at Oak Knoll, in Danvers, still in his native county of Essex. This is a mansion, with its porches and porticoes and surrounding lawns and groves, which seems meet for a poet’s home; it stands in spacious and secluded grounds, shadowed by mighty oaks, and with that woodland character which birds and squirrels and rabbits, darting in the checkered sunshine, must always give. It is the home of culture and refinement, too, and as full of beauty within as without. Here many of the later poems were sent forth, and here fledglings had the unwarrantable impertinence to intrude with their callow manuscripts, and here those pests of prominence, the autograph seekers, sent their requests by the thousands. But in the early fall the poet stole quietly back to Amesbury, and there awaited Election Day, a day on which he religiously believed that no man has a right to avoid his duty, and of which he always thought as when he saw

Along the street
The shadows meet
Of Destiny, whose hand conceals
The moulds of fate
That shape the State,
And make or mar the common weal.

What a life he had to look back upon, as he sat with his fame about him--what storms and what delights, what struggle and what victory! With all the deep and wonderful humility of spirit that he bore before God and man, yet it is doubtful if he could have found one day in it that he would have changed, so far as his own acts were concerned. It is certain that no one else could find it.

In appearance, Mr. Whittier was to the last as upright in bearing as ever; his eye was as black and burned with as keen a fire as when it flashed over the Concord mob, and saw beauty everywhere as freshly as when he cried out with the “Voices of Freedom” and sang the “Songs of Labor”; and his smile was the same smile that won the worship of men, and of women, too, for sixty years and over. Now it is with a sort of tenderness that people speak and think of him whose walk in life ended September 7, 1892. It seemed impossible to think that such vitality and power and spirit could ever cease. And indeed, it has not ceased, for it has been transferred into loftier regions, where his earthly songs are set to the music of the morning-stars as they sing together.

HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.

MRS. MARGARET DELAND

MRS. MARGARET DELAND

MT. VERNON STREET, BOSTON, AND KENNEBUNKPORT, MAINE

Very few houses suggest in a more marked degree the tastes of those who occupy them, than the one in which Margaret Deland may be found during the winter months, and until the chilly New England spring deigns to set forth a tempting array of blossoms. At this signal, followed by a general exodus in favor of suburban residences, Mrs. Deland--being a Bostonian only by adoption, and therefore to be pardoned for seeking recreation at a greater distance from home--closes the town house, leaving it guarded by flowers, to re-establish herself and her household in an attractive cottage at Kennebunkport, Maine, where her summers are habitually passed.

If we are to go in search of the more representative of the two dwellings, we must turn our steps in the direction of Beacon Hill, for the Delands yielded a number of years ago to the indefinable charm of this time-honored quarter of the town, and have come to be considered--like Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Mrs. Henry Whitman, and others--as permanent members of the little colony in possession.

On turning into Mt. Vernon Street at the foot of the hill, a view that is essentially picturesque opens up, and its separate features--the steep road, large elm-trees, old-fashioned residences, and narrow sidewalks--have hardly had time to assert themselves, when the objective point of one’s walk comes in sight. No. 76 is the second of two houses on Mt. Vernon Street that have in turn afforded Mr. Deland an excuse to indulge his predilection for reconstruction, the present habitation being practically a larger edition of one lower down the street--in which “John Ward, Preacher,” was written.

A glance at the façade proves the felicity of a friend’s description, “It is all windows and flowers.” The chronicler of “Old Garden” fancies and none other is to be associated with the masses of jonquils, hyacinths, and pansies, whose notes of color define the unusual width of the main windows, and are equally in evidence against a background of soft white muslin, used as drapery for the curious little bay window on the second story. A few steps lead from the narrow sidewalk to the front door, and a moment later the visitor finds himself in a drawing-room of ample dimensions, reached by way of a tiny vestibule, and covering every inch of space on the north or Mt. Vernon Street side of the house. The maid servant in attendance disappears in search of her mistress, passing up the curved white staircase with crimson carpeting, placed to the left, and treated with due regard for decorative effect. A happy blending of comfort and luxury immediately makes itself felt, while a huge fire-place with a cord log blazing on its hearth easily dominates all other attractions, and finds its way to the heart of many an unacclimated stranger.

