Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

Dr. Lederle, Health Commissioner of New York City, says that while typhoid vaccination is likely to prove of untold benefit, other specific improvements should be made. There should be a more perfect control of the milk-supply. At present there is no central testing-station. He recommends also an improved method of sewage disposal, either by treatment or by carrying it farther out to sea, thus preventing pollution of the harbor. There should be a drainage of surrounding land to do away with mosquitos; improved methods of street-cleaning that would result in the prevention of flying dust-clouds; and the open garbage receptacles and dumps should be abolished in favor of cremation of all refuse. The campaign against the fly must be carried on more vigorously every year, and immediate steps are to be taken for the protection of all foods from fly contamination. This will be an extension of the control of food, together with the proper filtration of the public water-supply. Dr. Lederle says further that increased hospital facilities for contagious diseases are needed. There will be further popular education in sanitary matters, special stress being laid on the need of fresh air in homes, schools, factories, offices, theaters, and churches; and a comprehensive publication will be made, chiefly for the aid of the poorer classes, of the comparative nutritive and cost values of foods; and further changes in the customs of the time, due to these plans and to other activities, will result in a simpler manner of living. This should render overeating less frequent and reduce the consumption of alcohol and medicines.

Finally, in addition to these efforts, which are under the direction of public officers, the health commissioner declares that if the death-rate is to be further reduced, there must be in the immediate future two changes: first, a definite advance in bacteriological knowledge; and, second, a change in the attitude toward the health of our adult population.

“Save the babies!” was the cry of the last decade. “Save the middle-aged!” will be the cry of this. The real race suicide is not in the insufficiency of births, but in the inadequate knowledge of the diseases of maturity, and in the inadequate care and prevention of these diseases. Deaths from arterio-sclerosis, apoplexy, kidney affections, stomach disorders, and cancer are continuously on the increase, and have been for ten years past. Of the 75,000 persons that died in New York in 1911, 17,000 died of “middle-age complaints.”

The intense life of New Yorkers, their intemperance in eating, drinking, and working, contributes chiefly to the increase in the middle-age death-rate. However, Bright’s disease, diabetes, and cancer are not more a mystery than diphtheria was before antitoxin was discovered. Bacteriology has its fields of further effort well laid out in those directions.

It is the contention of those that give their lives to the study of the subject that “public health is a purchasable commodity.” The struggle, then, is between the death-rate and the dollar rate. Contribute more money to the cause of public health, and the death-rate will go down. Forty thousand babies were saved in 1910 at an average cost of eighteen dollars. It would have cost more to bury them, as the cheapest sort of funeral costs twenty-five dollars.

The appropriation for the care of the public health in New York is not niggardly; it is larger than in most cities. Still, it is not enough. Where the health officers ask for a dollar and a half, they get a dollar. The excuse is that the rest of the desired money is needed to improve parks and streets, for the police and fire departments, for the city government, the water-fronts, etc. Besides, the people of this city are absolutely obliged to spend about $100,000,000 a year on automobiles, candy, theaters, alcoholic drinks, tobacco, diamonds, and such other urgent needs of life. What is left over, after those necessities are provided for, goes toward the preservation of health!

The average expectation of life for man varies in different countries in direct proportion to the application of efficient principles of hygiene and sanitation. In India, for instance, where sanitation is low and the majority of the population live, like Kim, on “the ravellings of circumstance,” the average duration of life is less than twenty-five years. In Sweden and Denmark, where life is methodical and ideals are high, and the Government takes up the ash-heaps regularly, a normal man may expect to live more than seventy years. In Massachusetts, which is the only one of our States to furnish us with reliable statistics, the average duration of life is forty-five years. Wherever sanitary science is active, the length of life is steadily increasing. In India it is stationary; in Europe it has doubled in the last 350 years; in New York, as we have seen, it has doubled within the last half-century. Despite the many obstacles, it seems likely that when the next general census is taken the death-rate of the metropolis will be down to thirteen per thousand. With such a rate, every person in the city may expect to live to be seventy years old. And most of them will say, “Isn’t that old enough?”

THE ILLUSION OF PROGRESS[2]

BY KENYON COX

In these days all of us, even Academicians, are to some extent believers in progress. Our golden age is no longer in the past, but in the future. We know that our early ancestors were a race of wretched cave-dwellers, and we believe that our still earlier ancestors were possessed of tails and pointed ears. Having come so far, we are sometimes inclined to forget that not every step has been an advance, and to entertain an illogical confidence that each future step must carry us still further forward; having indubitably progressed in many things, we think of ourselves as progressing in all. And as the pace of progress in science and in material things has become more and more rapid, we have come to expect a similar pace in art and letters, to imagine that the art of the future must be far finer than the art of the present or than that of the past, and that the art of one decade, or even of one year, must supersede that of the preceding decade or the preceding year, as the 1913 model in automobiles supersedes the model of 1912. More than ever before “To have done, is to hang quite out of fashion,” and the only title to consideration is to do something quite obviously new or to proclaim one’s intention of doing something newer. The race grows madder and madder. It is hardly two years since we first heard of “Cubism” and already the “Futurists” are calling the “Cubists” reactionary. Even the gasping critics, pounding manfully in the rear, have thrown away all impedimenta of traditional standards in the desperate effort to keep up with what seems less a march than a stampede.

