Charles Godfrey Leland

It happened once in Boston, in the year 1861 or 1862, that I was at a dinner of the Atlantic Club, such as was held every Saturday, when the question was raised as to whether any man had ever written a complete and candid autobiography. Emerson, who was seated by me at the right, suggested the “Confessions” of Rousseau. I objected that it was full of untruths, and that for plain candour it was surpassed by the “Life of Casanova.” Of this work (regarding which Carlyle has said, “Whosoever has looked therein, let him wash his hands and be unclean until even”) neither Emerson nor Lowell, nor Palfrey nor Agassiz, nor any of the others present seemed to have any knowledge, until Dr. Holmes, who was more adventurous, admitted he knew somewhat thereof. Now, as I had read it thrice through, I knew it pretty well. I reflected on this, but came to the conclusion that perhaps the great reason why the world has so few and frank autobiographies is really because the world exacts too much. It is no more necessary to describe everything cynically than it is to set forth all our petty diseases in detail. There are many influences which, independent of passion or shame, do far more to form character.

Acting from this reflection, I wrote this book with no intention that it should be published; I had, indeed, some idea that a certain friend might use it after my death as a source whence to form a Life. Therefore I wrote, as fully and honestly as I could, everything which I could remember which had made me what I am. It occurred to me as a leading motive that a century or two hence the true inner life of any man who had actually lived from the time when railroads, steamboats, telegraphs, gas, percussion-caps, fulminating matches, the opera and omnibuses, evolution and socialism were quite unknown to his world, into the modern age, would be of some value. So I described my childhood or youth exactly as I recalled, or as I felt it. Such a book requires very merciful allowance from humane reviewers.

It seemed to me, also, that though I have not lived familiarly among the princes, potentates, and powers of the earth, yet as I have met or seen or corresponded with about five hundred of the three thousand set down in “Men of the Time,” and been kindly classed among them, it was worth while to mention my meetings with many of them. Had the humblest scribbler of the age of Elizabeth so much as mentioned that he had ever exchanged a word with, or even looked at, any of the great writers of his time, his record would now be read with avidity. I have really never in my life run after such men, or sought to make their acquaintance with a view of extending my list; all that I can tell of them, as my book will show, has been the result of chance. But what I have written will be of some interest, I think—at least “in the dim and remote future.”

I had laid the manuscript by, till I had time to quite forget what I had written, when I unexpectedly received a proposal to write my memoirs. I then read over my work, and determined “to let it go,” as it was. It seemed to me that, with all its faults, it fulfilled the requisition of Montaigne in being ung livre de bonne foye. So it has gone forth into print. Jacta est alea.

The story of what is to me by far the most interesting period of my life remains to be written. This embraces an account of my labour for many years in introducing Industrial Art as a branch of education in schools, my life in England and on the Continent for more than twenty years, my travels in Russia and Egypt, my researches among Gypsies and Algonkin Indians, my part in Oriental and Folklore and other Congresses, my discovery of the Shelta or Ogham tongue in Great Britain, and the long and very strangely adventurous discoveries, continued for five years, among witches in Italy, which resulted in the discovery that all the names of the old Etruscan gods are still remembered by the peasantry of the Toscana Romagna, and that ceremonies and invocations are still addressed to them. All this, however, is still too near to be written about. But it may perhaps some day form a second series of reminiscences if the present volumes meet with public favour.

As some of my readers (and assuredly a great many of the American) will find these volumes wanting in personal adventure and lively variety of experiences, and perhaps dull as regards “incidents,” I would remind them that it is, after all, only the life of a mere literary man and quiet, humble scholar, and that such existences are seldom very dramatic. English readers, who are more familiar with such men or literature, will be less exacting. What I have narrated is nowhere heightened in colour, retouched in drawing, or made the utmost of for effect, and I might have gone much further as regards my experiences in politics with the Continental Magazine, and during my connection with Colonel Forney, or life in the West, and have taken the whole, not more from my memory than from the testimony of others. But if this work be, as Germans say, at first too subjective, and devoted too much to mere mental development by aid of books, the “balance” to come of my life will be found to differ materially from it, though it is indeed nowhere in any passage exciting. This present work treats of my infancy in Philadelphia, with some note of the quaint and beautiful old Quaker city as it then was, and many of its inhabitants who still remembered Colonial times and Washington’s Republican Court; reminiscences of boyhood in New England; my revolutionary grandfathers and other relatives, and such men as the last survivor of the Boston Tea-party (I also saw the last signer of the Declaration of Independence); an account of my early reading; my college life at Princeton; three years in Europe passed at the Universities of Heidelberg, Munich, and Paris, in what was emphatically the prime of their quaint student-days; an account of my barricade experiences of the French Revolution of Forty-Eight, of which I missed no chief scene; my subsequent life in America as lawyer, man of letters, and journalist; my experiences in connection with the Civil War, and my work in the advancement of the signing the Emancipation by Abraham Lincoln; recollections of the Oil Region when the oil mania was at its height; a winter on the frontier in the debatable land (which was indeed not devoid of strange life, though I say it); my subsequent connection for three years with Colonel John Forney, during which Grant’s election was certainly carried by him, and in which, as he declared, I “had been his right-hand man;” my writing of sundry books, such as the “Breitmann Ballads,” and my subsequent life in Europe to the year 1870.

I can enumerate in my memory distinctly half-a-dozen little-known men whom I have known, and could with time recall far many more, compared to whose lives my uneventful and calm career has been as that of the mole before the eagle’s. Yet not one of their lives will ever be written, which is certainly a pity. The practice of writing real autobiographies is rapidly ceasing in this our age, when it is bad form to be egoistic or to talk about one’s self, and we are almost shocked in revising those chronicled in the Causeries de Lundi of Sainte-Beuve. Nowadays we have good gossipy reminiscences of other people, in which the writer remains as unseen as the operator of a Punch exhibition in his schwassel box, while he displays his puppets. I find no fault with this—À chacun sa maniÈre. But it is very natural under such influences that men whose own lives are full of and inspired with their own deeds will not write them on the model of Benvenuto Cellini. One of the greatest generals of modern times, Lord Napier of Magdala, told me that he believed I was the only person to whom he had ever fully narrated his experiences of the siege of Lucknow. He seemed to be surprised at having so forgotten himself. In ancient Viking days the hero made his debut in every society with a “Me voici, mes enfants! Listen if you want to be astonished!” and proceeded to tell how he had smashed the heads of kings, and mashed the hearts of maidens, and done great deeds all round. It was bad form—and yet we should never have known much about Regner Lodbrog but for such a canticle. If I, in this work, have not quite effaced myself, as good taste demands, let it be remembered that if I had, at the time of writing, distinctly felt that it would be printed as put down, there would, most certainly, have been much less of “me” visible, and the dead-levelled work would have escaped much possible shot of censure. It was a little in a spirit of defiant reaction that I resolved to let it be published as it is, and risk the chances. As Uncle Toby declared that, after all, a mother must in some kind of a way be a relation to her own child, so it still appears to me that to write an autobiography the author must say something about himself; but it is a great and very popular tour de force to quite avoid doing this, and all art of late years has run to merely skilfully overcoming difficulties and avoiding interesting motives or subjects. It may be, therefore, that in days to come, my book will be regarded with some interest, as a curious relic of a barbarous age, and written in a style long passed away—

“When they sat with ghosts on a stormy shore,
And spoke in a tongue which men speak no more;
Living in wild and wondrous ways,
In the ancient giant and goblin days.”

Once in my younger time, one of the most beautiful and intellectual women whom I ever knew, Madame Anita de BarrÉra—(Daniel Webster said she was beautiful enough to redeem a whole generation of blue-stockings from the charge of ugliness)—once made a great and pathetic fuss to me about a grey hair which had appeared among her black tresses. “And what difference,” I said, “can one white hair make to any friend?” “Well,” she replied, “I thought if I could not awaken any other feeling, I might at least inspire in you veneration for old age.” So with this work of mine, if it please in naught else, it may still gratify some who love to trace the footsteps of the past, and listen to what is told by one who lived long “before the war.”

Now for a last word—which involves the only point of any importance to me personally in this preface—I would say that there will be certain readers who will perhaps think that I have exaggerated my life-work, or blown my own trumpet too loudly. To these I declare in plain honesty, that I believe there have been or are in the United States thousands of men who have far surpassed me, especially as regards services to the country during the Civil War. There were leaders in war and diplomacy, editors and soldiers who sacrificed their lives, to whose names I can only bow in reverence and humility. But as it was said of the great unknown who passed away—the fortes ante Agamemnon—“they had no poet, and they died.” These most deserving ones have not written their lives or set themselves forth, “and so they pass into oblivion”—and I regret it with all my soul. But this is no reason why those who did something, albeit in lesser degree, should not chronicle their experiences exactly as they appear to them, and it is not in human nature to require a man to depreciate that to which he honestly devoted all his energies. Perhaps it never yet entered into the heart of man to conceive how much has really been done by everybody.

And I do most earnestly and solemnly protest, as if it were my last word in life, that I have said nothing whatever as regards my political work and its results which was not seriously said at the time by many far greater men than I, so that I believe I have not the least exaggerated in any trifle, even unconsciously. Thus I can never forget the deep and touching sympathy which Henry W. Longfellow expressed to me regarding my efforts to advance Emancipation, and how, when some one present observed that perhaps I would irritate the Non-Abolition Union men, the poet declared emphatically, “But it is a great idea” or “a noble work.” And Lowell, Emerson, and George W. Curtis, Bayard Taylor, and many more, spoke to the same effect. And what they said of me I may repeat for the sake of History and of Truth.

The present work describes more than forty years of life in America, and it is therefore the American reader who will be chiefly interested in it. I should perhaps have mentioned what I reserved for special comment in the future: that during more than ten years’ residence in Europe I had one thing steadily in view all the time, at which I worked hard, which was to qualify myself to return to America and there introduce to the public schools of Philadelphia the Industrial or Minor Arts as a branch of education, in which I eventually succeeded, devoting to the work there four years, applying myself so assiduously as to neglect both society and amusements, and not obtaining, nor seeking for, pay or profit thereby in any way, directly or indirectly. And if I have, as I have read, since then “expatriated” myself, my whole absence has not been much longer than was that of Washington Irving, and I trust to be able to prove that I have “left my country for my country’s good”—albeit in a somewhat better sense than that which was implied by the poet.

And I may here incidentally mention, with all due modesty, that since the foregoing paragraph came to me “in revise,” I received from Count Angelo di Grubernatis a letter, beginning with the remark that, in consequence of my gentile ed insistence premÚra, or “amiable persistence, begun four-years ago,” he has at length carried out my idea and suggestion of establishing a great Italian Folklore Society, of which I am to rank as among the first twelve members. This is the fourth institution of the kind which I have been first, or among the first, to found in Europe, and it has in every case been noted, not without surprise, that I was an American. Such associations, being wide-reaching and cosmopolitan, may be indeed considered by every man of culture as patriotic, and I hope at some future day that I shall still further prove that, as regards my native country, I have only changed my sky but not my heart, and laboured for American interests as earnestly as ever.

Charles Godfrey Leland.

Bagni di Lucca, Italy, August 20, 1893.

er, as another supposes.

I went further in this field than I have room to describe. I even read the rococo-sweet poems of Joachim du Bellay. In this year my father gave me “The Doctor,” by Robert Southey, a work which I read and re-read assiduously for many years, and was guided by it to a vast amount of odd reading, Philemon Holland’s translation of Pliny being one of the books. This induced me to read all of Southey’s poems, which I did, not from the library, but from a bookstore, where I had free run and borrowing privileges, as I well might, since my father lost £4,000 by its owner.

While at Mr. Greene’s school I had given me Alsopp’s “Life and Letters of Coleridge,” which I read through many times; then in my thirteenth year, in Philadelphia, I read with great love Charles Lamb’s works and most of the works of Coleridge. Mr. Alcott had read Wordsworth into us in illimitable quantities, so that I soon had a fair all-round knowledge of the Lakers, whom I dearly loved. Now there was a certain soupÇon of Mysticism or Transcendentalism and Pantheism in Coleridge, and even in Wordsworth, which my love of rocks and rivers and fairy lore easily enabled me to detect by sympathy.

But all of this was but a mere preparation for and foreshadowing of a great mental development and very precocious culture which was rapidly approaching. I now speak of what happened to me from 1838 to 1840, principally in the latter year. If I use extravagant, vain words, I beg the reader to pardon me. Perhaps this will never be published, therefore sit verbo venia!

I had become deeply interested in the new and bold development which was then manifesting itself in the Unitarian Church. Channing, whom I often heard preach, had something in common with the Quietists; Mr. Furness was really a thinker “out of bounds,” while in reality as gentle and purely Christian as could be. There was something new in the air, and this Something I, in an antiquated form, had actually preceded. It was really only a rechauffÉ of the Neo-Platonism which lay at the bottom of Porphyry, Proclus, Psellus, Jamblichus, with all of whom I was fairly well acquainted. Should any one doubt this, I can assure him that I still possess a full copy of the “Poemander” or “Pimander” of Hermes Trismegistus, made by me in my sixteenth year, which most assuredly no mortal could ever have understood or made, or cared to make, if he had not read the Neo-Platonists; for Marsilius Ficinus himself regarded this work as a pendant to them, and published it as such. Which work I declared was not a Christian Platonic forgery, but based on old Egyptian works, as has since been well-nigh proved from recent discoveries. (I think it was Dr. Garnett who, hearing me once declare in the British Museum that I believed Hermes was based on an ancient Egyptian text, sent for a French work in which the same view was advanced.)

The ignorance, narrow-mindedness, and odium theologicum which prevailed in America until 1840 was worse than that in Europe under the Church in the Middle Ages, for even in the latter there had been an Agobard and an Abelard, Knight-Templar agnostics, and illuminati of different kinds. The Unitarians, who believed firmly in every point of Christianity, and that man was saved by Jesus, and would be damned if he did not put faith in him as the Son of God, were regarded literally and truly by everybody as no better than infidels because they believed that Christ was sent by God, and that Three could not be One. Every sect, with rare exceptions, preached, especially the Presbyterians, that the vast majority even of Christians would be damned, thereby giving to the devil that far greater power than God against which Bishop Agobard had protested. As for a freethinker or infidel, he was pointed at in the streets; and if a man had even seen a “Deist,” he spoke of it as if he had beheld a murderer. Against all this some few were beginning to revolt.

There came a rumour that there was something springing up in Boston called Transcendentalism. Nobody knew what it was, but it was dreamy, mystical, crazy, and infideleterious to religion. Firstly, it was connected with Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and finally with everything German. The new school of liberal Unitarians favoured it. I had a quick intuition that here was something for me to work at. I bought Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus, first edition, and read it through forty times ere I left college, of which I “kept count.”

My record here as regards some books may run a little ahead; but either before I went to college or during my first year there (almost all before or by 1840-’41), I had read Carlyle’s “Miscellanies” thoroughly, Emerson’s “Essays,” a translation of Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason,” the first half of it many times; Dugald Stewart’s works, something of Reid, Locke, and Hobbes’s “Leviathan”; had bought and read French versions of Schelling’s “Transcendental Idealism” and Fichte’s fascinating “Destiny of Man”; studied a small handbook of German philosophy; the works of Campanella and Vanini (Bruno much later, for his works were then exceeding rare. I now have Weber’s edition), and also, with intense relish and great profit, an old English version of Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. In which last work I had the real key and clue to all German philosophy and Rationalism, as I in time found out. I must here modestly mention that I had, to a degree which I honestly believe seldom occurs, the art of rapid yet of carefully-observant reading. George Boker once, quite unknown to me, gave me something to read, watched my eyes as I went from line to line, timed me by watch, and finally examined me on what I had read. He published the incident long after, said he had repeated it more than once À mon insu, and that it was remarkable.

Such a dual life as I at this time led it has seldom entered into the head of man to imagine. I was, on the one hand, a school-boy in a jacket, leading a humiliated life among my kind, all because I was sickly and weak; while, on the other hand, utterly alone and without a living soul to whom I could exchange an idea, I was mastering rapidly and boldly that which was then in reality the tremendous problem of the age. I can now see that, as regards its real antique bases, I was far more deeply read and better grounded than were even its most advanced leaders in Anglo-Saxony. For I soon detected in Carlyle, and much more in Emerson, a very slender knowledge of that stupendous and marvellous ancient Mysticism which sent its soul in burning faith and power to the depth of “the downward-borne elements of God,” as Hermes called them. I missed even the rapt faith of such a weak writer as Sir Kenelm Digby, much more Zoroaster! Vigourous and clever and bold writers they were—Carlyle was far beyond me in literary art—but true Pantheists they were not. And they were men of great genius, issuing essays to the age on popular, or political, or “literary” topics; but philosophers they most assuredly were not, nor men tremendous in spiritual truth. And yet it was precisely as philosophers and thaumaturgists and revealers of occulta that they posed—especially Emerson. And they dabbled or trifled with free thought and “immorality,” crying Goethe up as the Light of Lights, while all their inner souls were bound in the most Puritanical and petty goody-goodyism. Though there were traces of grim Scotch humour in Carlyle, my patron saint and master, Rabelais, or aught like him, had no credit with them.

They paddled in Pantheism, but as regards it, both lacked the stupendous faith and inspiration of the old adepti, who flung their whole souls into God; and yet they sneered at Materialism and Science.