Mrs. Deland lives all over her house, the different rooms on the first and second floors being in constant use, and equally familiar to her friends. If she has installed herself in the sunny library overhead, or in the salon opening off of it, you will as likely as not be summoned to join her in one or the other of these pleasant rooms, and will find the same simple yet luxurious appointments--the cheery open fires, the profusion of flowers, the tasteful and harmonious decorations--evenly distributed throughout the entire house. Books are stored away in every conceivable receptacle, Mr. Deland’s taste in this matter, as indeed in most others, being as fully represented as that of his wife. One even runs across a set of book-shelves fitted into the wall at the head of the staircase, where the old-fashioned niche once held its place. But although they are found to exist in such quantities, neither books nor periodicals are allowed to become an annoyance by being left about to crowd out other things and to collect dust. The exquisite neatness and order that prevail speak volumes for the refinement and managerial capacity of the mistress of the house. An authoress is supposedly the least practical of persons; and yet in this one instance an exception must be noted, for there are countless signs that the hand at the helm is both experienced and sure.

Mrs. Deland is of Scottish ancestry on her father’s side of the family, and, as a lineal descendant of John of Gaunt, may be said to have sprung from the house of Lancaster. There is about her something of the freedom and indomitable strength of the Highlands--a look in the clear blue eye, a warmth of coloring, a cut of features, and, above all, a certain unruly assertiveness of stray locks of hair--that awakens memories of the heather and of the wind upon the hills, coming heavily laden with the odor of peat and fresh from its contact with some neighboring loch. And, again, there are moments when other and quite different pictures suggest themselves, as the outcome of a still more subtle relation to the fragrant treasures of her garden--the delicate mignonette, the open-hearted June rose--with just a touch of passion in its veins to make it kin with all the world--and the sensitive convolvulus, lifting its face heavenward to greet the light, but robbed of aspirations when the shadows settle into gloom.

The strong love of flowers finds its expression in a number of ways, and it seems extraordinary that a success which is seldom achieved by those who live in town should crown the efforts of one who apparently has but to touch a plant to make it live. A little fig-tree--the most notable of her triumphs, for it, too, was planted and raised within doors--lifts its branches and bears fruit as the central attraction of a group of tropical plants that flourish near the casement of the dining-room window. An India-rubber plant that is fast assuming proportions which threaten its banishment, spreads its glossy leaves in the middle of the library, and, overladen as it is, one cannot fail to observe that the broad ledge of the window in the rear was arranged with a special view to the well-being of the various blooms seen thereon, and thus given the full benefit of the sunshine.

At the close of the winter Mrs. Deland has a sale of flowers in aid of some good cause, and also for the purpose of demonstrating that the cultivation of such plants as are raised under her roof, with no other care than that given from out of her own busy life, might be made to serve many a gentlewoman of reduced circumstances as a means of support. During the weeks that precede the sale, the house is ablaze with daffodils, and one leaves the snow and ice without, to enter on a scene more suggestive of Florida than of Massachusetts.

A wide diversity of interests draws very different kinds of people under this roof, for the sympathies of those who live under it are of extensive range, and their hospitality is without limit. There are the purely social functions, placing in touch representative members of the world of fashion and those whose gifts or strong individuality have lifted them out of the more conventional lines of thought and action. Mr. Deland, as an authority on football and the inventor of strategic moves which have materially strengthened Harvard’s game, also gathers about him serious amateurs in outdoor sports, and is ever ready to prolong the pleasures of the post-prandial cigar by enthusiastic discussion of moot points.

Meetings in the interests of charitable organizations, civic matters, and all stirring questions of the day, make their demands on the time of a hostess whose tact and responsiveness are unfailing. When some interest of an exclusively feminine nature remains to be dealt with, or that bugbear of the male mind, a ladies’ luncheon-party is in order, the genial host escapes to some such favorite haunt as the St. Botolph or the Tavern Club, leaving an almost startling substitute in the shape of a life-size portrait by the well-known Boston artist, Miss S. G. Putnam, to smile a welcome in his stead. The portrait and the little bay-window first seen from the outside are the most conspicuous features of the upper salon. It is from this window that a view of the sunset and of the distant river may be enjoyed; and in looking up and down the street one cannot fail to observe the fine old mansions on the opposite side of the way, set back a considerable distance from the street, and with enough ground round about them to include in their surroundings old-fashioned grass-plots and flowering shrubs belonging to the past century. In presiding at her table Mrs. Deland does the honors with cordial interest in those grouped about her, and while taking full part in the conversation, always contrives to draw out others, rather than to permit her individual views to be drawn upon.