But while we talk so loudly of progress in the arts we have an uneasy feeling that we are not really progressing. If our belief in our own art were as full-blooded as was that of the great creative epochs, we should scarce be so reverent of the art of the past. It is, perhaps, a sign of anemia that we have become founders of museums and conservers of old buildings. If we are so careful of our heritage, it is surely from some doubt of our ability to replace it. When art has been vigorously alive, it has been ruthless in its treatment of what has gone before. No cathedral builder thought of reconciling his own work to that of the builder who preceded him; he built in his own way, confident of its superiority. And when the Renaissance builder came, in his turn, he contemptuously dismissed all medieval art as “Gothic” and barbarous, and was as ready to tear down an old façade as to build a new one. Even the most cock-sure of our moderns might hesitate to emulate Michelangelo in his calm destruction of three frescos by Perugino to make room for his own “Last Judgment.” He at least had the full courage of his convictions, and his opinion of Perugino is of record.

Not all of us would consider even Michelangelo’s arrogance entirely justified, but it is not only the Michelangelos who have had this belief in themselves. Apparently the confidence of progress has been as great in times that now seem to us decadent as in times that we think of as truly progressive. The past, or at least the immediate past, has always seemed “out of date,” and each generation, as it made its entrance on the stage, has plumed itself upon its superiority to that which was leaving it. The architect of the most debased baroque grafted his “improvements” upon the buildings of the high Renaissance with an assurance not less than that with which David and his contemporaries banished the whole charming art of the eighteenth century. Van Orley and Frans Floris were as sure of their advance upon the ancient Flemish painting of the Van Eycks and of Memling as Rubens himself must have been of his advance upon them.

We can see plainly enough that in at least some of these cases the sense of progress was an illusion. There was movement, but it was not always forward movement. And if progress was illusory in some instances, may it not, possibly, have been so in all? It is at least worth inquiry how far the fine arts have ever been in a state of true progress, going forward regularly from good to better, each generation building on the work of its predecessors and surpassing that work, in the way in which science has normally progressed when material conditions were favorable.

If, with a view to answering this question, we examine, however cursorily, the history of the five great arts, we shall find a somewhat different state of affairs in the case of each. In the end it may be possible to formulate something like a general rule that shall accord with all the facts. Let us begin with the greatest and simplest of the arts, the art of poetry.

In the history of poetry we shall find less evidence of progress than anywhere else, for it will be seen that its acknowledged masterpieces are almost invariably near the beginning of a series rather than near the end. Almost as soon as a clear and flexible language has been formed by any people, a great poem has been composed in that language, which has remained not only unsurpassed, but unequaled, by any subsequent work. Homer is for us, as he was for the Greeks, the greatest of their poets; and if the opinion could be taken of all cultivated readers in those nations that have inherited the Greek tradition, it is doubtful whether he would not be acclaimed the greatest poet of the ages. Dante has remained the first of Italian poets, as he was one of the earliest. Chaucer, who wrote when our language was transforming itself from Anglo-Saxon into English, has still lovers who are willing for his sake to master what is to them almost a foreign tongue, and yet other lovers who ask for new translations of his works into our modern idiom; while Shakspere, who wrote almost as soon as that transformation had been accomplished, is universally reckoned one of the greatest of world-poets. There have, indeed, been true poets at almost all stages of the world’s history, but the preëminence of such masters as these can hardly be questioned, and if we looked to poetry alone for a type of the arts, we should almost be forced to conclude that art is the reverse of progressive. We should think of it as gushing forth in full splendor when the world is ready for it, and as unable ever again to rise to the level of its fount.

The art of architecture is later in its beginning than that of poetry, for it can exist only when men have learned to build solidly and permanently. A nomad may be a poet, but he cannot be an architect; a herdsman might have written the Book of Job, but the great builders are dwellers in cities. But since men first learned to build they have never quite forgotten how to do so. At all times there have been somewhere peoples who knew enough of building to mold its utility into forms of beauty, and the history of architecture may be read more continuously than that of any other art. It is a history of constant change and of continuous development, each people and each age forming out of the old elements a new style which should express its mind, and each style reaching its point of greatest distinctiveness only to begin a further transformation into something else; but is it a history of progress? Building, indeed, has progressed at one time or another. The Romans, with their domes and arches, were more scientific builders than the Greeks, with their simple post and lintel, but were they better architects? We of to-day, with our steel construction, can scrape the sky with erections that would have amazed the boldest of medieval craftsmen; can we equal his art? If we ask where in the history of architecture do its masterpieces appear, the answer must be “Almost anywhere.” Wherever men have had the wealth and the energy to build greatly, they have builded beautifully, and the distinctions are less between style and style or epoch and epoch than between building and building. The masterpieces of one time are as the masterpieces of another, and no man may say that the nave of Amiens is finer than the Parthenon or that the Parthenon is nobler than the nave of Amiens. One may say only that each is perfect in its kind, a supreme expression of the human spirit.

