Chapter XI: A Sick Man Who Never Gave Up

Francis Parkman was born at Boston on September 16, 1823. He had a fairly good start in life. He lived in a fine large brick house of three stories, with good big lawns and lots of room, so that any boy could have a real good time. There were flowers and fruit trees in abundance, and no doubt young Francis thought himself a very lucky boy.

When he was eight years of age he went to live on a farm with his grandfather, and remained there for nearly five years. It was during this time that he began to take a keen interest in nature. When not at school he spent most of his time collecting eggs, insects, reptiles, trapping squirrels, woodchucks, and other animals. All his life he was greatly interested in animals, and many good stories are told about him. Once when he was sitting at his desk in school a snake which had revived in the warmth of the schoolroom stuck its head out of his pocket, much to the consternation and alarm of some pupils sitting near.

His father was a minister, and one Sunday morning while Rev. Dr. Parkman and his wife were walking solemnly down the street to church with Francis close behind, Mrs. Parkman noticed a smile on the faces of those they passed. She turned around to see what was the matter, and there was Francis carrying by the tail, at arm's length, a dead rat. His father made him throw away the rat and walk with more dignity.

His favourite subject at school was history. He was especially interested in reading about Indians. By the time he was seventeen he made up his mind to write a history of the Indian wars, and this resolution became the controlling power of his life. From that time on he never lost an opportunity of studying Indian life. Nearly all his vacations were spent either with Indian tribes or in carefully going over ground which had been the scenes of many fierce conflicts.

About this time Francis Parkman began to have trouble both with his eyes and his heart. He consulted several doctors and travelled extensively, seeking to improve his health. For this reason, and also in order to better acquaint himself with the manners and customs of Indians, he joined a band of Indians on their way to the remote West. During this extensive trip he suffered great pain, yet he knew that it would be unwise to complain or show signs of weakness. Day after day he faced the hardships of a strange life, riding daily on horseback over a wild country, and taking his share with the Indians in hunting buffalo.

Instead of improving his health this trip greatly weakened him, and probably did him permanent injury. He could not digest the food that was given him; he became so faint and dizzy that he had to be helped into the saddle, and at times his mind lost its clearness. He could not sleep at nights, and from that time until his death he rarely, if ever, enjoyed a good night's sleep. When he got three hours' sleep out of twenty-four he thought himself lucky. Most of the time he got even less than this. He was attacked with rheumatic gout, which particularly affected one of his knees. This caused him intense suffering, and for many years he could only hobble around with the aid of a stick.

Francis Parkman, while still in his early twenties, was a sick man. He had so many disorders that he was never free from pain. Often the pain was so intense that he could not concentrate on any subject. He used to refer to his many troubles as "the enemy", and this can be said to his credit, that he never ceased to fight "the enemy". He had amazing courage; probably not one man in ten thousand could have been so brave and cheerful with so much physical pain.

He felt his misfortunes all the more because he so much admired strong men. As a boy, one of the great ambitions of his life had been to become strong physically. One thing which he so much admired about the Indians was their great agility and endurance. And so very early in life, he began to avoid habits which would undermine his strength. For such a man, admiring the physically strong as he did, it became a terrible trial for him to have to go through life as an invalid.

In the spring of 1848 he began to write the "History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac." He did this partly because he felt that to have a strong purpose, and to keep his mind occupied, would help him partly to forget his troubles. In view of his condition it was a great task to attempt. His eyes were so extremely weak that he could not write his own name except by closing them. His brain would not permit him to work for more than a few minutes at a time. Every effort he made cost him a good deal of pain. He caused a wooden frame to be constructed of the same size and shape as a sheet of paper. Stout wires were fixed horizontally across it, half an inch apart, and a movable back of thick pasteboard fitted behind them. The paper for writing was placed between the pasteboard and the wires, guided by which, and using a black lead crayon, he could write fairly well with closed eyes.

He made notes for his book with eyes closed, and these were afterwards read to him until they had become thoroughly fixed in his memory. But under such terrible handicaps did he work, that for a year and a half he only averaged six lines of writing each day.

The fact that he could not use his eyes in writing made his work very slow indeed. He had to depend upon the eyes of others. Often he would go to a public library with some educated person and for hours listen to passages from books which were likely to help him. If he had been well he could have seen at a glance what books were worth spending his time over. As it was he had to listen to a great many unimportant and tedious details.

Even when he was fairly well his condition was such that he could not listen to any person reading for more than an hour or two each day and that with frequent intervals of rest. It was all painfully slow and tedious work and it is not hard to believe what he wrote in the following words: "Taking the last forty years as a whole, the capacity for literary work which during that time has fallen to my share has, I am confident, been considerably less than a fourth part of what it would have been under normal conditions."

In 1851 Francis Parkman published "The Conspiracy of Pontiac" in two volumes. Fourteen years later he published "The Pioneers of France in the New World". Then followed, "The Jesuits in North America", "LaSalle and the Discovery of the Great West", "The Old Regime", "Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV", "Montcalm and Wolfe" and "A Half Century of Conflict".

All those books were marked by the author's extraordinary accuracy. One could have forgiven a man who was in such great pain if he had shown signs of carelessness, yet a lack of thoroughness was the one thing which annoyed Francis Parkman. He expected other people to be thorough and painstaking in their work, and he carried it out in his own life. If there was the least doubt about any statement he would not rest until he had looked carefully into the matter. As a result his books probably rank as the most reliable authorities on Indian life, customs and history. The thoroughness and accuracy of his books is admitted by all. During the period 1848 to 1867 he never knew a day when his body was not racked with pain, and yet the books he wrote during these years of severe suffering are a model of first-class workmanship.

Many great universities hastened to honour the scholar who had worked under such great difficulties. In 1879 McGill University conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Laws and Languages, and Harvard University honoured him with the same degree in 1889. He was made an honourary member of over twenty scientific societies in Great Britain and America. He died in 1893 at the age of seventy. Thus came to an end the life of one who, in spite of terrible handicaps, became one of the greatest historians of his age.