I did not then see all of this so clearly as I now do, but I very soon found that, as in after years it was said that Comteism was Catholicism without Christianity, so the Carlyle-Emersonian Transcendentalism was Mysticism without mystery. Nor did I reflect that it was a calling people from the nightmared slumber of frozen orthodoxy or bigotry to come and see a marvellous new thing. And when they came, they found out that this marvellous thing was that they had been awakened, “only that and nothing more”; and that was the great need of the time, and worth more than any magic or theosophy. But I had expected, in simple ignorant faith, that the sacred mysteries of some marvellous cabala would be revealed, and not finding what I wanted (though indeed I discovered much that was worldly new to me), I returned to the good old ghost-haunted paths trodden by my ancestors, to dryads and elves and voices from the stars, and the archÆus formed by the astral spirit (not the modern Blavatsky affair, by-the-bye), which entyped all things . . . and so went elving and dreaming on ’mid ruins old.

Be it observed that all this time I really did not know what I knew. Boys are greatly influenced by their surroundings, and in those days every one about me never spoke of Transcendentalism or “Germanism,” or even “bookishness,” without a sneer. I was borne by a mysterious inner impulse which I could not resist into this terrible whirlpool of belles-lettres, occulta, facetiÆ, and philosophy; but I had, God knows, little cause for pride that I read so much, for it was on every hand in some way turned against me. If it had only been reading like that of other human beings, it might have been endured; but I was always seen coming and going with parchment-bound tomes. Once I implored my father, when I was thirteen or fourteen, to let me buy a certain book, which he did. This work, which was as dear to me as a new doll to a girl for a long time, was the Reductorium or moralisation of the whole Bible by Petrus Berchorius, black-letter, folio, Basle, 1511. It was from the library of a great and honest scholar, and, as the catalogue stated, “contained MS. notes on the margin by Melanchthon.”

Promising, this, for an American youth who was expected to go into business or study a profession!

While at Hurlbut’s school I took lessons in Spanish. There was a Spanish boy from Malaga, a kind of half-servant, half-protÉgÉ in a family near us, with whom I practised speaking the language, and also had some opportunity with a few Cubans who visited our family. One of them had been a governor-general. He was a Gallician by birth, but I did not know this, and innocently asked him one day if los Gallegos no son los Irlandeses d’EspaÑa?—if the Gallicians were not the Irish of Spain—which drew a grave caution from my brother, who knew better than I how the land lay. I really attained some skill in Spanish, albeit to this day “Don Quixote” demands from me a great deal of dictionary. But, as I said before, I learn languages with incredible difficulty, a fact which I cannot reconcile with the extreme interest which I take in philology and linguistics, and the discoveries which I have made; as, for instance, that of Shelta in England, or my labours in jargons, such as Pidgin-English, Slang, and Romany. But, as the reader has probably perceived, I was a boy with an inherited good constitution only from the paternal side, and a not very robust one from my mother, while my mind, weakened by long illness, had been strangely stimulated by many disorders, nervous fevers being frequent among them. In those days I was, as my mother said, almost brought up on calomel—and she might have added quinine. The result of so much nervousness, excessive stimulating by medicine, and rapid growth was a too great susceptibility to poetry, humour, art, and all that was romantic, quaint, and mysterious, while I found it very hard to master any really dry subject. What would have set me all right would have been careful physical culture, boxing, so as to protect me from my school persecutors, and amusement in a healthy sense, of which I had almost none whatever.

Hurlbut’s became at last simply intolerable, and my parents, finding out in some way that I was worse for being there, removed me to a far better school kept by E. C. Wines, who had written books on education, and attained some fame thereby. This was in 1839-’40, and I was there to be prepared for college. We were soon introduced to an old French gentleman, who was to teach us, and who asked the other boys what French works they had read. Some had gone through TelÉmaque, or Paul et Virginie, Florian, etcetera. The good-goody nature of such reading awoke in me my sense of humour. When it came to my turn, and I was asked, I replied, “La Pucelle d’Orleans and Dictionnaire Philosophique of Voltaire, the Confessions of Rousseau, the Poems of Villon, Charles d’Orleans, Clotilde de Surville, and more or less of Helvetius, D’Holbach, and Condillac.” Here the professor, feeling himself quizzed, cast forth his hands as in disgust and horror, and cried, “Assez! assez! Unhappy boy, you have raked through the library of the devil down to the dregs!” Nor was I “selling” him, for I certainly had read the works, as the records of the Philadelphia Library can in a great measure prove, and did not speak by hearsay.

I had at this time several severe long attacks of illness with much pain, which I always bore well, as a matter of course or habit. But rather oddly, while in the midst of my Transcendentalism, and reading every scrap of everything about Germany which I could get, and metaphysics, and study—I was very far gone then, and used to go home from school and light a pipe with a long wooden stem, and study the beloved “Critic of Pure Reason” or Carlyle’s Miscellanies, having discovered that smoking was absolutely necessary in such reading—[De Quincey required a quart of laudanum to enable him to enjoy German metaphysics]—there came a strange gleam of worldly dissipation, of which I never think without pleasure. I had passed one summer vacation on a farm near Philadelphia, where I learned something in wood-ranging about wild herbs and catching land-tortoises and “coon-hunting,” and had been allowed to hire and ride a horse.

I did not know it, but this horse had thrown over his head everybody who had ever mounted him. He was a perfect devil, but also a perfect gentleman. He soon took my measure, and resolved to treat me kindly as a protÉgÉ. When we both wanted a gallop, he made such time as nobody before had dreamed was in him; when he was lazy, he only had to turn his head and look at me, and I knew what that meant and conformed unto him. He had a queer fancy at times to quietly steal up and put his hoof on my foot so as to hurt me, and then there was an impish laugh in his eye. For he laughed at me, and I knew it. There is really such a thing as a horse-laugh. One day we passed through a drove of sheep, and he did not like it—no horse does. After a while I wanted to go by a certain road, but he refused sternly to take it. I found soon after that if I had done so we must have met the sheep again. He had, in fact, understood the route far better than I. I once got a mile out of him in three minutes—more or less; but he had seen me look at my watch, and knew that I wanted to see what he could do. He never did it again. I may have been mistaken here, but it was my impression at the time. Perhaps if I had gone on much longer in intimacy with him I might have profited mentally by it, and acquired what Americans call “horse-sense,” of which I had some need. It is the sixth—or the first—sense of all Yankees and Scotchmen. When I returned to the city I was allowed to hire a horse for a few times from a livery stable, and went out riding with a friend. This friend was a rather precociously dissipated youth, and with him I had actually now and then—very rarely—a glass at a bar and oysters. He soon left me for wilder associates, and I relapsed into my old sober habits. Strange as it may seem, I believe that I was really on the brink of becoming like other boys. But it all faded away. Now it became imperative that I should study in earnest. I used to rise at three or four in the morning. What with hard work and great fear of not passing my matriculation, I contrived to get up so much Latin, Greek, and mathematics, that Mr. Wines thought I might attempt it, and so one fine summer day my father went with me to Princeton. I was in a fearful state of nervous anxiety.

COLLEGE LIFE.

PRINCETON.

We went to Princeton, where I presented my letters of introduction, passed a by no means severe examination for the Freshman’s class, was very courteously received by the professors to whom I was commended, and, to my inexpressible delight, found myself a college student. Rooms were secured for me at a Mrs. Burroughs’, opposite Nassau Hall; the adjoining apartment was occupied by Mr. Craig Biddle, now a judge. George H. Boker was then at the end of his Sophomore year, the term having but a few days to run. He had rooms in college and lived in unexampled style, having actually a carpet on his floor and superior furniture, also a good collection of books, chiefly standard English poets. He at once took me in hand and gave me a character.

Princeton College was entirely in the hands of the strictest of “Old School” Presbyterian theologians. Piety and mathematics rated extravagantly high in the course. The latter study was literally reckoned in the grades as being of more account than all the rest collectively. Thus, as eventually happened to me, a student might excel in Latin, English, and Natural Philosophy—in fact, in almost everything, good conduct included—and yet be the last in the class if he neglected mathematics. There was no teaching of French, because, as was naÏvely said, students might read the irreligious works extant in that language, and of course no other modern language; as for German, one would as soon have proposed to raise the devil there as a class in it. If there had been an optional course, as at Cambridge, Massachusetts, by which German was accepted in lieu of mathematics, I should probably have taken the first honour, instead of the last. And yet, with a little more Latin, I was really qualified, on the day when I matriculated at Princeton, to have passed for a Doctor of Philosophy in Heidelberg, as I subsequently accurately ascertained.

There were three or four men of great ability in the Faculty of the University. One of these was Professor Joseph Henry, in those days the first natural philosopher and lecturer on science in America. I had the fortune in time to become quite a special protÉgÉ of his. Another was Professor James Alexander, who taught Latin, rhetoric, and mental philosophy. He was so clear-headed and liberally learned, that I always felt sure that he must at heart have been far beyond the bounds of Old School theology, but he had an iron Roman-like sternness of glance which quite suited a Covenanter. The most remarkable of all was Albert Dodd, Professor of Mathematics and Lecturer on Architecture. This man was a genius of such a high order, that had it not been for the false position in which he was placed, he would have given to the world great works. The false position was this: he was the chief pulpit orator of the old school, and had made war on the Transcendentalist movement in an able article in the Princeton Review (which, by the way, was useful in guiding me to certain prohibited works, before unknown to me). But as he was a man of poetic genial feeling, he found himself irresistibly fascinated by what he had hunted down, and so read Plato, and when he died actually left behind him a manuscript translation of Spinoza’s works!

The reader may imagine what a marvellous find I was to him. George Boker, who was ages beyond me in knowledge of the world—man and woman—said one day that he could imagine how Dodd sat and chuckled to hear me talk, which remark I did not at all understand and thought rather stupid. I remember that during my first call on him we discussed Sartor Resartus, and I expressed it as my firm conviction that the idea of the Clothes Philosophy had been taken from the Treatise on Fire and Salt by the Rosicrucian Lord Blaise. Then, in all naÏvetÉ and innocence of effect, I discussed some point in Kant’s “Critic,” and a few other trifles not usually familiar to sub-Freshmen, and took my departure, very much pleased at having entered on a life where my favourite reading did not really seem to be quite silly or disreputable. I remember, however, being very much surprised indeed at finding that the other students, in whom I expected to encounter miracles of learning, or youth far superior to myself in erudition and critical knowledge, did not quite come up to my anticipations. However, as they were all far beyond me in mathematics, I supposed their genius had all gone in that direction, for well I knew that the toughest page in Fichte was a mere trifle compared to the awful terrors of the Rule of Three, and so treated them as young men who were my superiors in other and greater things.

There were wearisome morning prayers in the chapel, and roll-call every morning, and then an hour of recitation before breakfast, study till ten or eleven, study and recitation in the afternoon, and evening prayers again and study in the evening. The Sabbath was anything but a day of rest, for we had the same prayers; morning attendance at church; afternoon, the learning and reciting of four chapters in the Bible; while we were expected in the evening to master one or two chapters in the Greek Testament. I am not sorry that I used to read books during sermon-time. It kept me from, or from me, a great deal of wickedness. Videlicet:

The sermons consisted principally of assertion that man himself consisted chiefly of original sin. As evil communications corrupt good manners, I myself, being young and impressionable, began to believe that I too was an awful sinner. Not knowing where else to look for it, I concluded that it consisted in my inability to learn mathematics. I do not distinctly remember whether I prayed to Heaven that I might be able to cross the Pons Asinorum, but “anyway” my prayer was granted when I graduated.

Another stock-piece in the repertoire consisted of attacks on Voltaire, Tom Paine, and other antiquated Deists or infidels. I had read with great contempt a copy of “The Rights of Man” belonging to my genial uncle Amos. I say with great contempt, for I always despised that kind of free thought which consisted chiefly of enmity to Christianity. Now I can see that Voltaire and his followers were quite in the right in warring on terrible and immediate abuses which oppressed mankind; but I had learned from Spinoza to believe that every form of faith was good in its way or according to its mission or time, and that it was silly to ridicule Christianity because the tale of Balaam’s ass was incredible. Paine was to me just what a Positivist now is to a Darwinian or Agnostic, and such preaching against “infidels” seemed to me like pouring water on a drowned mouse. There had always been in Mr. Furness’s teaching a very decided degree of Rationalism, and I had advanced far more boldly on the track. I remember reading translations from Schleiermacher and buying Strauss’s “Life of Jesus” before I went to Princeton—I saw Strauss himself in after years at Weinsberg, in Germany—but at Princeton the slightest approach to explaining the most absurd story in the Old Testament was regarded as out-and-out atheism. It had all happened, we were told, just as it is described.

I may as well note here the fact that for many years in my early life such a thing as only reading a book through once rarely happened, when I could obtain it long enough. Even the translations of the Neo-Platonists, with Campanella, Vanini, or the Italian naturalists, were read and reread, while the principal English poets, and such books as I owned, were perused daily.

And here in this great infant arithmetic school I was in due time set down to study Paley’s “Evidences of Christianity” and Locke on the Understanding—like Carlyle’s young lion invited to a feast of chickweed. Apropos of the first, I have a droll reminiscence. There had been in Philadelphia two years before a sale of a fine library, and I had been heart-broken because my means had not permitted me to buy the works of Sir Kenelm Digby. However, I found them in the Princeton College Library. The first thing I came to in Paley was his famous simile of the watch—taken bodily and without acknowledgment from Digby. The theft disgusted me. “These be your Christian champions!” I thought—

“Would any of the stock of infidels
Had been my evidence ere such a Christian!”

And, moreover, Paley forgets to inform us what conclusion the finder might draw if he had picked up a badly made watch which did not keep good time—like this our turnip of a world at times!

As we were obliged to attend divine service strictly on Sunday, I was allowed to go to the Episcopal church in the village, which agreed very well with my parents’ views. I quite fell into the sentiment of the sect, and so went to Professor Dodd to ask for permission from the Faculty to change my religion. When he asked me how it was that I had renegaded into Trinitarianism, I replied that it was due to reflection on the perfectly obvious and usual road of the Platonic hypostases eked out with Gnosticism. I had found in the College Library, and read with great pleasure almost as soon as I got there, Cudworth’s “Intellectual System” (I raided a copy as loot from a house in Tennessee in after years, during the war), and learned from it that “it was a religious instinct of man to begin with a Trinity, in which I was much aided by Schelling, and that there was no trace of a Trinity in the Bible, or rather the contrary, yet that it ought consistently to have been there”—a sentiment which provoked from Professor Dodd a long whistle like that of Uncle Toby with Lilliburlero. “For,” as I ingeniously represented, “man or God consists of the Monad from which developed spirit or intellect and soul; for toto enim in mundo lucet Trias cujus Monas est princeps, as the creed of the Rosicrucians begins (which is taken from the Zoroastrian oracles)”—here there was another long subdued whistle—“and it is set forth on the face of every Egyptian temple as the ball, the wings of the spirit which rusheth into all worlds, and the serpent, which is the Logos.” Here the whistle became more sympathetic, for Egypt was the professor’s great point in his lectures on architecture. And having thus explained the true grounds of the Trinity to the most learned theologian of the Presbyterian sect, I took my leave, quite unconscious that I had said anything out of the common, for all I meant was to give my reasons for going back to the Episcopal Church. As for Professor Dodd, he had given me up from the very first interview to follow my idols as I pleased, only just throwing in argument enough to keep me well going. He would have been the last man on earth to throw down such a marvellous fairy castle, goblin-built and elfin-tenanted, from whose windows rang Æolian harps, and which was lit by night with undying Rosicrucian lamps, to erect on its ruin a plain brick, Old School Presbyterian slated chapel. I was far more amusing as I was, and so I was let alone.

I had passed my examination about the end of June, and I was to remain in Princeton until the autumn, reading under a tutor, in the hope of being able to join the Sophomore class when the college course should begin. There I was utterly alone, and rambled by myself in the woods. I believed myself to be a very good Christian in those days; but I was really as unaffected and sincere a Poly-Pantheist or Old Nature heathen as ever lived in Etrusco-Roman or early German days. A book very dear to my heart at that time was the Curiositez Inouyes of Gaffarel (Trollope was under the impression that he was the only man in Europe who ever read it), in which there is an exquisite theory that the stars of heaven in their courses and the lines of winding rivers and bending corn, the curves of shells and minerals, rocks and trees, yes, of all the shapes of all created things, form the trace and letters of a stupendous writing or characters spread all over the universe, which writing becomes little by little legible to the one who by communion with Nature and earnest faith seeks to penetrate the secret. I had found in the lonely woods a small pond by a high rock, where I often sat in order to attain this blessed illumination, and if I did not get quite so far as I hoped, I did in reality attain to a deep unconscious familiarity with birds and leafy shades, still waters, and high rising trees; in short, with all the sweet solemnity of sylvan nature, which has ever since influenced all my life. I mean this not in the second-hand way in which it is so generally understood, but as a real existence in itself, so earnestly felt that I was but little short of talking with elfin beings or seeing fairies flitting over flowers. Those who explain everything by “imagination” do not in the least understand how actual the life in Nature may become to us. Reflect for a minute, thou whose whole soul is in gossip and petty chronicles of fashion, and “sassiety,” that in that life thou wert a million years ago, and in it thou wilt be a million years hence, ever going on in all forms, often enough in rivers, rock, and trees, and yet canst not realise with a sense of awe that there are in these forms, passing to others—ever, ever on—myriads of men and women, or at least their life—how we know not, as what we know not—only this, that the Will or creative force of the Creator or Creating is in it all. This was the serious yet unconscious inspiration of my young life in those days, in even more elaborate or artistic form, which all went very well hand in hand with the Euclid and Homer or Demosthenes and Livy with which my tutor Mr. Schenk (pronounce SkÁnk) was coaching me.