As one of the first to introduce the use of the chafing-dish, her experiments in this direction must be quoted as unique, not only because of their most excellent results, but in view of the fact that everything that has to be done is so daintily and gracefully accomplished. It is simply astonishing how she continues to hold her place in the general conversation, while quietly mixing and adding the ingredients out of which some particularly delicious _plat_ is to evolve. Everything has been measured out in advance and stands in readiness. This bit of Venetian glass, whose soft colors are intensified by the sunlight playing about it, holds just the proper quantity of cream; that small jug--an infinitesimal specimen of yellow pottery--contains but a spoonful of some dark liquid, as to whose mission the uninitiated may not guess. It is the very poetry of cooking, and it was hardly in the nature of a surprise when a guest whose travels had extended through the East gravely assured Mrs. Deland, on partaking of a preparation which had served as the _pièce de resistance_ of the occasion, that its name as translated from the Persian could only be explained by the significant phrase,--“The Sultan faints with delight”!

As an author Mrs. Deland fully recognizes the importance of systematizing her work, therefore she has long made it a custom to deny herself to every one during the morning hours in order to devote them exclusively to writing. The library, whose attraction has already been referred to, makes an ideal workshop, and as such deserves to rank as far and away the most interesting room in the house. It is usually flooded with sunshine, and is always light, the open fire contributing further brightness, and bringing into requisition a quaint pair of andirons, shaped in the form of two revolutionary soldiers standing on guard.

The window, framing a sheet of glass that might well prove problematic to a less capable housekeeper, gives on the rear of several Chestnut Street houses whose old roofs and old chimneys reach nearly to its level and are directly outside. A faint twittering tells of the presence of those _gamins_ among birds, the sparrows, and a closer search for the little fellows reveals their bright eyes and ruffled feathers, as seen emerging from the crevices into which they have contrived to squeeze themselves in their search for shelter and warmth.

There is space beyond, with only the shifting clouds to gaze upon, and the stillness and repose of the spot speak well for the writer’s chances in regard to the maintenance of moods and consecutive thought. The ill-starred fortunes of “Philip and His Wife” were followed from amid these same peaceful surroundings, and the commodious desk near the window doubtless held manuscript sheets of that tale, as well as of others more recently written. A cast of Mr. Deland’s hand is suspended from one side of the desk, and his share in the possession of the room is indicated by a central writing-table with telephone attachment. If he chances to look up while transacting such business as invades the home, he will meet with the gentle face of one of Lucca della Robia’s angels, or his eyes may wander from this relief, and the mantelpiece against which it is placed, to a large photograph of Boston, and a number of well-selected pictures covering the walls.

Mrs. Deland’s first productions were in verse, and an idea as to their spontaneity may be gathered from the fact that several of the poems which appeared under the title of “In An Old Garden” were originally jotted down upon the leaves of a market-book, to be left in the hands of a friend whose sympathy and belief awakened the first sense of power, and to whom the volume was dedicated. One of these prosaic bits of ruled paper is still in existence. It bears the penciled words of “The Clover,” and, by way of illustration, a graceful spray of the flower, suggestively traced over all, as if thrown upon the page.

When the Delands first went to Kennebunkport, it was a little fishing village of the most primitive kind, and life there, in the summer time, was refreshingly simple and unconstrained. A cottage was selected within a stone’s throw of the river, and Mr. Deland’s yacht, with its picturesque Venetian-red sails, became a feature of the scene. A disused barn, in a nook among the hills, was found to possess a charming outlook, and was immediately turned into a study. In this retreat “Sidney” was written. The glory of the garden proved a thing to be remembered, and its mistress was never happier than when delving among her treasures. Kennebunkport has grown into a popular summer resort, with its hordes of transient visitors, its countless hotels and boarding-houses; but the Delands pass their days in much the same fashion as when the pleasures of the river and the charm of the surrounding country seemed to belong to them alone.

That our authoress still counts her garden the most fascinating spot on earth, may be gathered from her own words:--“I am rather fond of rising at five o’clock in the morning, and of going out to weed when every blade of grass and every leaf is beaded with dew; and if the tide is high, and the sun comes shining over the hills on the wide blue river--weeding is an enchanting occupation.”

LUCIA PURDY.