Of the art of music I must speak with the diffidence becoming to the ignorant; but it seems to me to consist of two elements and to contain an inspirational art as direct and as simple as that of poetry, and a science so difficult that its fullest mastery is of very recent achievement. In melodic invention it is so far from progressive that its most brilliant masters are often content to elaborate and to decorate a theme old enough to have no history--a theme the inventor of which has been so entirely forgotten that we think of it as sprung not from the mind of one man, but from that of a whole people, and call it a folk-song. The song is almost as old as the race, but the symphony has had to wait for the invention of many instruments and for a mastery of the laws of harmony, and so symphonic music is a modern art. We are still adding new instruments to the orchestra and admitting to our compositions new combinations of sounds, but have we in a hundred years made any essential progress even in this part of the art? Have we produced anything, I will not say greater, but anything as great as the noblest works of Bach and Beethoven?

Already, and before considering the arts of painting and sculpture, we are coming within sight of our general law. This law seems to be that, so far as an art is dependent upon any form of exact knowledge, so far it partakes of the nature of science and is capable of progress. So far as it is expressive of a mind and soul, its greatness is dependent upon the greatness of that mind and soul, and it is incapable of progress. It may even be the reverse of progressive, because as an art becomes more complicated and makes ever greater demands upon technical mastery, it becomes more difficult as a medium of expression, while the mind to be expressed becomes more sophisticated and less easy of expression in any medium. It would take a greater mind than Homer’s to express modern ideas in modern verse with Homer’s serene perfection; it would take, perhaps, a greater mind than Bach’s to employ all the resources of modern music with his glorious ease and directness. And greater minds than those of Bach and Homer the world has not often the felicity to possess.

The arts of painting and sculpture are imitative arts above all others, and therefore more dependent than any others upon exact knowledge, more tinged with the quality of science. Let us see how they illustrate our supposed law.

Sculpture depends, as does architecture, upon certain laws of proportion in space which are analogous to the laws of proportion in time and in pitch upon which music is founded. But as sculpture represents the human figure, whereas architecture and music represent nothing, sculpture requires for its perfection the mastery of an additional science, which is the knowledge of the structure and movement of the human body. This knowledge may be acquired with some rapidity, especially in times and countries where man is often seen unclothed. So, in the history of civilizations, sculpture developed early, after poetry, but with architecture, and before painting and polyphonic music. It reached the greatest perfection of which it is capable in the age of Pericles, and from that time progress was impossible to it, and for a thousand years its movement was one of decline. After the dark ages sculpture was one of the first arts to revive, and again it develops rapidly, though not so rapidly as before, conditions of custom and climate being less favorable to it, until it reaches, in the first half of the sixteenth century, something near its former perfection. Again it can go no further; and since then it has changed, but has not progressed. In Phidias, by which name I would signify the sculptor of the pediments of the Parthenon, we have the coincidence of a superlatively great artist with the moment of technical and scientific perfection in the art, and a similar coincidence crowns the work of Michelangelo with a peculiar glory. But, apart from the work of these two men, the essential value of a work of sculpture is by no means always equal to its technical and scientific completeness. There are archaic statues that are almost as nobly beautiful as any work by Phidias, and more beautiful than almost any work that has been done since his time. There are bits of Gothic sculpture that are more valuable expressions of human feeling than anything produced by the contemporaries of Buonarroti. Even in times of decadence a great artist has created finer things than could be accomplished by a mediocre talent of the great epochs, and the world could ill spare the “Victory” of Samothrace or the portrait busts of Houdon.

As sculpture is one of the simplest of the arts, painting is one of the most complicated. The harmonies it constructs are composed of almost innumerable elements of lines and forms and colors and degrees of light and dark, and the science it professes is no less than that of the visible aspect of the whole of nature--a science so vast that it never has been and perhaps never can be mastered in its totality. Anything approaching a complete art of painting can exist only in an advanced stage of civilization. An entirely complete art of painting never has existed and probably never will exist. The history of painting, after its early stages, is a history of loss here balancing gain there, of a new means of expression acquired at the cost of an old one.

We know comparatively little of the painting of antiquity, but we have no reason to suppose that that art, however admirable, ever attained to ripeness, and we know that the painting of the Orient has stopped short at a comparatively early stage of development. For our purpose the art to be studied is the painting of modern times in Europe from its origin in the Middle Ages. Even in the beginning, or before the beginning, while painting is a decadent reminiscence of the past rather than a prophecy of the new birth, there are decorative splendors in the Byzantine mosaics hardly to be recaptured. Then comes primitive painting, an art of the line and of pure color with little modulation and no attempt at the rendering of solid form. It gradually attains to some sense of relief by the use of degrees of light and less light; but the instant it admits the true shadow, the old brightness and purity of color have become impossible. The line remains dominant for a time, and is carried to the pitch of refinement and beauty, but the love for solid form gradually overcomes it, and in the art of the high Renaissance it takes a second place. Then light and shade begins to be studied for its own sake; color, no longer pure and bright, but deep and resonant, comes in again; the line vanishes altogether, and even form becomes secondary. The last step is taken by Rembrandt, and even color is subordinated to light and shade, which exists alone in a world of brownness. At every step there has been progress, but there has also been regress. Perhaps the greatest balance of gain against loss, and the nearest approach to a complete art of painting, was with the great Venetians. The transformation is still going on, and in our own day we have conquered some corners of the science of visible aspects which were unexplored by our ancestors. But the balance has turned against us; our loss has been greater than our gain; and our art, even in its scientific aspect, is inferior to that of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

And just because there never has been a complete art of painting, entirely rounded and perfected, it is the clearer to us that the final value of a work in that art never has depended on its approach to such completion. There is no one supreme master of painting, but a long succession of masters of different yet equal glory. If the masterpieces of architecture are everywhere because there has often been a complete art of architecture, the masterpieces of painting are everywhere for the opposite reason. And if we do not always value a master the more as his art is more nearly complete, neither do we always value him especially who has placed new scientific conquests at the disposal of art. Palma Vecchio painted by the side of Titian, but he is only a minor master; Botticelli remained of the generation before Leonardo, but he is one of the immortal great. Paolo Ucello, by his study of perspective, made a distinct advance in pictorial science, but his interest for us is purely historic; Fra Angelico made no advance whatever, but he practised consummately the current art as he found it, and his work is eternally delightful. At every stage of its development the art of painting has been a sufficient medium for the expression of a great man’s mind; and wherever and whenever a great man has practised it, the result has been a great and permanently valuable work of art.