My reading may seem to the reader to have been more limited than it was, because I have not mentioned the historians, essayists, or belletrists whose works are read more or less by “almost everybody.” It is hardly worth while to say, what must be of course surmised, that Sterne, Addison, Goldsmith, Johnson, Swift, and Macaulay—in fine, the leading English classics—were really well read by me, my ambition being not to be ignorant of anything which a literary man should know. Macaulay was then new, and I devoured not only his works, but a vast amount by him suggested. I realised at an early age that there was a certain cycle of knowledge common to all really cultivated minds, and this I was determined to master. I had, however, little indeed of the vanity of erudition, having been deeply convinced and constantly depressed or shamed by the reflection that it was all worse than useless, and injurious to making my way in life. When I heard that Professor Dodd had said that at seventeen there were not ten men in America who had read so much, while Professor Joseph Henry often used words to this effect, and stern James Alexander in his lectures would make deeply learned allusions intended for me alone—as, for instance, to Kant’s “Æsthetik”—I was anything but elated or vain in consequence. I had read in Sartor Resartus, “If a man reads, shall he not be learned?” and I knew too well that reading was with me an unprofitable, perhaps pitiable, incurable mania-amusement, which might ruin me for life, and which, as it was, was a daily source of apprehension between me and my good true friends, who feared wisely for my future.

I absolutely made James Alexander smile for once in his life—’twas sunshine on the grim Tarpeian rock. I had bought me a nice English large type Juvenal, and written on the outside in quaint Elizabethan character form—I forget now the name of the author—the following:—

“Ay, Juvenall, thy jerking hande is good,
Not gently laying on, but bringing bloude.
Oh, suffer me amonge so manye men
To treade aright the traces of thy penne,
And light my lamp at thy eternal flame!”

We students in the Latin class had left our books on a table, when I saw grim and dour James Alexander pick up my copy, read the inscription, when looking up at me he smiled; it was a kind of poetry which pleased him.

I remember, too, how one day, when in Professor Dodd’s class of mathematics, I, instead of attending to the lecture, read surreptitiously Cardanus de Subtilitate in an old vellum binding, and carelessly laid it on the table afterwards, where Professor Dodd found it, and directed at me one of his half-laughing Mephistophelian glances. Reading of novels in lectures was not unknown; but for Dodd to find anything so caviare-like as Cardanus among our books was unusual. George Boker remarked once, that while Professor Dodd was a Greek, Professor James Alexander was an old Roman, which was indeed a good summary of the two.

I have and always had a bad memory, but I continued to retain what I read by repetition or reviewing and by collocation, which is a marvellous aid in retaining images. For, in the first place, I read entirely by groups; and if I, for instance, attacked Blair’s “Rhetoric,” Longinus and Burke Promptly followed; and if I perused “Rambles in the Footsteps of Don Quixote,” I at once, on principle, followed it up with “Spain in 1830,” and a careful study of Ford’s Guide-Book for Spain, and perhaps a score of similar books, till I had got Spain well into me. And as I have found by years of observation and much research, having written a book on Education partly based on this principle, ten books on any subject read together, profit more than a hundred at intervals. And I may here add, that if this record of what I read be dull, it is still that of my real youthful life, giving the clue to my mind as it was formed. Books in those days were the only events of my life.

Long before I went to college I had an attack of Irish antiquities, which I relieved by reading O’Brien, Vallancey, the more sensible Petrie, and O’Somebody’s Irish grammar, aided by old Annie Mooney, who always remained by us. In after years I discovered an Ogham inscription and the famed Ogham tongue, or Shelta, “the lost language of the bards,” according to Kuno Meyer and John Sampson.

During my first half-year a college magazine was published, and I, a Freshman, was requested to contribute to the first number. I sent in an article on the history of English poetry. Before I wrote it, the great man among the senior students asked leave to be allowed to write it with me. I did not quite like the idea, but reflecting that the association would give me a certain prestige, I accepted his aid. So it appeared; but it was regarded as mine. Professor Dodd said something to me about the inexpediency of so young a person appearing in print. I could have told him that I had already published several poems, &c., in Philadelphian newspapers, but reflecting that it was not kind to have the better of him, I said nothing. From that time I published something in every number. My second article was an essay on Spinoza, and I still think it was rather good for a boy of sixteen.

There was the College and also a Society library, out of which I picked a great deal of good reading. One day I asked Professor John MacLean, the college librarian, for the works of Condorcet. His reply was, “Vile book! vile book! can’t have it.” However, I found in the Society library Urquhart’s translation of “Rabelais,” which I read, I daresay, as often as any mortal ever did. And here I have a word to say to the wretched idiots who regard “the book called Rabelais” as “immoral” and unfit for youth. Many times did I try to induce my young friends to read “Rabelais,” and some actually mastered the story of the goose as a torche-cul, and perhaps two or three chapters more; but as for reading through or enjoying it, “that was not in their minds.” All complained, or at least showed, that they “did not understand it.” It was to them an aggravating farrago of filth and oddity, under which they suspected some formal allegory or meaning which had perished, or was impenetrable. Learn this, ye prigs of morality, that no work of genius ever yet demoralised a dolt or ignoramus. Even the Old Testament, with all its stores of the “shocking,” really does very little harm. It requires mind for mind in reading, and vice becomes unattractive even to the vicious when they cannot understand it. I did understand Rabelais, and the Moyen de Parvenir, and the Cymbalum Mundi, and Boccaccio (I owned these books), and laughed over them, yet was withal as pure-minded a youth as could well be imagined without being a simpleton. For, with all such reading, I best loved such a book as Bromley’s “Sabbath of Rest,” or sweet, strange works of ancient Mysticism, which bore the soul away to the stars or into Nature. Such a combination is perfectly possible when there is no stain of dishonesty or vulgarity in the character, and I had escaped such influences easily enough.

A droll event took place in the spring. It had been usual once a year—I forgot on what occasion—to give to all the classes a holiday. This year it was abolished, and the Sophomore, junior, and senior classes quietly acquiesced. But we, the Freshmen, albeit we had never been there before, rebelled at such infringement of “our rights,” and absented ourselves from recitation. I confess that I was a leader in the movement, because I sincerely believed it to be a sin to “remove old landmarks,” and that the students required more rest and holidays than were allowed them; in which I was absolutely in the right, for our whole life, except Saturday afternoons, was “one demnition grind.”

The feeling which was excited by this “Freshman’s rebellion” was one of utter amazement, or awful astonishment tempered with laughter, not unmingled with respect. It was the terrier flying at the lion, when the great mastiff, and bloodhound, and Danish dog had quietly slunk aside. There were in the class beside myself several youths of marked character, and collectively we had already made an impression, to which my intimacy with George Boker, and Professor Dodd, and the very Élite of the seniors, added not a little force. We were mysterious. Hitherto a Freshman had been the greenest of the green, a creature created for ridicule, a sort of “leathery fox” or mere tyro (ty—not a ty-pographical error—pace my kind and courteous reviewer in the Saturday)—and here were Freshmen of a new kind rising in dignity above all others.

Which reminds me of a merry tale. It was usual for Freshmen to learn to smoke for the first time after coming to college, and for more advanced students to go to their rooms, or find them in others, and smoke them sick or into retreating. I, however, found a source of joy in this, that I could now sit almost from morning till night, and very often on to three in the morning, smoking all the time, being deeply learned in Varinas, Kanaster, and the like; for I smoked nothing but real Holland tobacco, while I could buy it. A party of Sophomores informed George Boker that they intended to smoke me out. “Smoke him out!” quoth George; “why, he’d smoke the whole of you dumb and blind.” However, it came to pass that one evening several of them tried it on; and verily they might as well have tried it on to Niklas Henkerwyssel, who, as the legend goes, sold his soul to the devil for the ability to smoke all the time, to whom my father had once compared me. So the cigars and tobacco were burned, and I liked it extremely. Denser grew the smoke, and the windows were closed, to which I cheerfully assented, for I liked to have it thick; and still more smoke and more, and the young gentlemen who had come to smother me grew pale, even as the Porcupines grew pale when they tried to burn out the great Indian sorcerer, who burned them! But I, who was beginning to enjoy myself amazingly in such congenial society, only filled Boker’s great meerschaum with Latakia, and puffed away. One by one the visitors also “puffed away,” i.e., vanished through the door into the night.

“Shall I open the window?” asked George.

“Not on my account,” I replied. “I rather enjoy it as it is.”

“I begin to believe,” replied my friend, “that you would like it in Dante’s hell of clouds. Do you know what those men came here for? It was to smoke you out. And you smoked them out, and never knew it.” Which was perfectly true. As for smoking, my only trouble was to be able to buy cigars and tobacco. These were incredibly cheap in those days, and I always dressed very respectably, but my smoking always cost me more than my clothing.

When we Freshmen had rebelled, we were punished by being rusticated or sent into the country to board. I went to Professor Dodd to receive my sentence, and in a grave voice, in which was a faint ring as of irony, and with the lurking devil which always played in his great marvellous mysterious black eyes, he said, “If you were any other student, I would not send you to the city, and so reward your rebellion with a holiday. But as I know perfectly well that you will go into the Philadelphia Library, and never stop reading till it is time to return, I will send you there.”

My parents were then absent with my younger sisters in New England, but I had unlimited credit at Congress Hall Hotel, which was kept by a Mr. John Sturdevant, and where I was greatly respected as the son of the owner of the property. So I went there, and fared well, and, as Professor Dodd prophesied, read all the time. One night I went into an auction of delightful old books. My money had run low; there only remained to me one dollar and a half.

Now, of all books on earth, what I most yearned for in those days were the works of Jacob Behmen. And the auctioneer put up a copy containing “The Aurora or Morning Rednesse,” English version (circa 1636), and I bid. One dollar—one dollar ten cents—twenty—twenty-five; my heart palpitated, and I half fainted for fear lest I should be outbid, when at the very last I got it with my last penny.

The black eyes of Professor Dodd twinkled more elfishly than ever when I exhibited to him my glorious treasure. He evidently thought that my exile had been to me anything but a punishment, and he was right. For a copy of Anthroposophos Theomagicus or the works of Robert Fludd I would have got up another rebellion.

It was quite against the college regulations for students to live in the town, but as I never touched a card, was totally abstemious and “moral,” and moreover in rather delicate health, I was passed over as an odd exception. Once or twice it was proposed to bring me in, but Professor Dodd interfered and saved me. While in Princeton for more than four years, I never once touched a drop of anything stronger than coffee, which was a great pity! Exercise was not in those days encouraged in any way whatever—in fact, playing billiards and ten-pins was liable to be punished by expulsion; there was no gymnasium, no boating, and all physical games and manly exercises were sternly discouraged as leading to sin. Now, if I had drunk a pint of bitter ale every day, and played cricket or “gymnased,” or rowed for two hours, it would have saved me much suffering, and to a great degree have relieved me from reading, romancing, reflecting, and smoking, all of which I carried to great excess, having an inborn impulse to be always doing something. That I did not grapple with life as a real thing, or with prosaic college studies or society, was, I can now see, a disease, for which, as my peculiar tastes had come upon me from nervous and Unitarian and Alcottian evil influences, I was not altogether responsible. I was a precocious boy, and I had fully developed extraordinary influences, which, like the seed of Scripture, had in my case fallen on more than fertile ground; it was like the soil of the Margariten Island, by Budapest, which is so permeated by hot springs in a rich soil that everything comes to maturity there in one-third of the time which it does elsewhere. I was the last child on earth who should ever have fallen into Alcott’s hands, or listened to Dr. Channing or Furness, or have been interested in anything “ideal”; but fate willed that I should drink the elfin goblet to the dregs.

George H. Boker had a great influence on me. We were in a way connected, for my uncle Amos had married his aunt, and my cousin, Benjamin Godfrey, his cousin. He was exactly six feet high, with the form of an Apollo, and a head which was the very counterpart of the bust of Byron. A few years later N. P. Willis described him in the Home Journal as the handsomest man in America. He had been from boyhood as precociously a man of the world as I was the opposite. He was par Éminence the poet of our college, and in a quiet, gentlemanly way its “swell.” I passed a great deal of my time in his rooms reading Wordsworth, Shelley, and Byron, the last named being his ideal. He ridiculed the Lakers, whom I loved; and when Southey’s last poem, “On Gooseberry Pie,” appeared, he declared that the poor old man was in his dotage, to which I assented with sorrow in my heart. Though only one year older than I, yet, as a Junior, and from his superior knowledge of life, I regarded him as being about thirty. He was quite familiar, in a refined and gentlemanly way, with all the dissipation of Philadelphia and New York; nor was the small circle of his friends, with whom I habitually associated, much behind him in this respect. Even during this Junior year he was offered the post of secretary to our Ambassador at Vienna. From him and the others I acquired a second-hand knowledge of life, which was sufficient to keep me from being regarded as a duffer or utterly “green,” though in all such “life” I was practically as innocent as a young nun. Now, whatever I heard, as well as read, I always turned over and over in my mind, thoroughly digesting it to a most exceptional degree. So that I was somewhat like the young lady of whom I heard in Vienna in after years. She was brought up in the utmost moral and strict seclusion, but she found in her room an aperture through which she could witness all that took place in the neighbouring room of a maison de passe; but being a great philosopher, she in time regarded it all as the “butterfly passing show” of a theatre, the mere idle play of foolish mortal passions.

Even before I began my Freshman year there came into my life a slight but new and valuable influence. Professor Dodd, when I arrived, had just begun his course of lectures on architecture. To my great astonishment, but not at all to that of George Boker, I was invited to attend the course, Boker remarking dryly that he had no doubt that Dodd thanked God for having at last got an auditor who would appreciate him. Which I certainly did. I in after years listened to the great Thiersch, who trained Heine to art, and of whom I was a special protÉgÉ, and many great teachers, but I never listened to any one like Albert Dodd. It was not with him the mere description of styles and dates; it was a deep and truly Æsthetic feeling that every phase of architecture mirrors and reciprocally forms its age, and breathes its life and poetry and religion, which characterised all that he said. It was in nothing like the subjective rhapsodies of Ruskin, which bloomed out eight years later, but rather in the spirit of Vischer and Taine, which J. A. Symonds has so beautifully and clearly set forth in his Essays [98]—that is, the spirit of historical development. Here my German philosophy enabled me to grasp a subtle and delicate spirit of beauty, which passed, I fear, over the heads of the rest of the youthful audience. His ideas of the correspondence of Egyptian architecture to the stupendous massiveness of Pantheism and the appalling grandeur of its ideas, were clear enough to me, who had copied Hermes Trismegistus and read with deepest feeling the Orphic and Chaldean oracles. The ideas had not only been long familiar to me, but formed my very life and the subject of the most passionate study. To hear them clearly expressed with rare beauty, in the deep, strange voice of the professor, was joy beyond belief. And as it would not be in human nature for a lecturer not to note an admiring auditor, it happened often enough that something was often introduced for my special appreciation.

For I may here note—and it was a very natural thing—that just as Gypsy musicians always select in the audience some one who seems to be most appreciative, at whom they play (they call it dÉ o kān), so Professors Dodd and James Alexander afterwards, in their Æsthetic, or more erudite disquisitions, rarely failed to fiddle at me—Dodd looking right in my eyes, and Alexander at the ceiling, ending, however, with a very brief glance, as if for conscience’ sake. I feel proud of this, and it affects me more now than it did then, when it produced no effect of vanity, and seemed to me to be perfectly natural.

I heard certain mutterings and hoots among the students as I went out of the lecture-room, but did not know what it meant. George Boker informed me afterwards that there had been great indignation expressed that “a green ignorant Freshman” had dared to intrude, as I had done, among his intellectual superiors and betters, but that he had at once explained that I was a great friend of Professor Dodd, and a kind of marvellous rara avis, not to be classed with common little Freshmen; so that in future I was allowed to go my way in peace.

A man of culture who had known Coleridge well, declared that as a conversationalist on varied topics Professor Albert Dodd was his superior. When in the pulpit, or in the lengthened “addresses” of lecturing, there was a marvellous fascination in his voice—an Italian witch, or red Indian, or a gypsy would have at once recognised in him a sorcerer. Yet his manner was subdued, his voice monotonous, never loud, a running stream without babbling stones or rapids; but when it came to a climax cataract he cleared it with grandeur, leaving a stupendous impression. In the ordinary monotony of that deep voice there was soon felt an indescribable charm. In saying this I only repeat what I have heard in more or less different phrase from others. There was always in his eyes (and in this as in other points he resembled Emerson) a strange indefinable suspicion of a smile, though he, like the Sage of Concord, rarely laughed. Owing to these black eyes, and his sallow complexion, his sobriquet among the students was “the royal Bengal tiger.” He was not unlike Emerson as a lecturer. I heard the latter deliver his great course of lectures in London in 1848—including the famous one on Napoleon—but he had not to the same perfection the music of the voice, nor the indefinable mysterious charm which characterised the style of Professor Dodd, who played with emotion as if while feeling he was ever superior to it. He was a great actor, who had gone far beyond acting or art.

