Chapter III: John Smith

John Smith historically considered.—The Number in Leading Cities
stated.—How classified.—Why he is not put in a separate Volume or in
an Appendix.—Origin of the Smiths.—American Genealogical Trees.—Smiths
up a Stump, in the Sap, and dangling from the Branches.—The Antiquity
and Ubiquity of the Smiths.—Variety and Extent of their Occupations
and Operations.—Will probably in time own all the World.—Comic
Situations of John Smiths in Cities, at Family Dinner-Parties, at
Prayer-Meetings, at Balls, in Titles to Real Estate, etc.—Whether he
can be sued.—Other Legal Questions in reference to him
considered.—John Smith of Pocahontas Fame a Myth.

As a magnet, laid amid a heap of iron-filings, gathers them all to itself in close-fitting unity, so the figure of John Smith crystallizes about it the elements of the early settler’s life in Virginia. Nor upon the banks of the Chickahominy alone does John Smith stalk in romantic proportions; but through all times, in every kingdom, state, city, and village, at all epochs, and in every shade of barbarism or civilization, is he found. New York holds 187; Philadelphia, 231; Boston, 35; Brooklyn, 118; London, 480; and every capital in the world its own appropriate complement.

No railroad can be run that does not touch his farm; no joke that does not skim his peculiarities; no portrait that does not contain his features; no conductor’s stealings that does not comprise his contributions; no miller’s breakfast-bell that does not toll the knell of a portion of his grist.

As dyers classify mankind by the color of their skins, wine-growers belt the world by isothermal vine-lines, and lawyers divide the human race into plaintiffs and defendants, so the historian, straining his telescopic gaze over the centuries and the globe, and discarding the division of the species into “mankind and the Beecher family,”—no longer appropriate since the publication of “Norwood” reduced the latter down to the common level,—justly sweeps all mankind into two great classes, the Smiths and the rest of creation.

And so John Smith finds appropriate place, not only in every history, but a special niche and chapter to himself. We might perhaps have put this select mention of a great public benefactor, an erudite scholar, and universal toiler, into a note, smothered up in an appendix, dimmed by the milky-way of small asterisks, and hazily obscured by countless references and authorities; but this injustice to the merits of an ancient family, whose tombs mound every churchyard, and whose door-plates shine on almost every house in our cities and towns not appropriated to drugs, groceries, or confectioneries, would, we are persuaded, sorely wound the public conscience.

The origin of the Smiths, like that of so many other distinguished families, is involved in distressing doubt. Audacious investigation, with a natural wish to penetrate to the roots, and too fearless of consequences where prudence perhaps might be better satisfied with a limited view of ancestry, has pressed its inquiries up and down genealogical trees until it has unearthed Smiths at the base, Smiths in the sap, Smiths up the stump, and even Smiths dangling at the end of the branches. No nation looks down in theory from such lofty heights of indifference upon ancestral distinctions as the American; none can better afford to cut down their genealogical, as they do their natural, forests; yet none are so fond of looking up to these airy and waving altitudes, and none that more carefully spare the tree which in youth sheltered them, and which waves, like the flag, long and fruity to their eyes. An American book of leading families would be larger than the London Directory, and make the fortune of even the Congressional Printer. True, the family herald would in nearly all these cases, like the chroniclers of ancient states, and the biographer of the Smiths, be obliged to substitute foggy conjecture for well-defined tracings. They would all find that their researches would, if carried back far enough, converge to the same focal point; and if produced at equal distances in the future, diffuse themselves into a common social, monetary, and undistinguishing equality: for families and states are much like boys at the ends of a balanced board, now up, now down, at one time touching the ground, then curving upward through medium spaces to a culminating point, while some one at the other end is noiselessly passing through a reversed career.

And so John Smith balances and pendulates on the same board with a Van Rensselaer, John Brown with a Tozewell, Mr. Snooks with a Winthrop, and John Doe with a Hampton.

There is, we think, but little doubt that the Hebrew Samson, the Greek Hercules, the Spanish Cid, the Scandinavian Thor, and the English Arthur of the Round Table, were each the John Smith of his nation and time, a multiform unity swinging round the circle of varied labor, hard work, and heroic deeds, accomplishing under one name—a family one, possessed at various times by several individuals—the work of all reapers, sewing-machines, cow-milkers, cotton and woollen factories. These national heroes, like the John Smiths, their descendants now, were arrayed in warm climates in a fragmentary style of short dress; in the middle regions in a Highland garb, appropriately frilled or furred; and in the north with a canine material, heroic in quality, and modishly artistical,—a bark.

The most reliable studies trace the smith genealogy back to Vulcan’s workshop, the original Smith being one of those employed on designs for Achilles’s shield,—a claim which experts in coats-of-arms will not readily stamp as a forge-ry.