For this seems, finally, to be the law of all the arts: the one essential prerequisite to the production of a great work of art is a great man. You cannot have the art without the man, and when you have the man you have the art. His time and his surroundings will color him, his art will not be at one time or place precisely what it might be at another; but at bottom the art is the man, and at all times and in all countries is just as great as the man.

Let us clear our minds, then, of the illusion that there is in any important sense such a thing as progress in the fine arts. We may with a clear conscience judge every new work for what it appears in itself to be, asking of it that it be noble and beautiful and reasonable, not that it be novel or progressive. If it be great art, it will always be novel enough; for there will be a great mind behind it, and no two great minds are alike. And if it be novel without being great, how shall we be the better off? There are enough forms of mediocre or evil art in the world already. Being no longer intimidated by the fetish of progress, when a thing calling itself a work of art seems to us hideous and degraded, indecent and insane, we shall have the courage to say so and shall not care to investigate it further. Detestable things have been produced in the past, and they are none the less detestable because we are able to see how they came to be produced. Detestable things are produced now, and they will be no more admirable if we learn to understand the minds that create them. Even should such things prove to be not the mere freaks of a diseased intellect that they seem, but a necessary outgrowth of the conditions of the age and a true prophecy of “the art of the future,” they are not necessarily the better for that. It is only that the future will be very unlucky in its art.

TO THE EXPERIMENTERS

BY CHARLES BADGER CLARK, JR.

Help me live long, O keen, cool servants of science!
Give me a hundred years, for life is good and I love it,
And wonders are easy for you.
Yet, by a rule that is older than Æsculapius,
I still must reckon my time to that luckless day
When a ’whelming foe will cross a frontier unguarded
Into this myriad nation of cells that bears my name,
Storming fort after fort till the swarming defenders have perished
And the strangled empire shall fall.
My friends, simple folk, will weep and say, “He is dead!”
But you will smile at their terrible, black-winged angel,
And jot his name and description down in your note-book--
The bitter song of the ages in a line of chemic formula!
Aye, and perchance you can take the components of living,--
Provinces, ravaged and waste, of that ruinous empire,--
And cunningly right them again.
Then call in the mourners.
“Say you your friend is dead?
See through that glass how his heart is pulsating steadily.
Look there, and there, at the beautiful play of the organs--
All the reactions of life restored by our science!
Where is your death?”
But I--is there not an I?--catch you that in a test-tube!

NONCHALANCE

FROM THE PAINTING BY JOHN S. SARGENT]

WAR-HORSES OF FAMOUS GENERALS

WASHINGTON--WELLINGTON--NAPOLEON--GRANT--LEE--SHERMAN--SHERIDAN

BY JAMES GRANT WILSON

When Colonel Washington accompanied General Braddock as aide-de-camp in the Virginia campaign against the French and their Indian allies, he took with him three war-horses. Of these his favorite was “Greenway,” a fiery steed of great speed and endurance. In the disastrous battle of July 9, 1755, Braddock was mortally wounded, after having five horses killed under him, a record, so far as the writer is aware, unequaled in the annals of war. Washington lost two horses. One of these was replaced by the dying general, who presented to him his best charger, which had escaped the carnage. A week later the young colonel wrote of the engagement to his brother John:

By the all powerful dispensation of Providence, I have been
protected beyond all human probability or expectation: for I have
had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me, yet
escaped unhurt, although death was on every side of me.

After the capture of Canada and the close of the war, Washington frequently followed the foxhounds mounted on “Braddock,” as he named that soldier’s powerful dark bay, or on “Greenway,” which was a dark gray, and it was seldom that the Virginian was not in the lead.

On June 20, 1775, Colonel Washington received his commission as Commander-in-Chief of the American Army, and on the following morning, accompanied by Generals Charles Lee and Philip Schuyler, he set out for Cambridge, Massachusetts. He took with him five horses, his favorite being a spirited stallion called “Douglas,” on which Washington first appeared before the army at Cambridge, charming all beholders with his manly grace and military bearing. Jefferson called him “the best horseman of his age.” Before the close of the Revolutionary War the general acquired by gift or purchase seven additional chargers. His bay horse “Fairfax” was so badly wounded at the battle of Trenton that he was left behind. At the battle of Monmouth, Washington rode a white steed presented to him by William Livingston, Governor of New Jersey. Such was the excessive heat on that June day, as well as the deep and sandy nature of the soil, that the spirited charger sank under the general, dying on the spot. His portrait is preserved in Trumbull’s full-length painting of Washington, in the City Hall of New York. He then mounted a high-bred chestnut mare with long, flowing mane and tail named “Dolly.” Lafayette said of her and her rider:

At Monmouth I commanded a division, and it may be supposed I
was pretty well occupied; still, I took time, amid the roar and
confusion of the conflict, to admire our beloved chief, who,
mounted on a splendid charger, rode along the ranks amid the shouts
of the soldiers, cheering them by his voice and example, and
restoring to our standard the fortunes of the fight. I thought I
had never seen so superb a man.