Owing, I suppose, to business losses, my father and family lived for two years either at Congress Hall Hotel or en pension. I spent my first vacation at the former place. There lived in the house a Colonel John Du Solle, the editor of a newspaper. He was a good-natured, rather dissipated man, who kept horses and had a fancy for me, and took me out “on drives,” and once introduced me in the street to a great actress, Susan Cushman, [101] and very often to theatres and coffee-houses and reporters, and printed several of my lucubrations. Du Solle was in after years secretary to P. T. Barnum, whom I also knew well. He was kind to me, and I owe him this friendly mention. Some people thought him a rather dangerous companion for youth, but I was never taken by him into bad company or places, nor did I ever hear from him a word of which my parents would have disapproved. But I really believe that I could at that time, or any other, have kept company with the devil and not been much harmed: it was not in me. Edgar A. Poe was often in Du Solle’s office and at Congress Hall.

In the summer we all went to Stonington, Connecticut, where we lived at a hotel called the Wadawanuc House. There I went out sailing—once on a clam-bake excursion in a yacht owned by Captain Nat. Palmer, who had discovered Palmer’s Land—and sailed far and wide. That summer I also saw on his own deck the original old Vanderbilt himself, who was then the captain of a Sound steamboat; and I bathed every day in salt-water, and fished from the wharf, and smoked a great deal, and read French books; and after a while we went into Massachusetts and visited the dear old villages and Boston, and so on, till I had to return to Princeton. Soon after my father took another house in Walnut Street, the next door above the one where we had lived. This one was rather better, for though it had less garden, it had larger back-buildings.

Bon an, mal an, the time passed away at Princeton for four years. I was often very ill. In the last year the physician who tested my lungs declared they were unsound in two places; and about this time I was believed to have contracted an incurable stoop in the shoulders. One day I resolved that from that minute I would always hold myself straight upright; and I did so, and in the course of time became as straight as an arrow, and have continued so, I believe, ever since.

I discovered vast treasures of strange reading in the library of the Princeton Theological College. There was in one corner in a waste-room at least two cart-loads of old books in a cobwebbed dusty pile. Out of that pile I raked the thirteenth known copy of Blind Harry’s famed poem, a black-letter Euphues Lely, an Erra Pater (a very weak-minded friend actually shamed me out of making a copy of this great curiosity, telling me it was silly and childish of me to be so pleased with old trash), and many more marvels, which were so little esteemed in Princeton, that one of the professors, seeing me daft with delight over my finds, told me I was quite welcome to keep them all; but I, who better knew their great value, would not avail myself of the offer, reflecting that a time would come when these treasures would be properly valued. God knows it was a terrible temptation to me, and such as I hope I may never have again—ne inducas nos in temptationem!

The time for my graduation was at hand. I had profited very much in the last year by the teaching and friendly counsel of Professor Joseph Henry, whose lectures on philosophy I diligently attended; also those on geology, chemistry and botany by Professor Torrey, and by the company of Professor Topping. I stood very high in Latin, and perhaps first in English branches. Yet, because I had fallen utterly short in mathematics, I was rated the lowest but one in the class—or, honestly speaking, the very last, for the one below me was an utterly reckless youth, who could hardly be said to have studied or graduated at all. There were two honours usually awarded for proficiency in study. One was the First Honour, and he who received it delivered the Valedictory Oration; the second was the Poem; and by an excess of kindness and justice for which I can never feel too grateful, and which was really an extraordinary stretch of their power under the circumstances, the Poem was awarded to me!

I was overwhelmed at the honour, but bitterly mortified and cut to my heart to think how little I had deserved it; for I had never done a thing save read and study that which pleased me and was easy. I wrote the poem (and I still think it was a good one, for I put all my soul into it), and sent it in to the Faculty, with a letter stating that I was deeply grateful for their extreme kindness, but that, feeling I had not deserved it, I must decline the honour. But I sent them my MS. as a proof that I did not do so because I felt myself incapable, and because I wished to give them some evidence that they had not erred in regarding me as a poet.

Very foolish and boyish, the reader may say, and yet I never regretted it. The Faculty were not to blame for the system pursued, and they did their utmost in every way for four years to make it easy and happy for one of the laziest and most objectionable students whom they had ever had. I have never been really able to decide whether I was right or wrong. At liberal Cambridge, Massachusetts, neither I nor the professors would ever have discovered a flaw in my industry. At the closely cramped, orthodox, hide-bound, mathematical Princeton, every weakness in me seemed to be developed. Thirty years later I read in the Nassau Monthly, which I had once edited, that if Boker and I and a few others had become known in literature, we had done so in spite of our education there. I do not know who wrote it; whoever he was, I am much obliged to him for a very comforting word. For, discipline apart, it was literally “in spite of our education” that we learned anything worth knowing at Princeton—as it then was.

* * * * *

From this point a new phase of life begins. Prominent in it and as its moving power was the great kindness of my father. That I had graduated at all under any conditions was gratifying, and so was the fact that it was not in reality without the so-called Second Honour, despite my low grade. And the pitiable condition of my health was considered. During the last year I had taken lessons in dancing and fencing, which helped me a little, and I looked as if I might become strong with a change of life. So my father took my mother and me on a grand excursion. We went to Stonington, New York, and Saratoga, where I attended a ball—my first—and then on to Niagara. On the way we stopped at Auburn, where there was a great State-prison, which I visited alone. There was among its attractions a noted murderer under sentence of death. There were two or three ladies and gentlemen who were shown by the warder with me over the building. He expressed some apprehension as to showing us the murderer, for he was a very desperate character. We entered a large room, and I saw a really gentlemanly-looking man heavily ironed, who was reading a newspaper. While the others conversed with him, I endeavoured to make unobserved a sketch of his face. The warder noticing this, called me to the front to make it boldly, and the prisoner, smiling, told me to go on with it; which I did, and that not so badly—at least, the sitter approved of it.

So we went up the beautiful Hudson, which far surpasses the Rhine, and yields the palm only to the Danube, stopping at Poughkeepsie and Albany, and so on to Niagara Falls. On the way we passed through a burning forest. My awe at this wonderful sight amused some one present to whom it was a familiar thing. Which reminds me that about the time when I first went to college, but while staying at Congress Hall, I there met a youth from Alabama or Mississippi, who was on his way to Princeton to join our ranks. To him I of course showed every attention, and by way of promoting his happiness took him to the top of the belfry of the State House, whence there is a fine view. While there I casually remarked what a number of ships there were in the river, whereupon he eagerly cried, “Oh, show me one! I never saw a ship in all my life!” I gazed at him in utter astonishment, as if I would say, “What manner of man art thou?” and then recalling myself, said, “Well, we are just equal, for you never saw a ship, and I never saw a cotton-field.” The young man smiled incredulously, and replied, “Now I know that you are trying to humbug me, for how could you grow up without ever seeing cotton-fields?”

We arrived at Niagara about noon, and I at once went to see the Falls. There was a very respectable-looking old gentleman, evidently from the far South, with two young ladies, one a great beauty, advancing just before. I heard him say, “Now, keep your eyes closed, or look down till you can have a full view.” I did the same, and when he cried “Look up!” did so. It was one of the great instants of my life.

I know not how it was, but that first glance suggested to me something chivalric. It may have been from Byron’s simile of the tail of the white horse and the cataract, and the snow-white steed of that incarnation of nobility, Crescentius, and there rang in my memory a mystical verse—

“My eye bears a glance like the gleam of a lance
When I hear the waters dash and dance;
And I smile with glee, for I love to see
The sight of anything that’s free!”

But it was a mingled sense of nobility, and above all of freedom, which impressed me in that roaring mist of waters, in the wild river leaping as in reckless sport over the vast broad precipice. It is usual, especially for those who have no gift of description, to say that Niagara is “utterly indescribable,” and the Visitors’ Book has this opinion repeated by the American Philistine on every page. But that is because those who say so have no proper comprehension of facts stated, no poetic faculty, and no imagination. Of course no mere description, however perfect, would give the same conception of even a pen or a button as would the sight thereof; but it is absurd and illogical to speak as if this were peculiar to a great thing alone. For my part, I believe that the mere description to a poet, or to one who has dwelt by wood and wold and steeped his soul in Nature, of a tremendous cataract a mile in breadth and two hundred feet high, cleft by a wooded island, and rushing onward below in awful rocky rapids with a mighty roar, would, could, or should convey a very good idea of the great sight. For I found in after years, when I came to see Venice and the temples on the Nile, that they were picturesquely or practically precisely what I had expected to see, not one shade or nuance of an expression more or less. As regards Rome and all Gothic cathedrals, I had been assured so often, or so generally, by all “intelligent tourists,” that they were all wretched rubbish, that I was amazed to find them so beautiful. And so much as to anticipations of Niagara, which I have thrice visited, and the constant assertion by cads unutterable that it is “indescribable.”

While at Niagara for three days, I walked about a great deal with a young lady whose acquaintance we had made at the hotel. As she was, I verily believe, the very first, not a relative, with whom I had ever taken a walk, or, I may almost say, formed an acquaintance, it constituted an event in my life equal to Niagara itself in importance. I was at this time just twenty-one, and certain I am that among twenty-one thousand college graduates of my age in America, of the same condition of life, there was not another so inexperienced in worldly ways, or so far behind his age, or so “docile unto discipline.” I was, in fact, morally where most boys in the United States are at twelve or thirteen; which is a very great mistake where there is a fixed determination that the youth shall make his own way in life. We cannot have boys good little angels at home and devils in business abroad.—Horum utrum magis velim, mihi incertum est.

p, and the rival rumblings and flashes of nature and machinery in the dusk made a sufficiently lurid prelude for battle. On the 24th it became generally known that in certain contingent events, carefully kept secret, the Brigade would attack between Gommecourt Wood and the Puisieux road, with the Berks and the Bucks in the leading waves. Accordingly, the gunners got to work, and the 18-pounders cut three narrow lanes in the enemy wire (which each night the patient Hun carefully repaired), while the howitzers played on the forts and beehive structures in Gommecourt Wood and near Ferme Sans Nom. It was far and away their biggest show up to date, but the number of rounds fired by the Divisional Artillery in the three hottest days was only 5,000, an amount which, by present-day standards, appears ludicrously small. Meanwhile, two platoons of 5th Sussex, cursing the fortune which had brought them up again to the trenches, were packed into the battalion sector to look after our belongings, if we went over.

Saturday, the 25th, broke wet and misty; the lovely autumn weather of the past fortnight had gone for good. The gunners were unable clearly to see their targets, or to mark by the spurt of dry earth the exact strike of their wire-cutting shrapnel. Through the mist on that most inappropriate morning appeared a herd of cows and men harvesting between Rossignol and Puisieux, not much more than a mile from our lines.

During the day a notable series of messages came through from G.H.Q., and it seemed at first as if the attack had broken the German lines, as we identified on our maps those names then unfamiliar—Loos, Hill 70, Hulluch, CitÉ St. Elie, and CitÉ St. Auguste—which successive messages announced as having passed into our hands. Then came the reports from Champagne with their impressive and ever-growing lists of guns and prisoners. The men were in high spirits, and some of B Company were heard making bets as to who would take the first German prisoner. Towards evening, however, the messages spoke only of violent counter-attacks and ground lost, while it was announced that the attack of the French Corps on our immediate left had failed completely. When this message reached Major Hedges in the Keep just as he was turning in, he summed up our general feeling by his remark: 'Well, I think I can take my boots off now.' Throughout the whole of Sunday expectation was at its highest pitch, for all believed that if the general advance was coming it would come quickly. But there was little positive news beyond the short French statement: 'We have taken Souchez.' Yet in the evening all the last preparations for attack were hastily carried through. A Berks and a Bucks dump were dug in the trenches, in which were collected all the engineering material required for an assault—tools, sandbags, trench bridges and flags for marking out positions in the captured line. The Brigade Signallers were busy putting up directions everywhere for the Bucks, who were to take over the left of our line: and new maps were issued to come into use at midnight. The night was very disturbed with bursts of rapid fire, and once a great cheer from the Warwicks at Fonquevillers, who were simulating an attack; while thousands of spent bullets from the 37th Division in the loop north of Gommecourt came wearily to rest in our trenches, several of which struck sentries in the sap-heads without doing them any harm. Early next morning a British aeroplane flew very low over the enemy trenches and, as desired, drew heavy fire, thereby proving them to be full of men, a matter in doubt before, as they had not responded to our attempts at provocation. But during the day it became increasingly clear that the great scheme had failed; for, although a message came from 3rd Army saying 'that in view of the great Allied successes both north and south it is possible that the Germans may evacuate their trenches, and in that case you must be prepared to slip quietly into them at a moment's notice,' its effect was more than discounted by a simple message which read: 'Work may now be resumed as usual in the trenches.' The enemy, meanwhile, appeared to be well acquainted with our plans, for voices were heard calling out, 'Come on, Bucks, come on, Berks!' 'The Royal Berks will lead the attack,' while a humorist shouted from the fort at Gommecourt, 'Run away, English; go away home.' The enemy had indeed good reason to be confident in the strength of these positions, which twice next year were to defy capture after the most elaborate preparation. The turmoil of the last few days was now succeeded by a complete calm in which scarcely a gun spoke.

On September 30th we were relieved in due course by the 6th Gloucesters, but went not to Authie, which was considered too far away, but to Souastre, a village in the area of the 37th Division, five kilometres west of Fonquevillers. As we approached we were played into the village by our band of drums and fifes, which had just arrived from England. Here the Battalion remained for six days in readiness to move at half an hour's notice, with baggage and transport reduced to a minimum, before we returned to Authie and resumed for many months to come our customary alternation of trench duty and rest, though the respective periods were in future lessened from 12 days to 8.

By our next return to the trenches autumn was already merging into early winter in this chilly tableland, with sharp night frosts and thick white mists. For days on end it was almost impossible to distinguish the hostile lines: and so the guns maintained their silence, for it was unprofitable to fire where you could not observe, and our own people had the strictest orders to economise rigorously until the expenditure of the Loos battles had been again made good. Such weather gave the finest opportunity for patrols, whose wanderings were made easier by the apparent indifference of the enemy. His saps and barbed wire were examined more than once, but though hares were started constantly in the thick tangled grass, only once were his patrols encountered. On this occasion a party of ten, moving in a dense fog and pitch darkness along the enemy wire, was challenged, and a lively fight ensued for a few minutes with rifles, revolvers and bombs, in the course of which Private A. Gibbs, of D Company, a huge, stout-hearted soldier, specially distinguished himself. As generally happens in these blind affrays, there was more noise than damage, and our patrol, which was considerably outnumbered, made its way safely back. One man who became separated from his comrades remained, uncertain of his direction, in No Man's Land for eight hours, until sunrise showed him his bearings. An officer and sergeant of the 10th Royal Irish Rifles, who formed part of the patrol, were spending their first tour of instruction with us in the trenches.

On October 17th-18th the general calm was rudely broken by the performance of the Bavarian Circus, a travelling siege train of 5.9's with a few heavier pieces, which retaliated effectively from the Bois de Biez for our September bombardments. The first day's firing was directed on the forward billets, HÉbuterne, Sailly and Colincamps, with short fierce bursts from six or seven batteries firing simultaneously. Next day it was the turn of the Trenches. On the left of the battalion sector part of D Company held a little salient position which enclosed a thicket standing steeply some 12 feet above the Bucquoy road. The enemy apparently believed it to be used for observation purposes, and frequently directed fire upon it, but in point of fact it was untenanted by day. On this salient and on its approaches, a total trench line of about 150 yards, the Bavarians threw during an hour about 400 5.9's, not to mention smaller shells, while two field guns galloped into Gommecourt Park and unlimbering in full view fired obliquely at the wire from point-blank range. They were harassed and eventually forced to retire by the action of Lieut. Coombes, of the Bucks, on our left, who gallantly got a machine gun into the open and took them in the flank. Our own guns were not available at the time, as they were themselves engaged in a 'shoot' and busy on pre-arranged targets. Although the trenches were cut to pieces and the thicket levelled by the fire, which was of extreme accuracy, not a single serious casualty was incurred. Captain Thorne had his Company Headquarters just behind the salient, and his dugout received several hits, and bulged ominously, but did not give way. All wires were cut, but were promptly repaired by the Company Signallers in the heat of the bombardment. Meanwhile, the Oxfords had been assailed with much greater violence, and over 2,000 shells fell in their lines; while their communication trenches were barraged with lachrymatory shells. It almost seemed as if an infantry attack might be imminent, and colour was lent to this theory by an aeroplane message saying that what appeared to be gas cylinders were observed along the enemy trenches between Gommecourt and Serre. Accordingly we stood-to all night repairing the shattered trenches and re-erecting the wire. The hostile infantry who probably disapproved of their artillery's activity as likely to bring future trouble upon themselves, made no attempt to hinder with rifle or machine-gun fire our all-night task. This was by far the heaviest and most concentrated bombardment which the Battalion had yet sustained.(Back to Contents)

CHAPTER VII

WINTER IN THE TRENCHES

In spite of many rumours of a rest the 48th Division remained in the line throughout the whole of the winter, and, indeed, as we shall see, until the spring of 1916 was far spent. Meanwhile, the wastage of the Battalion was considerable, and was not made good by drafts, whose total number up to March 1st, 1916, amounted only to 103 men. Companies, therefore, with a fighting strength of from 90 to 110 men had to hold (under far more trying conditions) the same frontage (about 1,400 yards as a rule) which had been allotted to them when at practically full strength in the summer. It is true that a company of some New Army battalion was constantly arriving for instruction, but during the two or three days of their visit they could not relieve our men of any of the burden. On the contrary, the work and responsibility, especially for officers and N.C.O.'s was considerably increased, and the difficulty of finding accommodation in the teeming hive of HÉbuterne for an extra 250 men added to the general discomfort. A certain amount of change, however, from trench routine was afforded by the courses now established at the various schools of instruction behind the line; for instance, one officer and 30 men went every fortnight to the Brigade Bomb School at Sailly, and in spite of constant shelling found reasonably comfortable billets.