F. MARION CRAWFORD

F. MARION CRAWFORD

AT SORRENTO

To most people who have travelled in the south of Italy the name of Sorrento recalls one of the loveliest places in the world, which has been so often and so well described that it forms part of the mental picture-gallery even of those who have never been there. We all seem to know the cheerful little town, perched high above the glorious bay, and crowded with tourists during more than half the year. On any bright morning, especially in early spring, the tiny shops in the principal street fairly swarm with strangers, to whom polite and polyglot dealers sell ornaments of tortoise-shell and lava, silk sashes which will look like impressionist rainbows under sober English skies, and endless boxes and book-shelves of inlaid woods, destined to fall to pieces under the fiery breath of the American furnace. In contrast to these frivolous travellers one may also see the conscientious Germans, whose long-saved pence are thriftily expended, seeking out every possible and impossible haunt of Tasso’s ghost, with the aid of Baedeker, the apostle of modern travel.

Comparatively few of this constantly changing company ever think of taking the side street which runs between the high-road to Castellamare and the sea, and it is possible to spend some time at Sorrento without having seen the home of Marion Crawford at all. Follow this side street, called the “rota,” because it curves like the rim of a wheel, and you will find yourself presently going back toward Naples, shut in on either hand by the high walls of villas and gardens, over which the orange and lemon and olive trees look down into the dusty lane. Just across the boundary line between Sorrento and the village of Sant’ Agnello, named after a martial abbot who is said to have fought the Turks, as many a churchman did in his time, there stands a sedate old inn, the Cocumella, or Little Gourd, which is a complete contrast to the two great hotels in the larger town. It was once the property of the Jesuits, and the King Ferdinand of Naples who was Nelson’s friend, nobly generous with the belongings of others, after the manner of kings, gave it, with the adjoining church, to the forefather of its present owner. The house has been an inn ever since, but the title to the church has never been settled, and the building is kept in repair by the landlord as a sort of courtesy to Heaven. To this old-fashioned inn many Italians and quiet English families come for the season, and it was in a cave or grotto at the foot of its garden, which slopes toward the cliff, whence there is a steep descent through the rocks to the sea, that Mr. Crawford wrote “To Leeward” and “Saracinesca,” before he married and bought his present house.

Beyond the Cocumella lies the parish of Sant’ Agnello, a village quite independent of its more fashionable neighbor, with a post-office and a few little shops of its own. Keeping to the lane, at about an English mile from Sorrento, a quaint old Capuchin monastery is reached on the left, with a small church and a rambling almshouse just showing above a high white-washed wall, which runs on to a gateway of gray stone over which ivy hangs in masses, while on each side the name of the place, “Villa Crawford,” is carved in plain block letters. The heavy dark-green doors of the gate stand hospitably open, and show the straight, narrow drive, bordered with roses, geraniums, and jasmine, and leading down to a square garden-court, not large but full of flowers and crooked old olive trees, over which wistaria has been trained from one to the other, so that in spring they are a mass of delicate bloom and fragrance. The house is very simple, built of rough stone partly stuccoed, as usual in that part of Italy, and irregular in shape because it has been added to from time to time. When Mr. Crawford took it for a season, soon after his marriage to a daughter of General Berdan, it was in such a very tumble-down condition that when the fierce winter gales swept over snow-clad Vesuvius from the northeast, the teeth of every lock chattered and the carpets rose in billows along the tiled floors. But the site is one of the most beautiful on the whole bay, for the house stands on the edge of a cliff which falls abruptly nearly two hundred feet to the water, and since Mr. Crawford bought it he has strengthened it with a solid tower which can be seen for some distance out at sea.

The front door opens directly upon a simple hall where there are plants in tubs, and a tall old monastery clock stands near the door leading to the stone staircase. The long drawing-room opens upon a tiled terrace, and is almost always full of sunshine, the scent of flowers, and the voices of children. It cannot be said to be furnished in the modern style, but it contains many objects which could only have been collected by people having both taste and opportunity. When in Constantinople, many years ago, Mr. Crawford was so fortunate as to find an unusually large quantity of the beautiful Rhodes embroidery formerly worked by the women of the Greek islands for the Knights of Malta, of which none has been made for over a hundred years. The pattern always consists of Maltese crosses, in every possible variety of design, embroidered in dark-red silk on a coarse linen ground which is entirely covered. Draped here and there the effect is exceedingly rich and soft, as well as striking, and some fine old Persian armor over the doors tells of a visit which the author and his wife made to the Caucasus during one of his rare holidays. A magnificent portrait of Mrs. Crawford by Lenbach, a gift from the artist to her husband, was painted during a winter spent at Munich; and on the opposite wall hangs a brilliant water-color drawing of a Moorish warrior, by Villegas, presented by him to Mrs. Crawford after a visit to his studio in Rome. On a table placed against the back of an upright piano, among a number of more or less curious and valuable objects, lies the large gold medal of the Prix Monbinne, the only prize ever given by the French Academy to foreign men-of-letters, which was awarded to Mr. Crawford for the French editions of “Zoroaster” and “Marzio’s Crucifix.”

