Chapter III: Old Family Portraits

Modern Photographic Albums like Ancient Roman Simulacra.—The Pleasure of
looking at the Likenesses of Friends.—The Portraits of our
Fore-Fathers.—Our dear old Great-Grandfather GEORGE WASHINGTON.—His
one hundred and twenty-eight Original Portraits.—His unique Character;
of the same Size all the Way up.—His Manners and Characteristics.—How
the Eighteenth Century, so long mated, refused to survive him.—Our
Great-Grand and good Mother MARTHA WASHINGTON.—The Resemblance between
her and a Bowl of ripe Strawberries and Cream.—Her Pride.—What
Qualities were corseted in her Bosom.—Our favorite Uncle, BENJAMIN
FRANKLIN.—How the Sky got into his Face and how it stays
charged.—Looks like an hereditary Director of all the Estates.—A born
Trustee.—What an idea Burns might have got of him in 1774, and how
expressed it.—Of our Aunt, MRS. JAMES MADISON; and what a fine Lady
she was.—Her careful Dress and Manners.—Impressive but
patronizing.—How Time forgot her, and the Years ran on un-notched.—The
forty Years she acted as Presidentess.—PATRICK HENRY described in
Dress, Person, shooting Game, and taking Audiences.—Our dear Visitor,
GENERAL LAFAYETTE; his Difficulties in reaching us; his noble Bride;
his Embarkation at a Spanish Port; his Labors here; his two subsequent
Visits, and how he survived Hand-shaking and Kissing.—About JOHN JAY
and his Wife SALLIE LIVINGSTON.—How they lived and what he
became.—Glances at ISRAEL PUTNAM and his expressive Face; at NATHANIEL
GREENE and his square, Quaker Character; at the Telescopic Eyes of
FRANCIS MARION, with a Dash at his soldierly Qualities.—The Effigies
of the WISE MEN—General Sketches of our Heroes and Heroines.—A Heart
Delineation of the Mothers, Wives, and Sisters of the Men of the
Revolution.

Cold indeed must be the heart, colder than any which pendulates in the readers of this History, that does not warm up pleasantly when carried by its owner into what is wisely called in the country “the living-room,” and there obeying the electrical summons of the eye, wanders with it lovingly through the pages of a family photographic album.

The elder Romans had a chamber, placed in the innermost part of the house, devoted to the images of the departed members of the family; images named after, but not always likenesses of, those who had led the way in the family history. So great was their reverence for these, so intimate the relation maintained with them, that, on the departure or return of any of the household, these silent figures were saluted with the same affection as the living.

The family photographic album is the modern chamber in which are kept our _simulacra_. Enter it as often as we may, scan as often as we choose its portraitures, we never survey with indifference, and rarely without better and tenderer feelings, these mute, dear faces.

Just as dear, just as touching to our national feelings, sensibilities, and emulous gratitude, just as instructive to head and heart, are the cherished and beloved features of our national forefathers. Turn we then a few leaves with interest, perchance with profit.

An instinctive delicacy places the elders at the head of the procession.

Of course the very first in the book, as in our hearts, is the dear, good face of our great-great-great-grandfather, GEORGE WASHINGTON. How well we all know it. One hundred and twenty-eight original portraits were taken of him, between 1770, when he was thirty-eight years old, and 1796, when he was sixty-four, by various painters, from the elder Peale to Sharpless. The statue of Houdon, ordered by Virginia in 1785, and finished in 1788, perpetuates in marble, to its visitors at Richmond, as its engraved copies have made familiar to all, the full-length majestic figure and port of the wise, thoughtful, and careful General. Yet numerous as are the likenesses, multiplied by various art processes, and scattered through parlors, bedrooms, sheds, cabins, and books, we instantly recognize and instinctively love the noble features of our dear old grandfather. Very grave he is, very sedate, as if he was thinking how it was best to settle in life some of his large household. His thoughts seem so earnest and weighty that we cannot interrupt them. Good and humane as is the face, we cannot bounce in, leap upon his high knees, pull lovingly his long hair, and then scamper away with a sense of unspoken forgiveness in our thumping hearts. O no! There is an awe in his presence, benevolent as it is, a width of responsibility in his thought-beaming face, which stills and hushes us. Very reserved and calm, seldom volunteering a remark, never a laugh, for mere entertainment, he makes ordinary conversation appear like empty chattering. Yet ever gracious is he, ever gentle, well-bred, and self-contained. His reticence is not sour, but thoughtful, his silence the waiting upon a large utterance. Intent and earnest after something he always seems. Even in his relaxation from formal work, and when least occupied, he seems like a good fisherman sitting on the bank, carefully watching the float, and fixed upon securing the nibbles.