Although casualties still, happily, remained light, and no officer had been killed since Lieut. Poulton-Palmer, considerable changes took place during the winter which it is convenient to summarise here. Colonel Serocold left the Battalion on February 14th, 1916. He had served with the regiment for 32 years, and had commanded it for 11-½. All Berkshire people know of the affection and respect with which he was regarded by the regiment, which alone can fully appreciate the debt they owe to his training and personal example. He was succeeded by Major (now Lieut.-Colonel) R. J. Clarke, C.M.G., D.S.O. The adjutant, Captain G. M. Sharpe, had already left in the previous October, and was afterwards to command his first Battalion. In losing him we all felt that we were losing not only an ideal adjutant, but a personal friend. He was succeeded by Lieut. L. E. Ridley, who was killed next August, near PoziÈres. The two commanders of A and D Companies, Major F. R. Hedges and Captain H. U. H. Thorne, came home through sickness about the end of 1915. Captain Thorne afterwards won distinction in command of the 12th Royal Scots, and was killed in the Battle of Arras, April 9th, 1917, leading the first wave of assault 'in the old chivalrous way,' as his Brigadier wrote. Captains W. E. M. Blandy and R. G. Attride assumed command of A and D Companies respectively. R.S.-M. Hanney also left, to our great regret, and received a commission in the 1st Battalion, where he afterwards won an M.C. His place was filled by the C.S.-M. (now Q.M.) Hogarth, of A Company. In fact, after a year abroad, the Battalion lost just a third of its original officers, and about 400 N.C.O.'s and men.

Winter set in early and in its most unpleasant form. During November there was only one day on which neither rain nor snow fell. The trenches began collapsing at once; after each heavy storm the unrevetted sides fell in, and liquid mud, reaching as high as the thighs, made movement almost impossible; the sump-hole covers floated away, and in the darkness it sometimes happened that a man would be plunged in water up to his neck. Many of the saps were entirely blocked, and at one time it became necessary temporarily to abandon a portion of the front line. Things would have been better if the floor of the trenches had consisted of duckboards (for the bricks so elaborately laid proved mere labour lost), while a proper supply of revetting hurdles could, by the exercise of a little foresight by Corps staff, have been made available. The thigh boots, which gradually arrived in numbers sufficient for men actually in the front line, went far towards preventing wet feet; whale oil was rubbed in, and arrangements made in the village for drying 400 pairs of socks every 24 hours, while the R.A.M.C. provided hot baths in the factory by the pond. Unfortunately, most of the dugouts, after a short resistance, succumbed to the alternations of frost and torrential rain. Sometimes the roof and sides collapsed, as the Oxfords found to their cost when an iron girder killed four men. Sometimes the pressure of water merely caused leakage, but in either case the result was eventually the same. The plight of the men without shelter was often extremely wretched. They lived in water and liquid mud, which mingled with their food and with the fabric of their clothes. However, it was found possible to hold the line more thinly, and during the eight days at HÉbuterne no man (except the Machine Gunners) normally spent more than 48 hours in the front line, as only two platoons of each of the two Companies holding the line composed the trench garrison; the remainder stayed in the support dugouts. Platoons were relieved every 24 hours and companies every 48. But the spirit of the men remained unabated, and the rate of sickness surprisingly low; while the mild open weather of January and February brought about a considerable improvement in trench conditions. On the other hand, as the winter drew on the hours of duty in the trenches grew longer and the rests shorter. For instance, during February the Battalion spent 25 days in the trenches and only 4 in reserve. Moreover, the former period was unusually exacting, as we held a more extended front, and the enemy's guns showed violent and continuous activity; while the rest billets, Sailly and Courcelles, were uncomfortable and frequently shelled.

It might have been expected that fighting activity would diminish during this period, but this was far from being the case. Both sides gradually brought up and permanently established in this sector large numbers of big guns; the 9.2-inch and 8-inch howitzers, whose first advent was signalled in the autumn, fired with increasing frequency as stocks of ammunition accumulated. For several consecutive days in February, HÉbuterne received a ration of several thousand shells, and cases of shell shock made their appearance. During one of these bombardments Company-Sergt.-Major Lawrence, of B Company, was blown to pieces as he came up from the cellar of the sergeants' mess in the Keep. Although a man of nearly 45 he made light of every hardship; his constant cheerfulness and devotion to duty were an inspiration to all. Intense bombardments of short trench sections also became more common, as the art of raiding, first practised by the Canadians at Messines, developed. The 6th Gloucesters were the first Battalion in our division to indulge in this amusement in November, 1915, when they successfully penetrated the German lines at south-east of Gommecourt Wood. Our Battalion took neither an active nor a passive part in such operations during the winter; their turn was to come, as will be related, on May 16th.

Small encounters between patrols, however, were not infrequent, as the enemy showed increased enterprise, and was no longer willing to surrender tamely command of No-man's Land. On December 14th a patrol of seven men, on reaching the east end of M hedge, were received with bombs and machine-gun fire from the sunken road which ran diagonally between the lines, losing one killed and three wounded. A search party was organised by Captain Blandy, which succeeded in recovering the body of the dead man. Lance-Corpl. Clayton (afterwards 2nd Lieutenant, killed on the Somme), a member of the patrol, though wounded, most gallantly volunteered to lead the search party and covered their withdrawal by throwing bombs. On March 17th, 1916, Lieut. Goolden and Corpl. V. H. Taylor had the satisfaction of shooting two Germans in a mist, who were trying to get back through their own wire; and on returning the patrol picked up an odd assortment of articles, which sound like an extract from some mad auctioneer's catalogue: (1) a glass globe full of liquid with a string net round it; (2) a strong case with powder inside it; (3) six hand grenades; (4) a shoulder strap, silver braid on red cloth, 169 in gilt; (5) a pair of gloves. Scarcely a night passed without fresh ground being covered and new information acquired, which was sometimes of a whimsical character. Once, for instance, an enemy working was heard conversing entirely in English, with such phrases as 'Dig that hole deeper,' 'Bring those stakes along'; one would imagine them to have been a waiters' battalion. Among the most active patrol leaders were Lieuts. Gathorne-Hardy, Lund, Downs, Calder and Teed; the two last-named distinguished themselves by a daylight reconnaissance lasting 3-¼ hours in the course of which much information of value was collected.

Nor must we fail to remember with gratitude the three cavalry officers who were attached to us during the winter for periods of one month: Captain A. L. Friend and Lieut. Ansell, of the 7th Dragoon Guards, and Captain M. Simmonds, Indian Cavalry. All did their best to relieve the short-handed company officers, while Captain Simmonds, although a senior captain, took charge of a platoon, and shared all fatigue duties with the subalterns of the Battalion.

When we were back in reserve the various amusements and relaxations, which a stationary warfare permits, were elaborated for the benefit of the men.

Christmas Day was fortunately spent at Authie, and the various companies sat down in comfort in the estaminets to a splendid dinner. Three pigs had been killed for the Battalion's consumption, a plum pudding was presented to each N.C.O. and man by the C.O., and others arrived from the Daily News Fund. A tin of cigarettes came from Messrs. H. and G. Simonds', a packet of cigars from the Maidenhead Fund. Each man received a shirt, muffler, socks and chocolate, the produce of a fund most energetically collected from Berkshire by Mrs. Serocold and Mrs. Hedges. The officers spent an equally happy evening at the chÂteau, whose owner, Madame De Wailly, kindly provided a room and all other requisites.

A Divisional Football Cup was given by the G.O.C., which was competed for by all units of the 48th Division under Association rules. We were beaten in the first round by the 5th Gloucesters, who scored the winning goal just on time, after an exciting game, in which Sergt. Hedges distinguished himself. The 'Varlets' of the 1st/1st South Midland Field Ambulance, and the Divisional Variety Troupe, of which Private Cooter (B Company) was a well-known member, performed for our benefit, and perhaps most attractive of all was Major Barron's cinematograph entertainment, which was always sure of the warmest reception.

Thus the first winter passed in the normal alternations of trench welfare.(Back to Contents)

CHAPTER VIII

THE NEW TRENCH AND THE RAID

The spring of 1916 was slow in coming. The German attack at Verdun had coincided with a long spell of deep snow and bitter cold. An officer going on leave at the end of February vividly remembers his experiences on the frozen roads, and the sight of a column of French troops of all arms 20 miles long, making their way painfully along the great 'Route Nationale' to Amiens to join in the defence of Verdun. But towards the end of March the weather grew warm and genial and the wild daffodils began to appear in all the fields around Sailly. Meanwhile the preliminaries for the Somme offensive became increasingly significant. The forward villages such as Sailly and Bayencourt were cleared of the civil population, and handed over entirely to the Army. Still more monstrous guns came crawling up, and in place of the old battery of 60-pounders, the orchard at the western outskirts of Sailly, in the angle of the Bayencourt road, harboured two 15-inch howitzers. Gun-pits and enormous new dugouts were constructed in HÉbuterne. The single-line railway which served the 48th and 4th Division with railheads at Acheux and Louvaincourt was supplemented by numbers of light lines. Troops grew thick upon the ground; the 56th Division appeared upon our left, the 31st on the right, and in May the front held by the Division scarcely exceeded that allotted to a single battalion during the winter. A 4th Army had been formed, of which the 48th Division was on the left in the 10th Corps. Conferences were held by the G.O.C. with C.O.'s and Adjutants two or three times a week, while parties were constantly detailed to witness demonstrations of gas, smoke and flame throwers. At last, also, the drafts so badly needed and so long overdue appeared in fairly adequate numbers; in March alone 202 men joined the Battalion for duty, which brought our total strength up to 874.

Map.

Meanwhile the G.O.C. was planning for the execution of the 145th Brigade a task, which sounds prosaic enough on paper, but which demanded for its success minute organisation and a high state of discipline in all concerned—namely, the digging of a forward trench in front of our own wire. Our line between HÉbuterne and Serre sagged back in a westerly direction from Trench Hoche to Trench Bouillon, thereby interposing 800-900 yards between ourselves and the Germans, with an intervening rise in No Man's Land. This configuration of the ground presented three obvious defects for offensive operations. It was impossible for the gunners to get direct observation on the sector of enemy trench opposite; it meant that troops deploying for the attack would get out of trenches facing in three directions, and would have to cross an unnecessary depth of shell-swept ground before getting to the assault. It was, therefore, determined to straighten out the line between the two points mentioned above. The battalions concerned assiduously practised wire-cutting, filing silently through the gaps, and night-digging. Our Battalion, which was to find the covering parties, took over the part of the line affected (J Sector, from Serre road to Trench Lassalle) a week beforehand, and every effort was made by means of patrols, two or three of which went out each night, to locate any forward posts or rifle pits from which the enemy might get wind of or interfere with the digging of the new trench. On the night of the 9th-10th April the scheme was carried out under the direction of Major Clissold (1st/1st Field Company, South Midland R.E.'s), an unfailing friend of the infantry, who was killed in the autumn of 1917. About 1,500 men in all were engaged; the digging was done by the 4th Oxfords and the 5th Gloucesters, while covering parties and fatigues were provided by the Bucks Battalion and ourselves. About six hours were allotted for the completion of the work, from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. The moon, which was near the full, shone brilliantly, though at times obscured by clouds, so that there was no fear of the confusion which arises from darkness, but rather of detection by the enemy's posts. Soon after 8.30 p.m. A Company, who were responsible for the protection from the right to the Puisieux road, strung themselves out into groups of three, some 20 yards apart, about 70 paces in front of the tape which marked the course of the proposed trench. While Captain Crouch, of the Bucks, was similarly employed on the left, some of his men, losing touch, ran into the vision of Hun sentries at the Poplars and were received with shots and bombs, which caused uneasy anticipations of discovery, happily unfulfilled. The diggers got to work behind their screen, and ate into the ground with remarkable speed, for stray rounds of shrapnel, intermittent sniping, and the constant discharge of Verey lights throughout the night, suggested that the Hun had some uneasy suspicion that all was not quite as usual; and indeed it seems almost incredible that the clash of the tools, the whispered orders, and the movements of the wiring parties should have entirely failed to strike the ear of a vigilant sentry at 250 yards. By 2 a.m. the work was almost finished; nothing remained but to strengthen the parapet of the new trench and to fill up the spaces between the knife-rests, which defended it some 40 yards in front, with screw pickets and loose strands of wire. By 3.20 a.m. all the diggers had returned to the old line, and the weary covering party, who had lain out for seven tedious hours, came home to get a hot drink, which they had well earned. Only 15 casualties were reported from the whole Brigade, none of which fell to the share of our Battalion. The trench was held by a few posts until dawn and then evacuated. About noon next day an enemy aeroplane flew along it, and the observer could be plainly seen leaning out and taking photographs of this mushroom growth. Almost immediately every battery from La Brayelle to Serre began to register upon it, and for weeks it was rendered unwholesome by the constant attention of artillery and mine-throwers. A poem of Lieut. Downs' preserves the air of mystery in which the whole scheme was so fortunately conceived and executed.

A whisper wandered round
Of a plan of the G.O.C's,
And figures surveyed the ground
In stealthy groups of threes;
But the whole Brigade were there,
Or pretty well all the lot,
When we dug the trench at Never-mind-where,
On April the Never mind-what.

The What's-a-names dug the trench,
The Who-is-its found the screen,
And we mustn't forget to mench
The Thingumies in between;
The Tothermies built the fence,
And the R.E.'s "also ran,"
For we didn't spare any expense,
With labour a shilling a man.

There isn't much else to tell,
Though the enemy made a song.
And tried to blow it to Hell,
But got the address all wrong;
For you'll find it's still out there
In the bally old self-same spot,
That trench which we built at Never-mind-where,
On April the Never-mind-what.

After these excitements the Battalion moved back on the 12th, half to Sailly, half to the huts in the park of Couin ChÂteau, which were leaky and surrounded by a pathless morass of mud several inches deep. Here the Battalion was reinoculated, as 18 months had elapsed since the original dose was injected in the autumn of 1914, and spent its mornings in Platoon and Company Drill, until its return to J Sector on the 20th. There was plenty of work and little comfort in the line that tour. The conditions resembled those of the winter at their worst; in the new trench, hastily dug and unrevetted, water and mud engulfed the passer-by to the waist. One afternoon a German was reported to have got in, and the Adjutant (Lieut. Ridley) who happened to be on the spot, at once organised a bombing party to deal with him, but after wading laboriously to the point indicated, found that the bird had flown. Meanwhile, the Huns showed their displeasure by sending into the sector 500-1,000 shells every day, and casualties were naturally higher than the normal, including Lieut. Duff seriously wounded, and Lieut. Calder shell-shock. No one was therefore sorry when on the 25th we returned to Authie, after an interval of three months, to the great delight of the inhabitants, and enjoyed the spring for a short while in that pleasant valley. Before returning to the line the battalion spent a few days at Sailly and Couin, furnishing working parties for HÉbuterne each night and day. On May 8th we relieved the 4th Oxfords in G Sector on the extreme right of the Brigade front. This tour was destined to be memorable in the history of the Battalion. The ground was entirely new to us, and extremely difficult. All rations and supplies had to be brought up from HÉbuterne by communication trenches more than a mile long and in bad repair. The whole sector had been the scene of a fierce battle in June 1915, for the possession of Touvent Farm and the outskirts of Serre, and was everywhere cut up by old disused trenches, French and German, and shell holes, and was still littered with bones and skulls. Nor was the front line more attractive; it formed a sharp salient projecting towards Serre, held by disconnected posts, ill defended, close to the enemy, and joined to the support line by only two communication trenches, one at each side of the salient. So vague and difficult of identification was this line of posts that Captain Cruttwell, when visiting them for the first time, nearly walked into the German lines while trying to establish connection with D Company, until warned of his mistake by a shower of rifle-grenades. The whole sector, indeed, closely resembled the crater areas, which the experiences of the Somme were to render familiar. The first week in this dreary spot passed uneventfully; the enemy guns and minenwerfer, the latter of the largest calibre, whose explosion was deafening, were active, but not unusually so, and up to the 15th the Battalion could congratulate themselves on an absence of casualties during the tour. They were to be relieved next day, and it seemed that the trouble always expected here would be reserved for others. During the 15th, however, the usual shelling seemed to the two Company Commanders in the front line—Captain Cruttwell, of B, and Captain Attride, of D, to be more methodical and to suggest a registration on all tactical points. Still this impression was not definite enough to arouse serious foreboding. Up to midnight all was quiet. Then a heavy bombardment opened upon the 56th Division on the left; our divisional guns, who were helping to cover that sector, opened at once in response to the S.O.S. The two anxious Company Commanders felt convinced that if a raid was intended they would not be the victims of it. But as soon as our guns were securely switched off on to a false target, the enemy showed his hand. His guns ceased to play on the 56th Division and were directed with extreme violence against our front. It was then 12.30 a.m. on the morning of May 16th; the raid had begun. It is now necessary, in order to understand its course, to describe minutely, with the aid of the map, the dispositions of the two Companies affected. The length of the line was approximately 1,200 yards; on the right B Company had two platoons in the front line strung out into seven posts between Nairne and Wrangel, each containing from six to nine men. Two sections and a Lewis gun team were in Jones Street, which had been chosen as the main defensive line in case of attack. The remaining two sections with another Lewis gun were in Caber, and the fourth platoon in Worcester Street. Company Headquarters were established some 800 yards behind the front line, at Pimlico, where a platoon of A Company was placed in dugouts at the disposal of O.C. Company. The line of D Company on the left stretched from Wrangel to Jena, and was similarly held by two platoons furnishing eight posts. The supporting platoon on the right was equally divided between Trench Dominique and Oxford Street; that on the left was located in the forward end of Jena. Company Headquarters were in Vauban, and Captain Attride disposed of a reserve platoon of C Company in Vercingetorix. Further two platoons of C Company which were returning from a working party in Wrangel when the bombardment started, were placed in dugouts near Pimlico.