Another of Washington’s war-horses, and the last to be mentioned, was “Nelson,” a light chestnut, sixteen hands high, with white face and legs. He was a gift from Governor Thomas Nelson of Virginia, and was named in his honor. He was used for the last time at the surrender of Lord Cornwallis, afterward leading a life of leisure at Mount Vernon and following Washington’s bier in the funeral procession. Before the Civil War, while on a visit to the general’s adopted son, Mr. Custis of Arlington, I was informed that when a youth he had ridden “Buckskin” and “Nelson,” and that the handsome white horse that fell on the field of Monmouth was painted from memory by Colonel Trumbull. Mr. Custis said:

Among the many troublesome and unbroken horses ridden by
Washington, he was never thrown, and he was perhaps the strongest
man of his time. Mounted on “Buckskin,” I occasionally accompanied
the general when making his daily morning rounds at Mount Vernon,
riding “Yorktown,” the youngest of his war-horses, and the last
mounted by him, only a few days before his death. On one of those
occasions Washington saw with displeasure two stalwart negroes
vainly endeavoring to raise a heavy stone to the top of a wall.
Throwing “Yorktown’s” bridle to me, he sprang from his saddle,
strode forward, pushed the slaves aside, leaned over, and, grasping
the huge stone with his large, strong hands, slowly but surely
raised it to its place, and remounted without any remark.

FROM THE PAINTING BY JOHN TRUMBULL]

* * * * *

At four o’clock on a June morning ninety-eight years ago, when Napoleon was defeated by Wellington in one of the sixteen decisive battles of the world, the illustrious English soldier mounted his celebrated charger “Copenhagen,” remaining in the saddle for eighteen hours. “Copenhagen” was a powerful chestnut, grandson of the famous war-horse “Eclipse,” and the son of “Lady Catherine,” the charger ridden by Field-Marshal Lord Grosvenor at the siege of Copenhagen, when she was in foal with the colt which afterward carried Wellington at Waterloo. The war-horse cost him, in 1813, four hundred guineas. Two years later, when the famous victory was won, and Wellington had held his historic interview with Blücher, the duke dismounted at ten o’clock. As “Copenhagen” was led away by the groom, he playfully threw out his heels as a “good-night” salutation to his successful master. It was Wellington’s last act before leaving Strathfieldsaye for London on public or private business, to walk out to the adjacent paddock to pat his favorite charger, and to feed him with chocolate or other confectionery, of which he was inordinately fond.

FROM THE PAINTING BY MEISSONIER]

For more than a dozen years before his death “Copenhagen,” leading the easy, comfortable career of a well-pensioned veteran who had retired from all the activities of life, was only twice surreptitiously saddled and ridden by the duke’s eldest son, the Marquis of Douro. The second Duke of Wellington, who died in 1884, erected two monuments on the grounds of Strathfieldsaye, that fine estate of nearly seven thousand acres on which is situated Silchester, the site of a Roman station, presented to the “Iron Duke” by the British government for a day’s work at Waterloo. One of these, a superb and lofty marble column, is to the memory of his illustrious father, the other to that of “Copenhagen.” The former stands just outside the park at the point where, immediately in front of one of the lodges, the London road meets at right angles that which connects Reading with Basingstoke. A simple marble tombstone standing under the shadow of a spreading Turkish oak marks the spot where the brave steed was buried with military honors, and bears the following inscription from the pen of the second duke:

Here lies Copenhagen, the charger ridden by the Duke of Wellington
the entire day of the battle of Waterloo. Born 1808, died 1836.

God’s humbler instrument though meaner clay
Should share the glory of that glorious day.

FROM THE PAINTING BY JAMES WARD, R.A.]

As we stood by “Copenhagen’s” grave in the summer of 1872, the duke said to me:

Several years after my father’s death an old servant of the family
came to me in the library, and, producing a paper parcel, spoke as
follows: “Your Grace, I do not believe that I have long to live,
and before I die I wish to place in your hands what belongs to
you.” With no small degree of surprise I inquired what it was, and
when he opened the package and produced a horse’s hoof he said:
“Your Grace, when Copenhagen died I cut off this hoof. None of us
imagined that the duke would trouble his head about the body of
the war-horse, but, to our great surprise, he walked down to the
stables on his sudden return from London to see him buried. He
instantly observed that his right forefoot was gone, and was in
a fearful passion. No one dared tell him how it happened. I have
preserved the hoof carefully for thirty years, and I now return it
to your Grace.”