A noble face! just the frontispiece to a great History, the preface to an Encyclopædia of Moral Philosophy and Political Rights, the trunk of a large genealogical tree, the grandfather of a large, proud family.

Stories we have of his boyhood; but they do not strike or stick to us as accounts of a boy. Even when cutting down the cherry-tree, and then scorning the boy’s ordinary deception in regard to the author of the deed; when mastering the blooded horse, at the expense of the animal’s life, and then hastening to avow to his stern but just mother his exclusive agency in the fatal conquest,—he seems the same calm, staid, mature impersonation of heroic Truth, as when he stalks with longer strides through a nation’s history.

Some naturalists tell us that the trunk of the tree does not lose its bulk as it grows upward; but that, if we measure the tapering trunk and its outspreading branches, we shall find that together they form the same size and weight throughout. So Washington, if viewed in sections, appears of equal size, dimensions, and compacted force in each. As a boy wise, grave, and truthful; large in frame, of unusual strength, but gentle in its use; from books learning little, from men much, from out-door life its large, fresh, wholesome, healthy activity, and wide breadths of suggestion. As a young man unweariedly industrious, unmistakably honest, impressing all with his oak-like qualities; carefully and perfectly accomplishing whatever he undertook, whether engaged in surveying a farm, keeping a journal, or supplying by study and observation deficiencies in education which his own good, well-balanced sense had discovered; loving honestly, and honestly describing in verse his heart affection for his “lowland beauty.” As an officer, at twenty-three, self-reliant because consciously well disciplined, vigilant, careful, yet as personally brave as the impulsive and unrestrained; confided with missions to the hostile French settlements on the Ohio, and saving, by his knowledge of savage life and habits, by his sagacity, self-command, and tact, the remnants of Braddock’s army.

As a statesman well rounded in intelligence, well poised in judgment, who so well comprehended, weighed, and settled the new questions of colonial rights as to draw from Patrick Henry the eulogy “that for solid information and sound judgment he was the greatest man on the floor” of the Continental Congress, and from that Congress itself its emphatic practical indorsement by his election as commander-in-chief.

As a general, managing small resources and means so as to secure the best results and completest ends; sparing of the lives of his soldiers as of the members of his family, yet venturing his own when an emergency made his great figure in front the pledge of success; refusing all pay and emoluments; keeping a minute and conscientious account of his expenses, and hastening at the close of the war to place his regimentals at the opening door of Peace. As a President marching abreast of new duties and obligations, thoroughly comprehending, and, by a wise forbearance and clear-hearted charity, mastering the struggling, passionate forces of new-born and grand ambitions, State rivalries, and material competitions, and so calming, adjusting, regulating, yet re-enforcing them by healthy elements,—not by compromise of principle, but by high conscientious impartiality, and just, equiposed authority,—as to receive the converging approval and accordant praise of good men of all shades of opinion.

Dear, good old grandfather! no wonder that the eighteenth century hastened to follow thee; no wonder that, wedded to thee so long and lovingly, it cared not to survive the separation, and within a fortnight gathered itself into the same tomb, more loved for the presence than life divided from thee.

On the next page of our album is our great-great-grand and good mother MRS. MARTHA WASHINGTON. We love so much to look at her sweet, handsome face, full of a large, generous, grandmotherly nature as a wide and deep bowl heaped with ripe strawberries laughing through unstinted masses of rich yellow, unwatered cream. We feel at once that there is amply enough to go round the largest old-fashioned family, and no fear, if visitors come in, of its not holding out, or of a scarcity for the kitchen. She was called Lady Washington, because they could not help it; for she was a lady.

Of course our grandmother was proud; not vain, nor boastful, but with pride of character, the pride that stiffens virtue into well-doing, makes life gracious, and fences in goodness from stray gossips, and self-constituted censors who stray from their own disordered homes into their neighbor’s well-regulated households.

Never were higher, truer, more valuable qualities, principles, and habits corseted in a female bosom than lived in hers.