A door leads from one end of the drawing-room into the library, a high square room completely lined with old carved bookcases of black walnut, built more than two hundred years ago for Cardinal Altieri before he became Pope Clement the Tenth, and of which the wanderings, down to their final sale, would be an interesting bit of Roman social history. The library is not a workroom, but the place where the author’s books are kept in careful order, those he needs at any time being carried up to his study and brought down again when no longer wanted. There are about five thousand volumes, very largely books of reference and classics, partly collected by the author himself, and in part inherited from his uncle, the late Samuel Ward, and his father-in-law, General Berdan. The room is so full that one large bookcase has been placed in the middle, so that both sides of it are used. Besides the books the library contains only a writing-table, three or four chairs, and a bronze bust of Mr. Ward.

But it is hard to think of these rooms without their inmates--the father, who is at his best, as he certainly is at his happiest, in his own house, the beautiful and gracious mother, and the four strikingly handsome children, with their healthy simplicity and unconsciousness which speak of that ideal home life which is the author’s highest fortune. The eldest child is a girl of twelve, “as fair as wheat,” with thoughtful eyes; next comes a boy two years younger, much darker in coloring, and with a face already full of expression; and last a pair of twins of eight, a boy and a girl--she with a nimbus of curly golden hair that makes her look like a saint by Fra Angelico, and he a singularly grave and sturdy little fellow, whose present energies are bent on being a sailor-man--a disposition which he gains fairly, for Mr. Crawford’s friends know that if he might have consulted only the natural bent of his mind, he would have followed the sea as his profession. From early boyhood he has passed the happiest hours of his leisure on board a boat, and he is as proficient in the management of the picturesque but dangerous felluca as any native skipper along the coast.

When he bought an old New York pilot-boat, in 1896, he was admitted to the examination of the Association of American Ship-masters in consideration of his long experience, and he holds a proper ship-master’s certificate authorizing him to navigate sailing-vessels on the high seas. He proved his ability by navigating his little schooner across the Atlantic with entire success, and without the slightest assistance from the mate he took with him. This episode in a life which has had more variety than falls to the lot of most men shows clearly the predominant trait of Marion Crawford’s character, which is determination to follow out anything he undertakes until he knows how it should be done, even if he has not the time to work at it much afterward. Readers of “Casa Braccio” may have noticed that the old cobbler who is Paul Griggs’s friend is described with touches which show acquaintance with his trade, the fact being that while the author was preparing for college in the English village which he describes later in “A Tale of a Lonely Parish,” he made a pair of shoes “to see how it was done,” as he also joined the local bell-ringers to become familiar with the somewhat complicated system of peals and chimes. Mere curiosity is like the clutch of a child’s hand, which usually means nothing, and may break what it seizes, but the insatiable thirst for knowledge of all kinds is entirely different, and has always formed part of the true artistic temperament.

The description of silver chiselling in “Marzio’s Crucifix” is the result of actual experience, for Mr. Crawford once studied this branch of art, and produced several objects of considerable promise. In rebuilding and adding to his house he has never employed an architect, for he is a good practical builder and stone-mason, as well as a creditable mathematician, and his foreman in all such work is a clever laborer who can neither read nor write. Like many left-handed men, he is skilful in the use of tools, and his mechanical capacity was tested recently when, having taken out a complete system of American plumbing, including a kitchen boiler, he could find no workmen who understood such appliances, and so put them all in himself, with the help of two or three plumbers whose knowledge did not extend beyond soldering a joint. When the job was done everything worked perfectly, to his justifiable satisfaction. As he is a very fair classical scholar and an excellent linguist, he could easily support himself as a tutor if it were necessary, or he might even attain to the awful dignity of a high-class courier.