By permission of “Harper’s Weekly”

SHERMAN’S FAVORITE STEED “LEXINGTON”

FROM A DRAWING BY THURE DE THULSTRUP

SHERIDAN’S FAMOUS WAR-HORSE “WINCHESTER”]

Lady de Ros, the last survivor of those who danced at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball in Brussels on the evening before the battle of Waterloo, also the last among those who had mounted “Copenhagen,” published a little volume of recollections of Wellington which contained the following extract:

We often stayed with the duke at Abbaye, Mount St. Martin,
Cambrai, and one morning he announced that there would be a sham
battle, and that he had given orders to Sir George Scovell that
the ladies riding should be taken prisoners, so he recommended our
keeping close to him. I had no difficulty in doing so, as I was
riding the duke’s Waterloo charger “Copenhagen,” and I found myself
the only one within a square where they were firing. To the duke’s
great amusement, he heard one of the soldiers saying to another:
“Take care of that ’ere horse; he kicks out. We knew him well in
Spain,” pointing to “Copenhagen.” He was a most unpleasant horse to
ride, but always snorted and neighed with pleasure at the sight of
troops. I was jumping with him when the stirrup broke, and I fell
off. In the evening the duke had a dance, and said to me, “Here’s
the heroine of the day--got kicked off, and didn’t mind it.”

The first Duchess of Wellington, with whom “Copenhagen” was a great favorite, wore a bracelet of his hair, as did several of her friends. Her daughter-in-law, the second duchess, who died in August, 1894, and who was much admired by the great duke, accompanying him on his last visit to the field of Waterloo, showed the writer a bracelet and breastpin made of “Copenhagen’s” mane. On my last sojourn of several days at Strathfieldsaye in September, 1883, I received from the second duke as a parting gift a precious lock of the Waterloo hero’s hair and a sheaf of the charger’s tail. It may be mentioned _en passant_ that Sir William Gomm’s redoubtable Waterloo charger “Old George,” once mounted by Wellington, which lived to the unusual age for war-horses of thirty-three years, is buried beneath a stone seat at Stoke Pogis, the pastoral scene of Gray’s familiar and beautiful elegy.

On the authority of his eldest son, who mentioned the circumstance to the writer, it may be stated in conclusion that the last time Wellington walked out of Walmer Castle, on the afternoon of the day previous to his death, it was to visit his stable and to give orders to the groom concerning his horses.

* * * * *

Chief among the most celebrated battle-chargers of the nineteenth century was “Marengo,” Napoleon’s favorite war-horse. He was named in honor of one of the most remarkable victories ever achieved by the illustrious soldier. The day was lost by the French, and then gained by the resistless charges of cavalry led by Desaix and Kellermann. Their success caused the beaten infantry to rally and, taking heart, to attack the Austrians with fury, and the field was finally won. In view of the several hundred biographies of Bonaparte, it is certainly surprising that so little should be known with any degree of certainty concerning the world-famous Arab which he rode for eight hours at Waterloo, and previously in scores of battles, as well as during the disastrous Russian campaign. To an American visitor to the Bonapartes at Chiselhurst in the summer of 1872, Louis Napoleon, in speaking of his own horses and those of his uncle, said:

The emperor’s “Marengo” was an Arabian of good size and style and
almost white. He rode him in his last battle of Mont St. Jean,
where the famous war-horse received his seventh wound. I mounted
him once in my youth, and only a short time before his death in
England at the age of thirty-six. Another favorite was “Marie,”
and was used by the emperor in many of his hundred battles. Her
skeleton is to be seen in the ancient castle of Ivenach on the
Rhine, the property of the Von Plessen family. Of the other sixty
or seventy steeds owned by Napoleon and used in his campaigns,
perhaps the most celebrated were “Ali,” “Austerlitz,” “Jaffa,” and
“Styrie.” He had nineteen horses killed under him.

The American might have mentioned, but did not, that Field-Marshal Blücher had twenty shot in battle, while in the American Civil War Generals Custer of the North and Forrest of the South are believed to have lost almost as many in the short period of four years. “Marie” is thus described by Victor Hugo in the words of a soldier of the Old Guard:

On the day when he [Napoleon] gave me the cross, I noticed the
beast. It had its ears very far apart, a deep saddle, a fine head
marked with a black star, a very long neck, prominent knees,
projecting flanks, oblique shoulders, and a strong crupper. She was
a little above fifteen hands high.

When “Marengo” was slightly wounded in the near haunch, Napoleon
mounted “Marie,” and finished his final battle on her. On his
downfall, a French gentleman purchased “Jaffa” and “Marengo” and
sent them to his English estate at Glastonbury, Kent. The tombstone
of the former may be seen there, with the inscription, “Under this
stone lies Jaffa, the celebrated charger of Napoleon.”

The last trumpet-call sounded for “Marengo” in September, 1829. After his death the skeleton was purchased and presented to the United Service Institution at Whitehall, London, and is at present among its most highly treasured relics. Another interesting souvenir of the famous steed is one of his hoofs, made into a snuff-box, which makes its daily rounds after dinner at the King’s Guards, in St. James’s Palace. On its silver lid is engraved the legend, “Hoof of Marengo, barb charger of Napoleon, ridden by him at Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, Wagram, in the Russian campaign, and at Waterloo,” and round the silver shoe the legend continues: “Marengo was wounded in the near hip at Waterloo, when his great master was on him in the hollow road in advance of the French. He had frequently been wounded before in other battles.” Near his skeleton may be seen an oil painting of “Marengo,” by James Ward, R.A., who also was commissioned by Wellington to paint a picture of “Copenhagen,” Napoleon’s pocket-telescope, and other articles found in his carriage at Genappe, near Waterloo, where he was nearly captured, but escaped by mounting the fleet “Marengo.” In the museum is also displayed the saddle used by Blücher at Waterloo, and a letter written by the fiery old field-marshal, the day after the fierce battle, of which the following is a translation:

Gossalines June 19, 1815.