The next page is thumb-worn and greased by frequent handling; for Uncle BENJAMIN FRANKLIN is a deserved favorite with the family. We should have liked to live with him, or if the house, as was natural, was too full for that, to have made long visits at his mansion. His is a right royal, good face, is it not? He looks as if he was always in love with a whole school of well-behaved, sweet-mannered children, and was about to take out from his capacious pockets, with a sly, benevolent surprise, a large assorted lot of presents. His face beams with a broad, heavenly tranced-ness, as if it had taken toll from his sky-tapping kite, and had become charged with positive celestial electricity. He looks as if he might have been chosen the executor of all the estates in the Union; and as if half the pangs of death were abstracted from those who were to leave their children and property to his honest, wise, and efficient care. He seems like a born trustee for schools, an hereditary director of charities,—one nominated in every village and town to every responsible place, and elected unanimously.

In his broadly balanced characteristics there is, too, a latent, reserved force, which makes us fancy that he might, when commissioner to England, in 1774, have paid a visit to Burns in Scotland and suggested to him, as advice to others, those shrewd lines:—

“Ay free, aff han’ your story tell,
When wi’ a bosom crony;
But still keep something to yoursel
Ye scarcely tell to ony.”

In fact, it is upon this felt reserve of uncommunicated goodness that we anchor our loving trust, feeling that the flukes cannot be uplifted nor our confidence drag. Among the few historical characters that red-mark the past 5873 years of the accepted chronology of our race, Franklin stands among the first half-dozen who reconcile us to public greatness, whose individuality is not obscured, whose virtues are not hazed, whose purity is not flecked anywhere by any soil from the public highways.

A very fine lady was our aunt, MRS. JAMES MADISON. That is very manifest by even a casual glance at her carefully arranged head-gear, her elaborately disposed hair, her effectively adjusted shawl, her well-studied laces and thoughtfully selected jewelry, collars, cuffs, and gloves. A little too fine, perhaps, to be cordially loved. A young modest person would, in spite of her assuring ease of manner, feel respectfully uneasy in her presence; but so respectable, so highly respectable she was, and still shows in her portrait, that we are all very proud of her. If she was exacting, she gave in return and to all equal measures of refined courtesy and attention. She was very elegant in her manners, but she was patronizing. Very impressive with her grand airs, but still patronizing. She lit up the White House with the radiance of cultivated beauty, the refinements of courtly ease and high-bred manner, but still was she patronizing.

She had gone through a third of a century of years when the eighteenth century died. She afterwards so cajoled and pleasantly imposed upon Time, that he forgot to score several notches against her, and she reached her eighty-second year, about six months before the next half-century was complete, before it occurred to him that the handsome old lady, with the smooth rosy face, had actually gained twelve lustres on the allotted human term. While her husband was not President until 1809, and continued so only eight years, our Aunt Madison acted like a President’s wife before she went into the Federal mansion, and carried her high head-dress and head under it, like a Presidentess, thirty-two years after he left the Executive residence.

On the next page of our album is an awkward, tall, ungainly, raw-boned figure, slightly stooping in the shoulders. How it was got together it is difficult to conjecture, how kept together still more puzzling. With a sallow complexion, iron-bound brow, stern lines running down and apparently holding immovably a large, rigid mouth, with a face like a large, well-filled, cheerful barn, with the door open, our good-hearted, noble-souled cousin, PATRICK HENRY, looks out at us as if he had been stared at before. Fortunately, our Aunt Madison is on the other side of the leaf, and cannot be disturbed by his slovenly dress. The features show an uneducated man, yet one of strong individuality, a capacity for great endurance, a fearlessness of personal consequences, and a will which would, even if the traces were cut, draw the load by the bit. Of course he loved a fishing-rod and gun, and told stories all day long. Much pith there was in his daily gathered anecdotes, which he extracted from all passing things, and put into the indolent, good-for-nothing crowd that hung around the tavern, or which crystallized around the stove in his too readily neglected law office. Up to his twenty-fourth year he had been a farmer and country store-keeper; but as his only interest in the farm was the fish which ran through its liquid ways, and as his account of stock stopped at the fish-hooks, powder, and ball, which he speedily borrowed of himself without charge, he naturally failed to acquire anything but sport out of either. He and Henry Clay were born near each other. Neither of them makes a good portrait; both were careless of their personal appearance, and each was as generous as an apple-tree in full bearing, or a shower in June, which slakes the thirst of lazy meadows lying on their backs with their mouths wide open.