His study or workroom at Villa Crawford is on the top of the house, by the tower, and opens upon a flat roof, after the Italian fashion. There are windows on three sides, as it is often important to be able to shut out the sun without losing too much light; the walls are simply white-washed, and the floor is of green and white tiles. In the middle there is a very large table, with a shelf at the back on which stand in a row a number of engravings and etchings, most of which were given him by his wife, prominent among them being “The Knight, Death, and the Devil,” by Dürer, mentioned in the beginning of “A Rose of Yesterday.” A small revolving bookcase full of books of reference has its place close to his hand, and his writing chair is of the most ordinary American pattern. The large plain brick fireplace projects into the room, and on the broad mantel-shelf stands a replica of his father Thomas Crawford’s Peri, a winged figure, fully draped, gazing sadly toward the forfeited paradise. On one wall hangs an engraving by Van Dalen after a portrait of Giorgione by Titian, of which the original has been destroyed, and on another a large photograph of Giorgione’s Knight of Malta, and small ones of his pilot-schooner as she looked when he crossed the ocean in her, and as she appears now, transformed into the yacht Alda, and refitted so that his wife and children may accompany him on the cruises which form his usual vacations. The effect of the room as a whole is severe and simple, but the view from its windows is most beautiful and varied. To the south lie olive-clad hills, with white houses dotted here and there among orange-groves, and with the craggy mass of Monte Sant’ Angelo, rising higher than Vesuvius itself, for a background; westward one looks over Sant’ Agnello and the neighboring townships, and to the northeast, across the shining bay, the curved white line of Naples stretches far along the shore, while Vesuvius broods fatefully over the villages at its feet.

Mr. Crawford is an early riser, being usually at his writing-table between six and seven o’clock. If it is winter he lights his own fire, and in any season begins the day, like most people who have lived much in southern countries, with a small cup of black coffee and a pipe. About nine o’clock he goes down-stairs to spend an hour with his wife and children, and then returns to his study and works uninterruptedly until luncheon, which in summer is an early dinner. In warm weather the household goes to sleep immediately after this meal, to re-assemble toward five o’clock; but the author often works straight through this time, always, however, giving the late afternoon and evening to his family. The common impression that the south of Italy is unbearably hot in summer is due to the fact that the guide-books in general use are written by Germans or Englishmen, whose blood boils at what seems to us a very tolerable temperature. Inland cities like Milan and Florence often suffer from oppressive heat, but records show that neither at Naples nor at Palermo does the thermometer mark so high as in New York, and at Sorrento it rarely goes above 84°. On Sundays, after early church, parents and children go off in a boat to some one of the many lovely spots which are to be found among the rocks along the shore, taking with them fire-wood, a kettle, and all that is necessary for a “macaronata,” or macaroni picnic. The sailors do the cooking, while the children look on or go in swimming with their father, and when the simple feast is over the rest of the afternoon is spent in sailing over the bay, perhaps as far as Capri if the breeze holds.

While every one acknowledges Marion Crawford’s talent as a story-teller, he is sometimes reproached with inventing impossible situations, or at least straining probability, which is only another illustration of the old saying about fact and fiction, for in each of the cases usually referred to he has set down what actually happened. The triple tragedy in “Greifenstein” was a terrible fact in a noble German family before the middle of the present century, and the son of the house, the last of his race, entered the Church and died a Cardinal. In “Casa Braccio,” the elopement of the nun and the burning of the substituted body took place in South America exactly as described, and the story was told to the author by a person who had met the real Gloria. The incident of Don Teodoro in “Taquisara,” who, although not ordained, acted as a priest for many years, occurred in the neighborhood of Rome, and there have been two well-known cases in which priests kept the secret of the confessional as Don Ippolito does in “Corleone,” but with the difference that they were both convicted of crimes which they had not committed, one being sent to the mines of Siberia, the other to a French penal colony.

The impression, quite generally entertained, that Mr. Crawford throws off one book after another as fast as he can write them down, is based upon a misapprehension of his method of working. For months, or even for several years, a subject is constantly in his mind, and he spares no study to improve his rendering of it. Travellers in Arabia, for instance, have commended the “local color” of his “Khaled,” which, however, is quite as much due to patient reading as to imagination, for he has never been there. The actual writing of his stories is done quickly, partly because few authors have had such large experience of all the mechanical work connected with literature. From early manhood he has been entirely dependent on his own resources, and during his two years’ editorship of an Indian newspaper he practically wrote it all every day, correcting the proof into the bargain. After his return to America, and before writing “Mr. Isaacs,” he supported himself by any literary work that he could get, during which time, by the way, he was a frequent contributor to _The Critic_. The man so often called “a born story-teller” is also a careful student, especially reverent of the precious inheritance of our language, and some of his works are now used as class-books for the study of modern English literature throughout this country, a fact which may easily escape the knowledge of the novel-reading public which owes him so much pleasure.