ORIGINAL FULL-LENGTH PORTRAIT OF JOHN SMITH.
(p. 110)
]

As there is no period of history without its John Smith, so there is no profession that does not enroll, no trade that does not contain, no occupation, from an office-holder’s up to that of an honest man’s, that does not embrace his name. Everywhere, on the sea and land; between every parallel of latitude, almost between every pair of sheets; at every pole and at every polling-place; on all rivers and in every strait; at every point, and even at Point-no-point; on the top, at the middle and bottom of every hill, enterprise, company, board of directors, and job; in all churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples; preaching, singing, and listening; talking all tongues, as well as curing, drying, and eating them; in prisons, police-stations, pulpits, grand-jury and other boxes; to-day hung, to-morrow putting on his black cap and sentencing the culprit to the rope’s end, and the day following condemning a pair to a less hempen noose; in the pugilistic ring, or ecclesiastical fight; the actor on the stage, and at the same time the spectator in the box, looking at himself personating his own character,—for every character is his,—everywhere, and in everything, is found this jolly, morose, lazy, active, sleepy, wakeful, fighting, pacific, coarse, refined, fat, lean, tall, short, blue-eyed, black-eyed John Smith.

In truth, when we think of him as ubiquitous, omniscient, and omnipresent, doing all things in all places, carrying on all businesses, living on all the real estate, owning at some time or other all the personal property, pocketing all the greenbacks, whistling to all the dogs, riding all the horses, looking after all the little poodle dogs, buying shoes and stockings for all the children agreeable and disagreeable, we get into such a world of John Smiths, such a nightmare of Johns, such a maelstrom of Smiths, such a gurgling, roaring, splitting, spitting, laughing, screeching, titilated, exhilarated, carnival, and Fourth of July of John Smiths, that we seem to be in a room lined with mirrors that reflect only John Smiths from all sides; indeed, we almost fancy ourselves a John Smith, our father and mother a John Smith, and all our aunts, cousins, uncles, nephews, brothers, and sisters, and even their clergymen, grocers, shoemakers, bootblacks, to be John Smiths, and that our last note and the mortgage on our house is owned by John Smith.

But the Smith family do not create all the humor and spend all the jollity upon others. Funny are the scenes which transpire among themselves. At a family party two John Smiths introduced, and each staring at his other self, is a conundrum; three a charade, in which the whole company give it up. A popular young lady, with card in her belt to carry the memory of her numerous engagements, finds herself swimming in doubt as to the identity of her partners, when John Smith claims her in the next dance, then for the following cotillon, then bows over her hand for the succeeding polka, and so confronts her at every turn of the figure and every return of the dance, until she doubts her own individuality, and requests to be baptized over again with a new name to get out of the tangle. Then at a family dinner-party of Smiths, when Mr. Smith asks Mr. John Smith the part of the turkey he prefers, and several voices in different tones and keys indicate as many different portions of the bird, there is a delightful series of warm explanations which enables the meal to become healthily cool, while each of the responders courteously leaves the piece he wants and takes one he did not desire.

Among the comic situations which Mr. Smith unconsciously creates are, that of a conveyancer, in a large city, endeavoring to trace a title through a J. S., or trying to ascertain which of the one hundred in the directory is the rightful defendant in a judgment, or the mortgagor in a mortgage, constituting a lien on the property sought to be transferred; or a country cousin, for the first time in New York or Philadelphia, consulting the directory to find her puzzled way to the forgotten residence of her cousin John Smith, or innocently asking a polite but humorous gentleman, in the street whether he knows John Smith’s house; or a clergyman in a city prayer-meeting asking John Smith to lead in prayer, and finding three or four, with closed eyes, responding to the request; or a notary making up his mind where to leave a notice of protest of a large note on the indorser John Smith, who wittily wrote his name without any address under it. Indeed, it would be one of the _causes célèbres_ for a jury to determine whether a child might not guiltlessly mistake his parent who bore only this undistinguishing name; whether a forgery of the name could be committed; whether an express company be bound to deliver a trunk to this _nominis umbræ_; or whether a wife, Mrs. John Smith, could be lawfully convicted of eloping with any one.

Then when John Smith comes to die, in the churchyard, and afterwards when the dead arise—but we stagger under the vision of puzzled bones and stop.

We cannot write more lucidly the history of the John Smith of Pocahontas fame. It grows mythical the more we look at it; an abstraction dancing over the coals of the early settlement of Virginia, a face and figure flitting like a twisting flame, up, around, and through the grate; seeming as we try to fix our attention upon him like a dozen different men, one falling in love with the young squaw, another surveying the James and Rappahannock, another mastering the turbulent spirits of a dissolute and discontented settlement; another caught and brought before Powhatan, while a graceful girl of twelve summers gently puts away the descending club; another sailing to England, and peeping out ever and anon among the friendly faces that make the living frame to her young virgin face, yet again dissolving and melting into the gray dimness of the morning light. Of only one thing do we feel certain in regard to John Smith in general, the average John Smith, that the portrait here presented, taken by instantaneous photography, representing his multitudinous character, is the only genuine and original likeness ever published.