The plan of the bombardment, which was a masterpiece of method, was as follows:—From 12.30 to 1 a.m. the whole of our front and supervision line was bombarded with field guns, 5.9-inch howitzers and mine-throwers; but the chief intensity of fire was directed at B Company between Nairne and Chasseur Hedge, with the object, which was practically accomplished, of destroying or burying all the posts included therein. At 1 a.m. a red rocket was shot up from the enemy lines, and the fire from Nairne to Wrangel lifted, but fell with redoubled fury on the support and reserve lines, where every communication trench and dugout was deluged with shells. At Pimlico, in particular, 5.9-inch shells were thrown at the rate of 100 a minute, enveloping it in a dense fog of smoke and fumes, and the supporting platoon of A Company lost nearly half its strength.

Meanwhile the fire on either flank covered both front line and support, rendering lateral communication impossible. Thus B Company was isolated, and the enemy infantry immediately entered. Post No. 7 opposed their entry, but was overpowered—none of the nine men who composed it were ever seen again, but the ground about was afterwards found littered with exploded and unexploded German bombs, showing that they had fought a good fight. The Germans then divided into two parties with separate tasks. One party worked along Jones Street towards the right, some moving in the trench, some along the parados. They destroyed the left post in Jones Street, but were eventually checked by Lance-Corpl. Cooke with his Lewis Gun team, which, reflecting the coolness of its commander, kept up a steady rifle fire when the gun jammed. The Huns then retired and left Jones Street at the point of entry, after fulfilling what was presumably their job of protecting their comrades from attack in the rear. For the other party, working along the fire trench, attacked Posts 6-2 inclusive from the rear. These posts were in sore straits. Their defences had been blown to pieces, their rifles damaged, broken or buried, and their bombs scattered; they had themselves been shaken or buried and were left defenceless. The story of a survivor from Post 2, who escaped, will serve as an example. As they endeavoured to extricate themselves and their weapons from the wrecked post, Germans appeared behind them and ordered them in English to mount the parapet or they would be shot. Private Chapman at once tackled an officer with his fists and, shot by the latter's revolver, died most bravely. Four men were taken, and one alone escaped. However, 12 survivors in all reached Post 1, which remained intact and resisted stoutly. Here Lieut. Ward, who was on duty, took charge, and reorganised the 12, only to find that some were wounded, and that the rifles of the remainder were useless. Accordingly he withdrew towards Nairne, and was fortunate to get them back safely, for at one point four Germans peered into the trench, which was a very deep one, close to the party, but made off when Ward loosed his revolver at them. Meanwhile, No. 1 Post, under Sergt. Holloway, a brave soldier from Abingdon, facing both to front and rear, drove back all the enemy who approached them with rifle and bombs, and effectively staved off their progress towards Nairne, where the position was secured by a post of 13th West Yorks (31st Division) which was promptly moved to the left in answer to Lieut. Ward's request. The support platoon was organised for defence in Caber by Lieut. Field, who remained with his men though seriously wounded. Here he was found by Lieut. Gathorne-Hardy, who, with his usual contempt for danger, had volunteered to go up from Company Headquarters to re-establish connection, which had been broken within five minutes of the commencement of the bombardment.

While B Company was being attacked, fire was still directed with violence on the front line of the left Company, and continued until 1.40 a.m., when it also lifted on to the support and reserve areas. The damage here had been mainly confined to Posts 1-3, where all the men had been killed or buried; at Post 1 five men were saved by the systematic and collected courage of Private Appleby (4749), who dug them out one after the other. At Post 3, Captain Boyle and Sergt. Pitman dug out Lance-Corpl. Sargeant and the other men, being disturbed during the operation by the appearance of a German on the parapet, whom they shot and wounded. Lance-Corpl. Sargeant was no sooner extricated than he collected bombs, and returned to his post only to find two wounded comrades being hauled off by a party of Germans. They received his bombs into their midst and ran back into the darkness behind Chasseur Hedge, where their supports were waiting. Meanwhile, Posts 4 and 5 remained intact and full of fight. Singing in the intervals between firing:—

'Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag,
And smile, smile, smile,'

they held off the enemy, who could be dimly seen filing through their wire and forming up outside in three lines, distinguished by white armlets. Post 5 soon received a reinforcement of some 20 men under Sergt. V. H. Taylor, who came up from Oxford Street. They had been summoned by Corpl. Page, a most gallant Wokingham man, who volunteered to go back through the fiery curtain of the barrage, which task he accomplished without harm. No further attack was made upon D Company, which escaped with comparatively light casualties. Captain Boyle was afterwards awarded the M.C. for the skill and coolness with which he organised the defence of his sector, and Corpl. Sargeant the Military Medal. The bombardment continued unabated until 2.45, and then ceased suddenly with the first light of dawn. The ruinous state of the trenches made daylight movement difficult and dangerous, as the enemy fired rifle grenades continually at broken points in the communication trenches, causing several casualties among men who were not quick enough in running the gauntlet. In spite of such difficulties all the wounded were evacuated by 10 a.m., though in some cases it took four hours to get the stretcher from the front line to the dressing station in the village. The losses had been heavy, amounting in all to 98, of whom 18 were killed and 29 missing; of these B Company supplied 60, thus losing half of its fighting strength. Many hours were spent next night by parties left behind after the relief of the Battalion in search of the missing, who afterwards were almost without exception reported as prisoners of war. This eventful night was the last spent by the Battalion in the trenches for five weeks; the 48th Division, which had established a record for an unbroken length of service in the line, was being withdrawn into Army Reserve. Thus the Battalion came through their first serious test, and were not found wanting. The praise which Colonel Clarke bestowed next day at Couin on their endurance, discipline and fighting spirit, was repeated by the Divisional General and the Corps Commander.(Back to Contents)

CHAPTER IX

BEFORE THE BATTLE

The day at Couin was spent in packing and loading up, a task rendered easier by the loan from our good friends, 3rd Warwick Battery, of two G.S. wagons. Early on the 18th we joined the Brigade at St. Leger and marched to Beauval. The day was very hot. The march was mainly through narrow valleys, dense with dust. The Battalion were short of sleep, and very weary, while the sun beat down upon their steel helmets, which they wore for the first time on the march. None the less, Sir A. Hunter-Weston complimented Colonel Clarke on the way in which they marched past him at Marieux. Beauval was reached at noon, a quiet little country town, with long shady streets; and the billets were very good. The fortnight here was spent in route marches, grouping practices at the range, and platoon and company training in general. The keen pleasure with which the men turned to drill and small company schemes after the months of trench monotony was very noticeable. A splendid compliment was paid to D Company by the Corps Commander, who met them one day on the march. Stopping their commander, Captain Attride, he said that he had never seen a finer body of men in France; that he was proud of them, and that they had every right to be proud of themselves, for their conduct on the night of the 16th. On the 31st the Brigade made an early start, rising at dawn and moving off at 4 a.m. in a bright, fresh, lovely morning, well-suited for the long march to the St. Riquier training area. The Battalion arrived at their billets, the small village of Maison Roland, some 7 miles north-east of Abbeville, before midday. The inhabitants, who had been unfortunate in the troops quartered on them just before, showed some hostility, closing their houses, and refusing to allow the men to enter. All ill-feeling, however, was rapidly removed. Colonel Clarke had warned the Battalion to do everything to create a good impression, and when we left the Mayor sent a letter thanking all ranks for their behaviour. The whole neighbourhood was a mass of troops rehearsing the Somme battles on specially prepared areas, where officers remarked on the advantage of being able to move freely without fear of damaging the crops. Some days in succession were spent in Battalion, Brigade and Divisional Training, and all learnt by experience how much the inevitable stagnation and immobility of long-continued trench warfare dull the initiative and lessen the quickness of mind and body. The days were strenuous; rÉveillÉ, as a rule, was at 4 a.m., and work began at 6 and lasted until 1, leaving the afternoons free, while the nights were twice begun with Brigade attacks, and finished in bivouac. But the men enjoyed their time; they grew hard for battle, with supple limbs and the indescribable thrill of perfect physical fitness. And in spite of the hard work time was found for recreation; cricket was played again for the first time since the summer days at HÉbuterne in 1915, and a Brigade Horse Show created keen interest. In St. Riquier men from all the Division could foregather in the estaminets, one of which possessed a much-coveted billiard table, and sometimes it was even possible to spend a day in the pleasant town of Abbeville.

For the latter part of this training period the Battalion had moved to Gapennes, a village some 6 miles north of Maison Roland, where, as before, hostility shown at arrival was soon changed to friendliness and goodwill.

On June 10th the Battalion set its face again towards the east; and after two days' long and dusty marching we found ourselves again in the huts of Couin, which next day were exchanged for an undesirable and filthy bivouac at Sailly. The preparations of the last month had completely changed the aspect of these forward villages, and it was clear that the time was at hand. Sailly was full of camps and dumps; the bare and desolate slopes to the east harboured tier upon tier of guns. Reliefs from the Brigade worked day and night without a pause in HÉbuterne and the adjacent trenches. When the Battalion took over H. Sector on the 16th, they found every nook and corner of the trenches by night filled with parties digging new dugouts and Stokes mortar emplacements, bringing up gas-cylinders, smoke candles and all the diverse paraphernalia of the modern offensive; while the enemy's artillery and machine guns incessantly harassed these suspected activities. Otherwise, no incident of especial note occurred during this tour, except a forced landing by one of our machines in front of Puisieux, which drew immediately into the open a mob of inquisitive Germans estimated at several hundreds. The 24th found the battalion back at Couin, where they were to stay until the fateful 1st July. The damp, ill-ventilated and crowded huts were responsible for a good many cases of sore throat and rheumatism. But there was little time to be sick. In the interval between working parties, bayonet fighting and wire-cutting, the last and most significant preparations for attack were made. Blue hearts, the distinguishing mark of the Battalion, were sewn on to the back of the steel helmet cover, and tin triangles affixed to the haversack, which was to be worn on the back in fighting order. It may be of interest to give in detail the equipment with which the men went into battle. Two sandbags were tucked in front of the belt; one Mills bomb was in each of the bottom pockets of the tunic; 50 extra rounds of ammunition were slung in a bandolier over the right shoulder. In his haversack each man carried one iron ration, cardigan waistcoat, soft cap, and pair of socks; the waterproof sheet was folded and strapped on outside, and the mess-tin fastened to the lowest buckle of the haversack. Every other man carried a pick or shovel slung; and the Brigade, with a more intimate solicitude, advised all ranks to carry a pipe, matches and tobacco.

The bombardment had begun on the 25th, and night after night from the hilltop at Couin watchers saw with exultation and confident expectation, reflected in many letters, the great shells picking out the enemy's lines with fire.

On July 1st the 48th Division were in Corps Reserve, and took no part in the battle, with the exception of the 5th and 6th Warwicks, who covered themselves with glory in Serre, though suffering terrible losses, which included both their commanding officers. The Division was concentrated for the day round Mailly-Maillet, which we reached about 1 p.m. after numberless checks in the encumbered roads. Detachments of Indian Cavalry were resting their horses by the roadside as we passed through Bus. The rest of the day was spent in bivouac in an open field; the guns around fired incessantly, including a 15-inch close at hand, but no hostile shell fell near. We were about 3 miles west of Beaumont-Hamel, where the 29th Division were so furiously engaged. All the good news of the morning, the taking of Gommecourt Cemetery and of Serre, had fired expectation, and the disappointment was correspondingly bitter when it was known at nightfall that the 8th Army Corps were everywhere back in their original front line. Next morning the Brigade received orders to attack early on the 3rd, their objective being south of Beaumont-Hamel and beyond the Ancre brook, a piece of country which none of them had seen before. The Brigadier, with the Commanding Officers, tried to get forward during the day and pick up the lie of the land, but the shelling, smoke and dust made observation impossible. The Brigade, therefore, moved up that night to Mesnil, a small ruined village 1 mile behind the line, very much in the dark. As they moved in, many smelt for the first time the curious fragrant odour of lachrymatory gas, which seemed to come from the flowers of some wayside garden until the pricking and watering at the eyes proved otherwise. The Company Commanders went forward into the trenches to find out what they could; to their right loomed a great black mass, and they debated whether it was a hill or a cloud. Suddenly an array of lights and a flicker of rifle-fire running along the top revealed it as the steep western slopes of Thiepval. A Company was just filing into the trenches when a rumour was brought by Lieut. Hughes that the attack was cancelled; inquiries were made and its truth confirmed. The Battalion returned the way it had come and bivouacked again in Mailly-Maillet at daybreak. The men, who had moved out in high spirits, were greatly cast down by this conclusion. It is, however, a matter for congratulation that the Battalion was not called upon to make its first attack under circumstances so unfavourable on positions which had defied the elaborate preparations which preceded the assault on July 1st. Next day guns and limbers passed in a steady stream going south—a sure indication that all efforts were being concentrated in widening the breach already made. That evening the Battalion returned to the huts at Couin much depressed at the prospect of taking up again the drab monotony of trench life after hopes aroused in the last few days. The weather now became very bad with almost incessant rain, and we relieved the 5th Gloucesters on July 8th in trenches waist deep in water, badly damaged by the bombardment, and affording the depressing view to right and left of the dead of the 31st and 56th Divisions lying out unburied. Meanwhile a great show of activity was kept up to foster among the enemy the idea that further attacks were intended; new stores of smoke bombs were sent up with instructions when and how to let them off, which were invariably cancelled before performance. Another assaulting trench was dug by the Brigade, running some 700 yards south of that already described, for which the Battalion supplied a small covering party of 50 men, who suffered a few casualties in the bright moonlight. The weather fortunately improved, and we were able to hand over the trenches to the 5th Gloucesters on July 12th dry and in good repair. Next day 100 men went over to see the 5th Battalion in the Bois de Warnimont. Thirteen months ago they had come to us for their first experience of trench warfare; this time a small remnant, they were resting from their attack on Ovillers, where every officer except the C.O. had been killed or wounded. We were now immediately to follow them into battle, for next day a fleet of motor-'buses bore us south to the crowded village of Senlis behind the Ovillers—La Boisselle Sector of the Somme front.(Back to Contents)

CHAPTER X

THE JULY FIGHTING AT POZIÈRES

The successful night attack of July 14th had eaten into the third German line between Longueval and Bazentin-le-Petit on a front of some three miles. The principal British efforts for the next six weeks were consequently directed towards getting more elbow-room on both flanks. On the north progress had been greatly hindered by the stubborn resistance of the German Guards at Ovillers, which was not cleared up till July 11th. Our line now skirted the southern orchards of PoziÈres, running westwards just north of Ovillers and then curving sharply back to the old front line near Authuille. All this sector was, to our great disadvantage, overlooked and enfiladed by the height of Thiepval; and progress, though steady, was for the most part slow and heavily bought.

On this occasion the Battalion was given ample time to view and get familiar with the ground, as the attack did not take place until July 23rd. Soon after arrival at Senlis the officers went over to La Boisselle. This first sight of the devastated area created the deepest impression. Afterwards such complete destruction became common enough; but till then no one had seen a village literally blown away. Not only the walls, but the very brick dust had vanished; its site could be fixed only by reference to the map and to the board stating This is La Boisselle. Every kind of battle-wreckage lay about, including many dead bodies, ten days unburied in the midsummer heat. But though the guns had done their work so well, enough remained of the wonderful fortified labyrinth to suggest the difficulties of attacking troops. The Battalion moved up by degrees, bivouacking on the 18th east of Albert in support of the Oxfords; and taking over trenches west of PoziÈres next night from 7th Royal Warwicks. Only two platoons of B Company held the short front line; which was naturally of a rough and ready description, shallow and blocked in places by earth or bodies. The enemy, in hourly anticipation of attack, were very restless; their infantry, who appeared to be very thick on the ground, sent up showers of lights and fired at intervals throughout the night hours. Their guns, mostly 5.9-inch and 8-inch, fired almost incessantly; even a comparative lull, it was remarked, would have been counted a heavy bombardment in the old quiet days. Many gas shells were used, mainly on road junctions and assembly points in the rear. We had only some seven casualties from this source—our support and reserve companies moved up or down constantly in accordance with the ever-shifting situations. Battalion Headquarters remained in a German dugout in La Boisselle. Though tainted by the foul reek from the village, it earned the admiration of its tenants by its solid and elaborate construction.