Mr. Crawford has made a success at play-writing as well as at novel writing. His “In the Palace of the King,” which has been played so successfully by Miss Viola Allen, was a play before he turned it into a novel, and he has recently written a drama founded on a new version of the story of Francesca and Paola, which Madame Sarah Bernhardt has produced with great success.

WILLIAM BOND.

PAUL LEICESTER FORD

PAUL LEICESTER FORD

THE MAN OF AFFAIRS AND THE MAN OF LETTERS

Long-suffering prominence, among its numerous woes, has at times to subject itself to snap-shot portraiture; but occasionally a friendly and amateurish zeal, seeking honest results, brings the person of note to the advantage of a long exposure, and then perchance educes finenesses and personalities neglected by the swifter method. I should like, if I may, to use the slower and truer means in a sketch of Mr. Paul Leicester Ford, who has of late, by reason of an unquestioned reputation, been compelled to stand from behind the vanguard of his books and show himself as a notability. In contrast therefore to various pen views which have presented Mr. Ford as all sorts and conditions of a man, it ought to be possible for a friendly candor to delineate his life and purposes without passing just limitations. Paraphrasing his own playfully bold title, I seek to portray “The True Mr. Ford,” entertaining the while that proportionate sense of demerit which I am sure restrained him as he limned the outlines of Washington.

The accrediting of unusual ability to heredity and environment alone fails to satisfy; for what we most wish to understand is the actual and not the probable resultant. Nevertheless it will never do to omit from the reckoning Mr. Ford’s innate tendencies and the slowly formed impulses made upon him and upon his equally remarkable brother, Worthington Chauncey Ford, by their father’s superb library, of which in a manner, but in a different degree, each is the incarnation. Puritan stock, absolutely pure, except where there is a crossing of the Huguenot on the paternal side--there is no choicer graft than that--a temperament stimulated by the nervous excitations of the cosmopolitan life of New York, and a scholarship sound yet unacademic and not held by the leash of college traditions--these, as I see them, are the factors, any of which taken from him would have made Mr. Ford quite other than he is. Yet the aggregate of such components most assuredly does not constitute his genius; for genius as distinguished from marked ability he undoubtedly possesses. It has before now been told that on his mother’s side he is the grandson of Professor Fowler of Amherst, the great-grandson of Noah Webster, and the grandson four times removed of President Charles Chauncey of Harvard College, and of Governor Bradford; and from this last worthy ancestor he comes honestly by his fondness for a manuscript. This is good blood to run through one’s veins, even in a remote generation. There is an added vigor from his mother, who, early expanded under favoring influences, had the native mental strength and moral sureness of a cultivated New England woman. His father, the late Gordon L. Ford, though known and honored as a successful lawyer and man of affairs, was, to those who had the closer knowledge of him, an idealist of the type which does not readily pursue other than the highest ends, and which cannot throw open the reserves of its nature.