You remember, my dear wife, what I promised you, and I have kept
my word. The superiority of the enemy’s numbers obliged me to
give way on the 17th; but yesterday, in conjunction with my friend
Wellington, I put an end forever to Bonaparte’s dancing. His army
is completely routed, and the whole of his artillery, baggage,
caissons, and equipage are in my hands. I have had two horses
killed under me since the beginning of this short campaign. It will
soon be all over with Bonaparte.

From a recent Paris publication, written by General Gourgaud, we learn that at St. Helena Napoleon said that the finest charger he ever owned was not the famous “Marengo,” but one named “Mourad Bey,” of which, unfortunately, no further information is afforded by the French general. In his St. Helena diary, Gourgaud writes:

L’Empereur passé à l’equitation. Il n’avait pas peur à cheval,
parce qu’il n’avait jamais appris. “J’avais de bons chevaux le
Mourad-Bey etait le meilleur et le plus beau à l’armée d’Italie.
J’en avait un excellent: Aussi, pour invalide, l’ai-je mis à
Saint-Cloud, où il passait en liberté.”

The last horse used by Napoleon was purchased at St. Helena. He was a small bay of about fifteen hands called “King George,” but afterward named by the emperor “Scheik,” which became much attached to him. Captain Frederick Lahrbush of the Sixtieth Rifles, who was then stationed on the island and who, as he could speak French, became intimate with Napoleon, gave me a description of “Scheik” and bequeathed to me his silver Waterloo medal and a lock of the emperor’s hair, received as a parting gift on his departure from St. Helena.

* * * * *

As far as I am aware, no great commander ever possessed so valuable a charger as “Cincinnati,” General Grant’s favorite during the fourth year of the Civil War, and after his great victory at Chattanooga, during which he rode “Egypt,” another of his six war-horses. A few weeks later, when in Cincinnati, Grant received the gift of the noble steed, which he named after that city. He was a son of “Lexington,” with a single exception the fastest four-mile thoroughbred that ever ran on an American race-course, having made the distance in 7:19¾ minutes. The general was offered $10,000 for the horse, as his record almost equaled that of his sire and his half-brother “Kentucky.” He was a spirited and superb dark bay of great endurance, Grant riding him almost daily during the Wilderness campaign of the summer of 1864, and until the war closed in the following spring. “Cincinnati” was seventeen hands, and, in the estimation of the illustrious soldier, the grandest horse that he had ever seen, perhaps the most valuable ever ridden by an army commander from the time of Alexander down to our own day.

The general very rarely permitted any person but himself to mount him. Only two exceptions are recalled by the writer, once when Admiral Daniel Ammen, who saved Grant when a small boy from being drowned, visited him at his headquarters at City Point on the James River, and when, a little later, President Lincoln came to the same place from Washington to spend a week with the general. On the admiral’s return from a two-hours’ ride, accompanied by a young aide-de-camp, Grant asked how he liked “Cincinnati.”

Ammen answered, “I have never backed his equal.”

“Nor have I,” said the general.

In his “Personal Memoirs” Grant writes:

Lincoln spent the last days of his life with me. He came to City
Point in the last month of the war, and was with me all the
time. He lived on a despatch-boat in the river, but was always
around headquarters. He was a fine horseman, and rode my horse
“Cincinnati” every day. He visited the different camps, and I did
all that I could to interest him. The President was exceedingly
anxious about the war closing, and was apprehensive that we could
not stand another campaign.

Soon after the surrender of General Robert E. Lee and his army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, in April, 1865, “Cincinnati” was retired from active service, thereafter enjoying almost a decade of peace and comfort on Admiral Ammen’s Maryland estate near Washington until the end came in September, 1874, and he then received honorable burial. The charger is fully entitled to a prominent place among the most celebrated chargers of the nineteenth century, which includes General Lee’s “Traveller,” General Sherman’s “Lexington,” and General Sheridan’s “Winchester,” which died in 1878, and was skilfully mounted by a taxidermist. “Winchester” is included among the relics of the Mexican and later wars in the interesting collection of the Military Service Institution on Governor’s Island, New York Harbor.

It is interesting to record that Washington, who was six feet and two inches in stature, weighed at the time of the siege of Yorktown 195 pounds; Wellington, five feet seven inches, weighed at Waterloo 140 pounds; Napoleon, five feet six inches, at the same date, 158 pounds; and Grant, five feet eight inches, weighed at Appomattox Court House 145 pounds; General Lee at Gettysburg weighed 180 pounds; Sherman at Atlanta 165 pounds; and Sheridan, in the battle of Cedar Creek, about 150 pounds. Washington was the tallest, and Sheridan the shortest of the seven generals whose war-horses are described in this article. It will be seen, therefore, that Washington’s war-horse “Nelson” had a much heavier weight to carry than the chargers “Copenhagen,” “Marengo,” and “Cincinnati,” in their masters’ concluding campaigns.