The 21st was a day of great activity, stores were brought up all day, and the trenches improved for the attack as far as intense enemy fire would permit. Lieut. Downs that night took out a patrol from the right, who explored the south-west corner of PoziÈres in spite of the extreme alertness of the Huns, and returned safely with the most valuable information for which the Anzacs, over whose attacking frontage the patrol had gone, were most grateful. Everyone was glad to have them on our flank, for they were splendid men, full of confidence and keenness.

Next day detailed orders were issued for the attack of the 145th Brigade. The two assaulting Battalions, 4th Oxfords and 5th Gloucesters, were allotted a frontage of about 500 yards a-piece. The right flank of the Oxfords rested on the Anzacs at a point some 500 yards west of PoziÈres. We were in support to the Oxfords, and, therefore, concerned only with their objectives. To understand the events of the following day it is necessary closely to study the map. The irregular curve of Sickle Trench, prolonged along the north side of the main road, constituted our front line. The Huns held a somewhat similar line, with a marked southward bulge; the Oxfords had orders to take the whole of this trench from Point 81 to Point 11. The difficulties of a simultaneous attack on such a pronounced salient are obvious, and were increased by the trench running southward from Point 81 for 150 yards, which terminated in a hostile strong point at 97.

The Oxfords attacked at dawn, but were immediately pressed at both flanks, and began to be squeezed into the centre near Point 28. B Company (Captain Aldworth) and C. Company (Captain Lewis), Royal Berks, had come up the main road under cover of darkness and were deployed by 3.30 a.m. (summer time), along a tape running east and west some 250 yards south of the centre of the Oxfords' objective. Here they waited for information and orders. It was still twilight and no certain information could be gained. Shots were now heard intermittently, and wounded men came back, telling, as wounded men will, contradictory stories. Some said that the Oxfords were wiped out; others that they had captured the trench. Two men were sent forward to reconnoitre, and came back to report that the position was critical. It was now 3.55 a.m.; the day was coming and the enemy barrage was growing more intense. Captain Aldworth at once ordered the two Companies to go forward to the assistance of the Oxfords. For this prompt decision, which undoubtedly secured the success of the whole operation, and for his bravery throughout, Captain Aldworth was awarded the M.C. The two Companies now advanced into the captured trench, losing some men en route from shell fire, especially on the right, where 2nd Lieut. Clayton was killed. During the advance B Company got split in two, Nos. 5 and 8 Platoons being divided by C Company from Nos. 6 and 7, who entered the left of the trench with Captain Aldworth. The congestion of the men of the two Battalions in the centre of the shallow trench was great, and there could be no security until the flanks were cleared and made good. Point 97 was soon gained, and Lieut. Downs pushed resolutely forward beyond 81, endeavouring to get in touch with the Australians. He reached the heavily-wired German second line, which ran north and south through the outskirts of PoziÈres, but was forced back. Returning with about 20 men from all three Companies he barricaded and secured Point 81, after killing 11 Germans in hand-to-hand fighting and capturing 2. Meanwhile, Point 11 was attacked on two sides. When the left of B Company got into the trench some Germans were still in view running away towards the left, one of whom Captain Aldworth bayoneted himself. Lieut. Tripp at once followed them up and bombed them out of Point 11 with the assistance of a party under Lieut. Wakeford, who jumped out of the centre and led them fearlessly over the open to the disputed place. Lieut. Wakeford was shot dead just as he reached his objective, but his action was entirely successful. By 6 a.m. the situation was reported safe, and the men still crowded and mixed up, were able to start consolidating and deepening the trench. At 6.30 a.m. about 200 men appeared over the brow of the hill on the left, where it dips down towards Ovillers, advancing with fixed bayonets. It was a Company of the Bucks moving in perfect order and with great fire. As they reached the trenches east of Point 11 the Huns could be seen coming out of their dugouts and flying in all directions, many with their hands up. A Lewis gun from C Company opened on those who tried to bolt back northwards, but soon stopped, as it was clear that they could no or that of the one below, in which his wife was, or had been, with another person. Being very tipsy, the injured individual went one storey too high, and tried to burst in to shoot me with a revolver, but I repelled him after a severe struggle, in which I had sharp work to avoid being shot. I would much rather fight a decent duel any time than have such a “hog-fight.” I only had a loaded cane. The worst of it was that the injured husband, having traced his wife, as he erroneously thought, to my room, went to Bixby and the clerk, and asked who lived in it. But as they were my friends, they dismissed him gruffly, yet believed all the same that I had “a petticoat in my wardrobe.” Hence for a week all my friends kept making cruel allusions in my presence to gay deceivers and Don Juan et cetera, until in a rage I asked what the devil it all meant, when there was an explanation by a clergyman, and I swore myself clear. But I thought it was hard lines to have to stand the revolver, endure all the scandal for a week, and be innocent all the time withal! That was indeed bitter in the cup!

Apropos of this small affair, I can recall a droll scene, de eodem genere, which I witnessed within a week of the other. There was a rather first-class saloon, bar, and restaurant on Broadway, kept by a good-looking pugilistic-associated individual named George Shurragar. As he had black eyes, and was a shoulder-hitter, and as the name in Romany means “a captain,” I daresay he was partly gypsy. And, when weary with editorial work, I sometimes dropped in there for refreshment. One night an elderly, vulgar individual, greatly exalted by many brandies, became disorderly, and drawing a knife, made a grand Malay charge on all present, À la mok. George Shurragar promptly settled him with a blow, disarmed him, and “fired him out” into outer darkness. Then George exhibited the knife. It was such a dirty, disreputable-looking “pig-sticker,” that we were all disgusted, and George cast it with contempt into the street. Does the reader remember the scene in “The Bohemian Girl” in which the dandy Count examines the nasty knife left behind by the gypsy Devilshoof? It was the very counterpart of this, the difference being that in this case it was the gypsy who despised the instrument.

Such trivial amusing incidents and rencontres as these were matters of almost daily occurrence to me in those days, and I fear that I incur the reproach of padding by narrating these. Yet, as I write this, I have just read in the “Life of Benvenuto Cellini” that he too omits the description of a lot of exactly such adventures, as being, like the darkey’s imprisonments for stealing, “not worf mentionin’”—and confess I felt great regret that he did so; for there is always a great deal of local and temporal colour in anything whose proper finale should be in a police-court.

Hawthorne used to stay at Bixby’s. He was a moody man, who sat by the stove and spoke to no one. Bixby had been a publisher, and was proud that he had first issued Hayward’s “Faust” in America. He was also proud that his hotel was much frequented by literary men and naval officers. He was very kind to me. Once when I complained to the clerk that the price of my rooms was too high, he replied, “Mr. Leland, the prices of all the rooms in the house, excepting yours, were raised long ago, and Mr. Bixby charged me strictly not to let you know it.” Uncle Daniel was a gentleman, and belonged to my club—the Century. When he grew older he lived on an annuity, and was a great and privileged favourite among actresses and singers. Thirty years later I called with him in New York on Ada Cavendish.

After a fortnight or so, Dr. Griswold began to be very erratic. He had a divorce case going on in Philadelphia. He went off, assuring me that everything was in order, and never returned. The foreman came to me saying that there was no copy, and nothing ready, and everything needed. Here was indeed a pretty kettle of fish! For I at that time absolutely distrusted my own ability to do all the work. I flew to Kimball, who said, “Just put it through by strong will, and you’ll succeed.”

Then I went to Mr. Barnum—Uncle Barnum—who was always “as good as gold” to me. I burst out into a statement of my griefs, mentioning incidentally that I really could not go on as full editor, and do such fearful work on the salary of an office-boy. He listened to it all, I am sure with amusement, and placing his hand kindly on my shoulder as we walked up and down the hall of the Museum, said, “You sha’n’t go. Don’t get into a funk. I know that you can do the work, and do it well. And the salary shall be doubled—certainly!”

So the paper was brought out after all. I had great trouble for some time to learn to write editorials. I used to go to the office of a Sunday morn, and sit sometimes from ten till two turning over the exchanges, and seeking for ideas. It was a dreadful ordeal. In fact, in after times it was several years before I could seize a pen, rattle up a subject and dash off a leader. Now I can write far more easily than I can talk. And it is a curious fact that soon after I became really skilled at such extempore work in the opinion of the best judges, such as Raymond, I no longer had any opportunity to practice it.

I had worked only a week or two when a rather queer, tall, roughish Yankee was brought into the office. He worked for a while, and in a day or two took possession of my desk and rudely informed me that he was my superior editor and master there. He had, as many men do, mistaken amiable politeness for humility. I replied, knowing that Mr. Beech, out of sight, was listening to every word, that there was no master there but Mr. Beech, and that I should keep my desk. We became affable; but I abode my time, for I found that he was utterly incompetent to do the work. Very soon he told me that he had an invitation to lecture in Philadelphia. I told him that if he wished to go I would do all his work for him. So he went, and Mr. Beech coming in, asked where Mr. --- was. I replied that he had gone away to lecture, and that I was to do his work during his absence. This was really too much, and the Yankee was dismissed “in short order,” the Beeches being men who made up their minds promptly and acted vigorously. As for me, I never, shirked work of any kind. A gentleman on a newspaper never does. The more of a snob a man is, the more afraid he is of damaging his dignity, and the more desirous of being “boss” and captain. But though I have terribly scandalised my chief or proprietor by reporting a fire, I never found that I was less respected by the typos, reporters, and subs.

I had before leaving Philadelphia published two books. One was “The Poetry and Mystery of Dreams,” which I dedicated to my fiancÉe, Miss Belle Fisher. The other was an odd mÉlange, which had appeared in chapters in the Knickerbocker Magazine. It was titled Meister Karl’s Sketch-Book. It had no great success beyond attaining to a second edition long after; yet Washington Irving praised it to everybody, and wrote to me that he liked it so much that he kept it by him to nibble ever and anon, like a Stilton cheese or a patÉ de foie gras; and here and there I have known men, like the late Nicolas TrÜbner or E. L. Bulwer, who found a strange attraction in it, but it was emphatically caviare to the general reader. It had at least a style of its own, which found a few imitators. It ranks, I think, about pari passu with Coryatt’s “Crudities,” or lower.

There were two or three salons in New York where there were weekly literary receptions, and where one could meet the principal writers of the time. I often saw at Kimball’s and other places the Misses Wetherell, who wrote the “Wide, Wide World” and “Queechy.” They were elderly, and had so very little of the “world” in their ways, that they occurred to me as an example of the fact that people generally write most on what they know least about. Thus a Lowell factory-girl likes to write a tale of ducal society in England; and when a Scotchman has less intelligence of “jocks” and “wut” than any of his countrymen, he compiles, and comments on, American humorists.

Once there was a grand publishers’ dinner to authors where I went with Alice and Phoebe Carey, who were great friends of mine. There I met and talked with Washington Irving; I remember Bryant and N. P. Willis, et tous les autres. Just at that time wine, &c., could only be sold in New York “in the original packages as imported.” Alice or Phoebe Carey lamented that we were to have none at the banquet. There was a large dish of grapes before her, and I said, “Why, there you have plenty of it in the original packages!”

At that time very hospitable or genial hosts used to place a bottle of brandy and glass in the gentlemen’s dressing-room at an evening’s reception, and I remember it was considered a scandalous thing when a certain old retired naval officer once emptied the whole bottle single-handed.

Of course I was very intimate with Clark of the Knickerbocker, Fred Cozzens, John Godfrey Saxe, and all the company of gay and festive humorists who circled about that merry magazine. There was never anything quite like the Knickerbocker, and there never will be again. It required a sunny, genial social atmosphere, such as we had before the war, and never after; an easy writing of gay and cultivated men for one another, and not painfully elaborating jocosities or seriosities for the million as in—But never mind. It sparkled through its summer-time, and oh! how its readers loved it! I sometimes think that I would like to hunt up the old title-plate with Diedrich Knickerbocker and his pipe, and issue it again every month to a few dozen subscribers who loved quaint odds and ends, till I too should pass away!

It was easy enough to foresee that a great illustrated weekly, with actually one young man, and generally no more, to do all the literary work could not last long. And yet the New York Times, or some such journal, said that the work was very well done, and that the paper did well until I left. Heaven knows that I worked hard enough on it, and, what was a great deal to boast of in those days, never profited one farthing beyond free tickets to plays, which I had little time to use. And yet my pay was simply despicably small. I had great temptations to write up certain speculative enterprises, and never accepted one. Our circulation sometimes reached 150,000. And if the publishers (excepting Barnum) had ever shown me anything like thanks or kindness for gratuitous zeal and interest which I took, I could have greatly aided them. One day, for instance, I was asked to write a description of a new ferry. I went there, and the proprietor intimated that he would pay a large sum for an article which would point out the advantage or profit which would accrue from investing in his lots. I told him that if it were really true that such was the case, I would do it for nothing, but that I never made money behind my salary. I began to weary of the small Yankee greed and griping and “thanklessness” which I experienced. There were editors in New York who, for less work, earned ten times the salary which I received. I was not sorry when I heard that some utterly inexperienced New England clergyman had been engaged to take my place. So I returned to Philadelphia. The paper very soon came to grief. I believe that with Barnum alone I could have made it a great success. We had Frank Leslie for chief engraver, and he was very clever and ambitious. I had a knowledge of art, literature, and foreign life and affairs, which could have been turned, with Leslie’s co-operation, to great advantage. I needed an office with a few books for reference, at least three or four literary aids, and other ordinary absolutely necessary facilities for work. All that I literally had was a space half-portioned off from the engine-room, where a dozen blackguard boys swore and yelled as it were at my elbow, a desk, a chair, and a pair of scissors, ink, and paste. This wretched scrimping prevailed through the whole business, and thus it was expected to establish a great first-class American illustrated newspaper. It is sometimes forgotten in the United States that to make a vast success, something is requisite beyond enterprise and economy, and that it is a very poor policy to screw your employÉs down to the last cent, and overwork them, and make business needlessly irksome, when they have it in their power to very greatly advance your interests. I dwell on this because it is a common error everywhere. I have in my mind a case in which an employer, who lived “like a prince,” boasted to me how little he paid his men, and how in the long-run it turned out bitterly to his loss in many ways. Those who had no principle robbed him, while the honest, who would have made his interests their own, left him. I have seen business after business broken up in this way. While the principal is in vigour and life, he may succeed with mere servants who are poorly paid; then, after a time, some younger partner, who has learned his morals from the master, pushes him out, or he dies, and the business is worthless, because there is not a soul in it who cares for it, or who has grown up with any common sense of interest with the heirs.

I remember one day being obliged in New York to listen to a conversation between two men of business. One owed the other a large sum, honestly enough—of that there was no question between them; but he thought that there was a legal way to escape payment, while the other differed from him. So they argued away for a long time. There was not a word of reproach; the creditor would have cheated the debtor in the same way if he could; the only point of difference was whether it could be done. An employÉ who can remain in such surroundings and be honest must be indeed a miracle of integrity, and, if he do not over-reach them in the long-run, one of stupidity. I might have made “house and land” out of the newspaper had I been so disposed.

Of all the men whom I met in those days in the way of business, Mr. Barnum, the great American humbug, was by far the honestest and freest from guile or deceit, or “ways that were dark, or tricks that were vain.” He was very kind-hearted and benevolent, and gifted with a sense of fun which was even stronger than his desire for dollars. I have talked very confidentially with him many times, for he was very fond of me, and always observed that to engineer some grotesque and startling paradox into tremendous notoriety, to make something immensely puzzling with a stupendous sell as postscript, was more of a motive with him than even the main chance. He was a genius like Rabelais, but one who employed business and humanity for material instead of literature, just as Abraham Lincoln, who was a brother of the same band, employed patriotism and politics. All three of them expressed vast problems, financial, intellectual, or natural, by the brief arithmetic of a joke. Mr. Barnum was fearfully busy in those days; what with buying elephants, wooing two-headed girls for his Grand Combination, laying out towns, chartering banks, and inventing unheard-of wonders for the unrivalled collection of one hundred and fifty million unparalleled moral marvels; but he always found time to act as unpaid contributor to a column of humorous items which I always published. I have said that I had no assistant; I forgot that I always had Mr. Barnum as assistant humorous editor for that department. All at once, when least expected, he would come smiling in with some curiosity of literature such as the “reverse”—

“Lewd did I live & evil I did dwel,”

or a fresh conundrum or joke, with all his heart and soul full of it, and he would be as delighted over the proof as if to see himself in print was a startling novelty. We two had “beautiful times” over that column, for there was a great deal of “boy” still left in Barnum; nor was I by any means deficient in it. One thing I set my face against firmly: I never would in any way whatever write up, aid, or advertise the great show or museum, or cry up the elephant. I was resolved to leave the paper first.

On that humorous column Barnum always deferred to me, even as a small school-boy defers to an elder on the question of a game of marbles or hop-scotch. There was no affectation or play in it; we were both quite in earnest. I think I see him now, coming smiling in like a harvest-moon, big with some new joke, and then we sat down at the desk and “edited.” How we would sit and mutually and admiringly read to one another our beautiful “good things,” the world forgetting, by the world forgot! And yet I declare that never till this instant did the great joke of it all ever occur to me—that two men of our experiences could be so simply pleased! Those humorous columns, collected and republished in a book, might truly bear on the title-page, “By Barnum and Hans Breitmann.” And we were both of the opinion that it really would make a very nice book indeed. We were indeed both “boys” over it at play.