There is then in his make-up a curious balance of conservative tendencies and a due share of remonstrance and even of headlong radicalism. To a superb mental equipment is to be added a physical constitution strong enough to have pulled him through an infancy and childhood full of peril and no doubt of suffering, and to have landed him in manhood’s estate with a vivacious and courageous disposition, a master of his fate. He is also endowed with an almost superhuman capacity for work. It may be that, conscious of hidden frailties of tenure, the impulse is within him to burn his candle of life fiercely; but I am disposed the rather to think that in his case this use of energy is mainly a question of superior “horse power”--he is able to work more than most of us, and therefore he does. But great capacity does not always so express itself; and it would be unjust, unless one chose to regard Mr. Ford as precocious in youth and phenomenal at all times, not to recognize that the fate which distributes gifts to mortals gave him Opportunity. Free, if he so wished, to follow his own devices and to take the joys of life without undue exertion, he was wise enough, at an age when most youth sows an unprofitable crop on stony ground, to plant in the fertile furrows which a farseeing father had sedulously made ready for him. As for education and the discipline of school life, so wholesome for the most of us, there was for him literally none of it. His nursery, his primary school, and his college all may be found within the four walls of his father’s library. The books held within the quiet residence in Clark Street, Brooklyn, must now be nearer 100,000 than 50,000 in number. They fill all parts of the large house fashioned in the manner of fifty years ago, but their headquarters are in the library proper, a room at the rear, over fifty feet square, and reached from the main floor by a short flight of steps. This room is well but not glaringly lighted by a lantern at the top, while the sides, with the exception of a few small windows of no great utility owing to the tallness of surrounding buildings, are fully taken up with books to the height of eight feet. The floor is covered in part by large rugs; the walls and ceilings are of serious tint; a fireplace is opposite the entrance; while sofas of most dissimilar pattern and meant seemingly to hold any burden but a human one, are placed “disposedly” about; chairs, easy but not seductive, are in plenty, but like the sofas give notice that here is a government not of men but of books--here there is no library built for the lust of the flesh and pride of the eye, but for books and for those who use them. I cannot suppose that those smitten of bibliophily would thrill over the Ford library, since it exists for the practical and virile, although it is, in parts, exceedingly choice. Roughly classified to suit the easy memories of the owners, it presents an appearance urbane and unprecise rather than military and commanding. At irregular intervals loom huge masses of books, pamphlets, papers, proof-sheets, and engravings in cataclysmic disorder and apparently suspended in mid-air like the coffin of the False Prophet, but in fact resting on tables well hidden by the superincumbent piles. In this room the father slowly accumulated this priceless treasure mostly illustrative of American history and its adjuncts, thereby gratifying his own accurate tastes and hoping, as we may suppose, that his children would ultimately profit by his foresight. Nor was he disappointed; for the two brothers, Paul and Worthington, drew their milk, historically speaking, from this exhaustless fount, and it is thus impossible to disconnect the labors and successes of these two unusual men from their association with this library. Not in books alone, but in many choice autograph letters, rare portraits and plates, and much unpublished material consists the value of the collection.

One who did not know Mr. Ford, on entering the room and beholding for the first time the Sierras of books, fronted by foot-hills and drumlins of unfinished work, sale catalogues, letters, and other detritus, might well suppose him to be the most careless of mortals. This would be to misjudge; for though no one else could fathom his methods, Mr. Ford turns readily to what he wants, and given the right haystack, finds his needle with astonishing ease. Like many another man of ability, he does not enslave himself to organization, but uses method only in proportion to direct needs.

The secret of his astonishing capacity for work and production is not far to seek. He is by nature and by predilection a man of affairs and of business. The accident of life has directed his energies toward books and letters. But he is not a literary man in the sense that he is to be identified with a class, for in the best sense he is _déclassé_. So far as there may be genius burning within him, it must express itself during moments of inspiration; but the between-times are not spent in dreams or vain imaginings, but in an almost relentless absorption in some historical or editorial task, requiring fidelity and energy rather than fitful moods.

I do not now discern what at one time I feared that I might--carelessness, or an effect of haste, in the large mass of results to which this author has already put his name. On the contrary it seems to me that more and more he tends toward painstaking care, and there is good reason to predict that his best and possibly most brilliant work is yet to come. Regarding one work, since published, he has told me that, having already pushed a long way toward the end and finding that the affair went slowly, of a sudden it was borne in upon him that he was on the wrong track. In a moment he swept 30,000 words of manuscript into his basket and started anew and with a good heart. A great organizing capacity, a power of maintained effort, and a willingness to take unstinted trouble, render the large volume of his achievements as acceptable as the small bulk of another’s work. Faults I think Mr. Ford has had, and still has, but it would be proper even for the nicest criticism to discover a sure advance in the quality of his style. Personally I have never been able to explain satisfactorily the success of his most popular book, “The Honorable Peter Stirling.” It is almost without a “literary” quip or term or phrase; the politics present a stiff dose to novel readers, a class too satiated with an unvarying diet not to crave spicier viands than those served to them by the love motive of Mr. Ford’s story. Why then has this proved to be one of the three stories of the past two years and more? I do not know, unless it be that Mr. Ford, who is no egotist and not exclusive in his sympathies, reflects in this book a genuine if unsentimental faith in human nature of every degree. To such a faith humanity is always responsive. He did not come crying in the wilderness with acrimony and fanaticism, but gave the prototype of a gentleman of the heart and not of long ancestry--a pure man in all things, even in metropolitan politics, who stamped on evil, not shrank from it. There was a cry for a politician who could be something to the “boys” besides a prig, and Mr. Ford, _haud inexpertus_, produced him. It was bread and not a stone, and the democracy, rampant yet not unclean, heard him gladly.