But what a treat it must have been to hear Patrick Henry speak. The small dishonesties of rhetoric he scorned. To its greatest opportunities, however, he strode with a master’s step and might. His long, sallow features then glowed, the stern lines melted into an illuminating intellectual beauty, his crooked figure, a moment before like a telescope placed on end and sliding by sections into itself, then stretched out and up into manliest exaltation, and erect, grandiose dignity. His keen words, like the battle-axe of the Douglas, cleaved the subject from head to chine. His large natural thoughts rushed up the summits of argument, as the free winds sweep the hills, without labor or effort, and shook all brains, wise or unwise, dull or quick, cultured or untutored, bending their tops before his resistless march, and shaking all their obstinate roots by his relentless grasp. No grander storm of logic, invective, irony, wit, humor, sharp demonstration, soul-rousing appeal, or tender pathos ever passed over an audience and stirred them from the deep depths of their nature than that which he awoke. No class interests, like those of the Virginia parsons for their tobacco tithes, no selfish isolations, like the petty claims of neighborhood squires, no encroachments on popular rights, like the Stamp Act or tea duties, could withstand the noble sweep of his eloquence. The tribune of the people, he was regarded, ere he had reached his thirty-fifth year, as without exception the greatest orator in America, if not in the world.

On the opposite page is the photograph of a dear visitor to our family, GENERAL LAFAYETTE. We never cared to inquire whether he was a relation or not. He was just as good to us as an own brother. He first came to see us when we were poor and needed friends. He had great difficulty in reaching us, as his own government gave orders to stop him. His young bride, equally noble in her nature, encouraged his coming. He was obliged to escape from France into Spain, and in a Spanish port to take passage in a Spanish ship, the only cargo of any value, except that made up of Columbus and his one hundred and twenty men from Palos in 1492, that ever came to us from the land of the Cid. The spirited young marquis remained with us from 1777 to 1781, fighting among our bravest, suffering privations with the most patriotic, confided in and beloved by Washington and the best of the Revolution. He made us two visits after the war, once in 1784, and the second time just forty years later, upon a special invitation of the nation. Proud and glad were we all to see him. The most wonderful part of the story is, that, after enduring vigorous hand-shaking through each of our then twenty-four States, and kissing all the children from two years old and upwards, he survived the job ten years.

We must now turn over the leaves rapidly, catching quick, pleasant glances at the fine, pale scholarly features of the pure-minded JOHN JAY, and, on the opposite side, of the handsome face and form of his accomplished wife SALLIE LIVINGSTON, who mated him when he was only nineteen, and consoled his heart and invigorated his head for twenty-eight eventful years, during which his inflexible patriotism, solid judgment, and weighty learning placed him by the side of Washington and John Adams in the estimation of the American household.

Then come the bluff face of hearty old ISRAEL PUTNAM, whose expression bears the clearly read inscription carved on his tombstone, “He dared to lead where any dared to follow”; the massed, trustworthy head of NATHANIEL GREENE, with its square, Quaker characteristics; FRANCIS MARION’S calm, lucid, telescopic eyes, and his farmer-like breadth of front, animated by the dash which egged him, when in the saddle, to plucky marches; and a long procession of valiant men and noble women,—family portraits in our national home gallery,—which gem and illuminate our collection and summon fresh pride to our patriotism, and new pleasures, on each review, to our hearts.

It is quite needless to suggest that here, too, are the well-preserved effigies of those WISE MEN whom we saw together on the summit of July 4, 1776, and whose remembered figures flitted often through the varied scenes of the Revolution and alighted in the green boughs, of our memories.

Some of these faces are singularly handsome, illuminated with the beauty of great purposes. Some, however, are rugged as hillocks, rich in mould but unsubdued by the plough of culture or the spade of refining taste. Some few hide mean purposes behind great, rotund cheekiness; others tell a mixed story of joy and suffering; a few ache with ambitions unsatisfied; still fewer awe us by a Titanic distress; but most are firm with earnest, resolute convictions spiked with will and riveted to the wide aims of continental purposes.

Here and there come in faces of great softness, sweetness, and delicacy, in which feminine grace and dignity are blent so holily; the mothers, wives, or sisters of the men of the Revolution and who kept alive in their own loving hearts faith in God, their kinsmen, and themselves; faces which plainly say,

“This is a haunted world. It hath no breeze
But is the echo of some voice beloved;
Its pines have human tones; its billows wear
The color and the sparkle of dear eyes.
Its flowers are sweet with touch of tender hands
That once clasped ours. All things are beautiful
Because of something lovelier than themselves,
Which breathes within them and will never die;—
Haunted, but not with any spectral gloom,
Earth is suffused, inhabited by Heaven.”

COURTSHIP IN THE OLDEN TIME.
(p. 353)
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