* * * * *

The most celebrated charger in the Confederacy during our four years’ war was General Robert E. Lee’s “Traveller,” described to the writer by Sheridan, who first saw him on the day of surrender at Appomattox, as “a chunky gray horse.” He was born near Blue Sulphur Springs in West Virginia in April, 1857, and when a colt won the first prize at the Greenbrier Fair under the name of “Jeff Davis.” When purchased by the great Virginian early in February, 1862, his name was changed by Lee to “Traveller,” his master being very careful always to spell the word with a double _l_. The horse was sixteen hands, above half bred, well developed, of great courage and kindness, and carried his head well up. He liked the excitement of battle, and at such times was a superb and typical war-steed. General Fitzhugh Lee said to me that “Traveller” was much admired for his rapid, springy walk, high spirit, bold carriage, and muscular strength.

It may be doubted if any of the great commanders mentioned in American history possessed greater admiration for a fine horse than General Lee, who said, “There is many a war-horse that is more entitled to immortality than the man who rides him.” On the third day of the battle of Gettysburg, when Pickett’s gallant charge had been successfully repulsed by Hancock, and the survivors of his broken and decimated command were returning to the Confederate position, Lee appeared and spoke encouragingly to his defeated troops. While he was thus occupied, observing an officer beating his horse for shying at the bursting of a shell, he shouted: “Don’t whip him, Captain! Don’t whip him! I have just such another foolish horse myself, and whipping does no good.” A moment later an excited officer rode up to Lee and “Traveller,” and reported the broken condition of his brigade. “Never mind, General,” responded Lee, cheerfully; “all this has been my fault. It is I that have lost the battle, and you must help me out of it in the best way you can.”

As with Napoleon and Wellington at Waterloo, so was it with Grant and Lee, who saw each other but once during their many fierce encounters about Richmond in the eleven months previous to the final surrender, and then only at a great distance, Grant, as he told me, recognizing the gray horse, but not his rider. The illustrious soldiers had met in Mexico while serving under General Scott, but after separating in April, 1865, never saw each other again but once--when General Lee called at the White House to see President Grant.

Soon after the close of the Civil War, Lee accepted the presidency of Washington and Lee University. For five years, until his death, he almost daily rode or fed his favorite charger. At the hero’s funeral, “Traveller” was equipped for service and placed close to the hearse. When the flower-covered coffin was carried out from the church, the faithful horse put his nose on it and whinnied! He survived his attached master for two years, when a nail penetrated his right forefoot while grazing in a field, and, although it was immediately removed, and everything possible was done to save him, lockjaw developed, and he died during the summer of 1872. “Traveller’s” skeleton was preserved, and is to be seen at Lexington, Virginia, as well as Stonewall Jackson’s famous “Sorrel,” which was skilfully set up by a veteran taxidermist. “Traveller,” like Sheridan’s celebrated charger “Winchester,” enjoyed the very great distinction of having his illustrious master for a biographer. In the sketch Lee mentions his other horses, saying: “Of all, ‘Traveller’s’ companions in toil,--‘Richmond,’ ‘Brown Roan,’ ‘Ajax,’ and quiet ‘Lucy Long,’--he is the only one that retained his vigor. The first two expired under their onerous burdens, and the last two failed.” During the Mexican War, the general’s favorite was “Grace Darling,” a handsome and powerful chestnut, which was seven times wounded, but never seriously.

Referring to the photograph of “Traveller,” General Custis Lee wrote to me:

You will observe that my father’s position in the picture which
I send you, is that “to gather the horse,” in order to keep him
quiet. The legs are crossed behind the girth, and the hand is
slightly raised. “Traveller” injured both my father’s hands at the
second battle of Manassas, and General Lee could not thereafter
hold the reins in the regulation manner.

The brilliant Sherman’s favorite war-horse was killed under him in the first day of the bloody battle of Shiloh, and two others were shot while in charge of his orderly. Later in the four years’ contest his most famous steeds were “Lexington” and “Sam.” The former was a Kentucky thoroughbred, and is mentioned in his memoirs. Sherman was photographed on “Lexington” in Atlanta, and he rode him in the grand review in Washington, May 24, 1865. The horse that under the homely name of “Sam” most firmly established himself in the affection and confidence of the general was a large, half-thoroughbred bay, sixteen and a half hands, which he purchased soon after losing his three steeds at Shiloh. “Sam” possessed speed, strength, and endurance, and was so steady under fire that Sherman had no difficulty in writing orders from the saddle and giving attention to other matters. While as steady as a rock under fire, “Sam” was nevertheless prudent and sagacious in his choice of shelter from hostile shot and shell. The charger was wounded several times when mounted, and the fault was wholly due to his master. He acquired wide reputation as a forager, and always contrived to obtain a full allowance of rations, sometimes escaping on independent expeditions for that purpose.

What first endeared “Sam” to Sherman was that he became a favorite with his son Willie, whom the writer well remembers when he came to Vicksburg on a visit during the siege only a brief period before his untimely death. The general told us that he always felt safe when his boy was absent on “Sam,” knowing that he would keep out of danger and return in time for dinner. Sherman rode him in many pitched battles, and placed him on an Illinois farm, where he was pensioned, dying of extreme old age in the summer of 1884. The general’s son Tecumseh writes: “Sam was hardly the heroic horse to place with the others you mention, but he was a strong, faithful animal who did perfectly the varied and dangerous work allotted to him, and made a march as long and difficult as any recorded in history--that from Vicksburg to Washington,” via Atlanta, Savannah, Columbia, and Richmond.