The entire American press expected, as a matter of course, that the Illustrated News would be simply an advertisement for the great showman, and, as I represented to Mr. Barnum, this would ere long utterly ruin the publication. I do not now really know whether I was quite right in this, but it is very much to Mr. Barnum’s credit that he never insisted on it, and that in his own paper he was conspicuous by his absence. And here I will say that, measured by the highest and most refined standard, there was more of the gentleman in Phineas T. Barnum than the world imagined, and very much more than there was in a certain young man in good society who once expressed in my hearing disgust at the idea of even speaking to “the showman.”

Henry Ward Beecher was a great friend of Barnum and the Beaches, of which some one wrote—

“No wonder Mr. Alfred Beach
Prefers, as noblest preacher,
A man who is not only Beach,
But even more so—Beecher.”

He came very frequently into our office; but I cannot recall any saying of his worth recording.

There was also a brother of H. W. Longfellow, a clergyman, who often visited me, of whom I retain a most agreeable recollection.

The newsboys who clustered round the outer door were divided in opinion as to me. One party thought I was Mr. Barnum, and treated me with profound respect. The other faction cried aloud after me, “Hy! you --- ---!”

Mr. Barnum wanted me to write his Life. This would have been amusing work and profitable, but I shrunk from the idea of being identified with it. I might as well have done it, for I believe that Dr. Griswold performed the task, and the public never knew or cared anything about it. But my jolly companions at Dan Bixby’s used to inquire of me at what hour we fed the monkeys, and whether the Great Gyascutus ever gave me any trouble; and I was sensitive to such insinuations.

At this time Mr. Barnum’s great moral curiosity was a bearded lady, a jolly and not bad-looking Frenchwoman, whose beard was genuine enough, as I know, having pulled it. My own beard has been described by a French newspaper as une barbe de Charlemagne, a very polite pun, but hers was much fuller. It was soft as floss silk. After a while the capillary attraction ceased to draw, and Mr. Barnum thought of an admirable plan to revive it. He got somebody to prosecute him for false pretences and imposture, on the ground that Madame was a man. Then Mr. Barnum had, with the greatest unwillingness and many moral apologies, a medical examination; they might as sensibly have examined Vashishta’s cow to find out if it was an Irish bull. Then came the attack on the impropriety of the whole thing, and finally Mr. Barnum’s triumphant surrebutter, showing he had most unwillingly been goaded by the attacks of malevolent wretches into an unavoidable course of defence. Of course, spotless innocence came out triumphant. Mr. Barnum’s system of innocence was truly admirable. When he had concocted some monstrous cock-and-bull curiosity, he was wont to advertise that “it was with very great reluctance that he presented this unprecedented marvel to the world, as doubts had been expressed as to its genuineness—doubts inspired by the actually apparently incredible amount of attraction in it. All that we ask of an enlightened and honest public is, that it will pass a fair verdict and decide whether it be a humbug or not.” So the enlightened public paid its quarters of a dollar, and decided that it was a humbug, and Barnum abode by their decision, and then sent it to another city to be again decided on.

I returned to Philadelphia, and to my father’s house, and occupied myself with such odds and ends of magazine and other writing as came in my way, and always reading and studying. I was very much depressed at this time, yet not daunted. My year in New York had familiarised me with characteristic phases of American life and manners; my father thought I had gone through a severe mill with rather doubtful characters, and once remarked that I should not judge too harshly of business men, for I had been unusually unfortunate in my experience.

A not unfrequent visitor at our house in Philadelphia was our near neighbour, Henry C. Carey, the distinguished scholar and writer on political economy, who had been so extensively robbed of ideas by Bastiat, and who retook his own, not without inflicting punishment. He was a handsome, black-eyed, white-haired man, with a very piercing glance. During the war, when men were sad and dull, and indeed till his death, Mr. Carey’s one glorious and friendly extravagance was to assemble every Sunday afternoon all his intimates, including any distinguished strangers, at his house, round a table, in rooms magnificently hung with pictures, and give everybody, ad libitum, hock which cost him sixteen shillings a bottle. I occasionally obliged him by translating for him German letters, &c., and he in return revised my pamphlet on Centralization versus State Rights in 1863. H. C. Baird, a very able writer of his school, was his nephew. The latter had two or three sisters, whom I recall as charming girls while I was a law-student. There were many beauties in Philadelphia in those days, and prominent at the time, though as yet a schoolgirl, was the since far-famed Emily Schaumberg, albeit I preferred Miss Belle Fisher, a descendant maternally of the famous Callender beauties, and by her father’s side allied to Miss Vining, the American Queen of Beauty during the Revolution at Washington’s republican court. There was also a Miss Lewis, whose great future beauty I predicted while as yet a child, to the astonishment of a few, “which prophecy was marvellously fulfilled.” Also a Miss Wharton, since deceased, on whom George Boker after her death wrote an exquisite poem. The two were, each of their kind, of a beauty which I have rarely, if ever, seen equalled, and certainly never surpassed, in Italy. How I could extend the list of those too good and fair to live, who have passed away from my knowledge!—Miss Nannie Grigg—Miss Julia Biddle!—Mais oÙ sont les neiges d’antan?

Thus far my American experiences had not paid well. I reflected that if I had remained in Paris I should have done far better. When I left, I knew that the success of Louis Napoleon was inevitable. Three newspapers devoted to him had appeared on the Boulevards in one day. There was money at work, and workmen such as lived in the HÔtel de Luxembourg, gentlemen who could not only plan barricades but fight at them, were in great demand, as honest men always are in revolutions. Louis Napoleon was very anxious indeed to attach to him the men of February, and many who had not done one-tenth or one-twentieth of what I had, had the door of fortune flung wide open to them. My police-dossier would have been literally a diploma of honour under the new Empire, for, after all, the men of February, Forty-eight, were the ones who led off, and who all bore the highest reputation for honour. All that I should have required would have been some ambitious man of means to aid—and such men abound in Paris—to have risen fast and high. As it turned out, it was just as well in the end that I neither went in as a political adventurer under Louis Napoleon, nor wrote the Life of Barnum. But no one knew in those days how Louis would turn out.

I have but one word to add to this. The secret of the Revolution of February had been in very few hands, which was the secret of its success. Any one of us could have secured fortune and “honours,” or at least “orders,” by betraying it. But we would as soon have secured orders for the pit of hell as done so. This was known to Louis Napoleon, and he must have realised who these men of iron integrity were for he was very curious and inquiring on this subject. Now, I here claim it as a great, as a surpassing honour for France, and as something absolutely without parallel in history, that several hundred men could be found who could not only keep this secret, but manage so very wisely as they did. Louis Blanc was an example of these honest, unselfish men. I came to know him personally many years after, during his exile in London.

One morning George H. Boker came to me and informed me that there was a writing editor wanted on the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. Its proprietor was Alexander Cummings. The actual editor was Gibson Bannister Peacock, who was going to Europe for a six months’ tour, and some one was wanted to take his place. Mr. Peacock, as I subsequently found, was an excellent editor, and a person of will and character. He was skilled in music and a man of culture. I retain grateful remembrances of him. I was introduced and installed. With all my experience I had not yet quite acquired the art of extemporaneous editorial composition. My first few weeks were a severe trial, but I succeeded. I was expected to write one column of leader every day, review books, and “paragraph” or condense articles to a brief item of news. In which I succeeded so well, that some time after, when a work appeared on writing for the press, the author, who did not know me at all, cited one of my leaders and one of my paragraphs as models. It actually made little impression on me at the time—I was so busy.

I had been at work but a short time, when one day Mr. Cummings received a letter from Mr. Peacock in Europe, which he certainly had hardly glanced at, which he threw to me to read. I did so, and found in it a passage to this effect: “I am sorry that you are disappointed as to Mr. Leland, but I am confident that you will find him perfectly capable in time.” This gave me a bitter pang, but I returned it to Mr. Cummings, who soon after came into the office and expressed frankly his great regret, saying that since he had written to Mr. Peacock he had quite changed his opinion.

I enjoyed this new life to the utmost. Mr. Cummings, to tell the truth, pursued a somewhat tortuous course in politics and religion. He was a Methodist. One day our clerk expressed himself as to the latter in these words:—“They say he is a Jumper, but others think he has gone over to the Holy Rollers.” The Jumpers were a sect whose members, when the Holy Spirit seized them, jumped up and down, while the Holy Rollers under such circumstances rolled over and over on the floor. We also advocated Native Americanism and Temperance, which did not prevent Mr. Peacock and myself and a few habituÉs of the office from going daily at eleven o’clock to a neighbouring lager-beer Wirthschaft for a refreshing glass and lunch. One day the bar-tender, Hermann, a very nice fellow, said to me, “I remember when you always had a bottle of Rudesheimer every day for dinner. That was at Herr Lehr’s, in Heidelberg. I always waited on you.”

Whoever shall write a history of Philadelphia from the Thirties to the end of the Fifties will record a popular period of turbulence and outrages so extensive as to now appear almost incredible. These were so great as to cause grave doubts in my mind whether the severest despotism, guided by justice, would not have been preferable to such republican license as then prevailed in the city of Penn. I refer to the absolute and uncontrolled rule of the Volunteer Fire Department, which was divided into companies (each having clumsy old fire apparatus and hose), all of them at deadly feud among themselves, and fighting freely with pistols, knives, iron spanners, and slung shot, whenever they met, whether at fires or in the streets. Of these regular firemen, fifty thousand were enrolled, and to these might have been added almost as many more, who were known as runners, bummers, and hangers-on. Among the latter were a great number of incendiaries, all of whom were well known to and encouraged by the firemen. Whenever the latter wished to meet some rival company, either to test their mutual skill or engage in a fight, a fire was sure to occur; the same always happened when a fire company from some other city visited Philadelphia.

This gave occasion to an incredible amount of blackmailing, since all house-owners were frequently called on to contribute money to the different companies, sometimes as a subscription for ball-tickets or repairs. It was well understood, and generally pretty plainly expressed, that those who refused to pay might expect to be burned out or neglected. The result of it all was a general fear of the firemen, a most degrading and contemptible subservience to them by politicians of all kinds, a terrible and general growth and spread of turbulence and coarse vulgarity among youth, and finally, such a prevalence of conflagration that no one who owned a house could hear the awful tones of the bell of Independence Hall without terror. Fires were literally of nightly occurrence, and that they were invariably by night was due to the incendiary “runner.” A slight examination of the newspapers and cheap broadside literature of that time will amply confirm all that I here state. “Jakey” was the typical fireman; he was the brutal hero of a vulgar play, and the ideal of nineteen youths out of twenty. For a generation or more all society felt the degrading influences of this rowdyism in almost every circle—for there were among the vast majority of men not very many who respected, looked up to, or cared for anything really cultured or refined. I have a large collection of the popular songs of Philadelphia of that time, in all of which there is a striving downwards into blackguardism and brutality, vileness and ignorance, which has no parallel in the literature of any other nation. The French of the PÈre DuchÊne school may be nastier, and, as regards aristocrats, as bloody, but for general all-round vulgarity, the state of morals developed among the people at the time of which I speak was literally without its like. It is very strange that Pliny also speaks of the turbulence or rowdyism of the firemen of Rome.

I remember that even in Walnut Street, below Thirteenth Street, before my father’s house (this being then by far the most respectable portion of Philadelphia), it happened several nights in succession that rival fire-companies, running side by side, fought as they ran, with torches and knives, while firing pistols. There was a young lady named Mary Bicking, who lived near us. I asked her one day if she had ever seen a man shot; and when she answered “No,” I replied, “Why don’t you look out of your window some night and see one?”

The southern part of the city was a favourite battleground, and I can remember hearing ladies who lived in Pine Street describe how, on Sunday summer afternoons, they could always hear, singly or in volleys, the shots of the revolvers and shouts of the firemen as they fought in Moyamensing.

Every effort to diminish these evils, or to improve the fire department in any way whatever, was vigorously opposed by the rowdies, who completely governed the city. The first fire-alarm electric telegraphs were a great offence to firemen, and were quietly destroyed; the steam-engines were regarded by them as deadly enemies. But the first great efficient reform in the Philadelphia fire department, and the most radical of all, was the establishment of a fire-detective department under a fire-marshal, whose business it was to investigate and punish all cases of incendiarism. For it was simply incendiarism, encouraged and supported by the firemen themselves, which caused nineteen-twentieths of all these disasters; it was the fires which were the sole support of the whole system.

I was much indebted for understanding all this, and acting on it boldly, as I did, to the city editor and chief reporter on the Evening Bulletin, Caspar Souder. The Mayor of the city was Richard Vaux, a man of good family and education, and one who had seen in his time cities and men, he having once in his youth, on some great occasion, waltzed with the Princess—now Queen—Victoria. Being popular, he was called Vaux populi. I wrote very often leaders urging Mayor Vaux by name to establish a fire-detective department. So great was the indignation caused among the firemen, that I incurred no small risk in writing them. But at last, when I published for one week an article every day clamouring for a reform, Mayor Vaux—as he said directly to Mr. Souder, “in consequence of my appeals”—vigorously established a fire-marshal with two aids. By my request, the office was bestowed on a very intelligent and well-educated person, Dr. Blackburne, who had been a surgeon in the Mexican war, then a reporter on our journal, and finally a very clever superior detective. He was really not only a born detective, but to a marked degree a man of scientific attainments and a skilled statistician. His anecdotes and comments as to pyromaniacs of different kinds were as entertaining and curious as anything recorded by Gaboriau. Some of the most interesting experiences of my life were when I went with Dr. Blackburne from place to place where efforts had been made to burn houses, and noted the unerring and Red-Indian skill with which he distinguished the style of work, and identified the persons and names of the incendiaries. One of these “fire-bugs” was noted for invariably setting fire to houses in such a manner as to destroy as many inmates as possible. If there were an exit, he would block it up. Dr. Blackburne took me to a wooden house in which the two staircases led to a very small vestibule about three feet square before the front door. This space had been filled with diabolical ingenuity with a barrel full of combustibles, so that every one who tried to escape by the only opening below would be sure to perish. Fortunately, the combustibles in the barrel went out after being ignited. “I know that fellow by his style,” remarked the Doctor, “and I shall arrest him at four o’clock this afternoon.”

This fire-detective department and the appointment of Blackburne was the real basis and beginning of all the reforms which soon followed, leading to the abolition of the volunteer system and the establishment of paid employÉs. And as I received great credit for it then, my work being warmly recognised and known to all the newspaper reporters and editors in the city, who were the best judges of it, as they indeed are of all municipal matters, I venture to record it here as something worth mentioning. And though I may truly say that at the time I was so busy that I made no account of many such things, they now rise up from time to time as comforting assurances that my life has not been quite wasted.

This reminds me that I had not been very long on the newspaper, and had just begun to throw out editorials with ease, when Mr. Cummings said to me one day that I did not realise what a power I held in my hand, but that I would soon find it out. Almost immediately after, in noticing some article or book which was for sale at No. 24 Chestnut Street, I inadvertently made reference to 24 Walnut Street. Very soon came the proprietor of the latter place, complaining that I had made life a burden to him, because fifty people had come in one day to buy something which he had not. I reflected long and deeply on this, with the result of observing that to influence people it is not at all necessary to argue with them, but simply be able to place before their eyes such facts as you choose. It is very common indeed to hear people in England, who should have more sense, declare that “nobody minds what the newspapers say.” But the truth is, that if any man has an eye to read and memory to retain, he must, willy-nilly, be influenced by reading, and selection from others by an able editor is often only a most ingenious and artful method of arguing. It has very often happened to me, when I wanted to enforce some important point, to clothe it as an anecdote or innocent “item,” and bid the foreman set it in the smallest type in the most obscure corner. And the reader is influenced by it, utterly unconsciously, just as we all are, and just as surely as all reflection follows sensation—as it ever will—into the Ages!

There was much mutual robbing by newspapers of telegraphic news in those days. Once it befell that just before the Bulletin went to press a part of the powder-mills of Dupont Brothers in Delaware blew up, and we received a few lines of telegram, stating that Mr. Dupont himself had saved the great magazine by actually walking on a burning building with buckets of water, and preventing the fire from extending, at a most incredible risk of his life. Having half-an-hour’s time, I expanded this telegram into something dramatic and thrilling. A great New York newspaper, thinking, from the shortness of time which elapsed in publishing, that it was all telegraphed to us, printed it as one of its own from Delaware, just as I had written it out—which I freely forgive, for verily its review of my last work but one was such as to make me inquire of myself in utter amazement, “Can this be I?”—“so gloriously was I exalted to the higher life.” The result of this review was a sworn and firm determination on my part to write another book of the same kind, in which I should show myself more worthy of such cordial encouragement; which latter book was the “Etruscan Legends.” I ought indeed to have dedicated it to the New York Tribune, a journal which has done more for human freedom than any other publication in history.

I do not know certainly whether the brave Dupont whom I mentioned was the Charley Dupont who went to school with me at Jacob Pierce’s, nor can I declare that a very gentlemanly old Frenchman who came to see him in 1832 was his father or grandfather, the famous old Dupont de l’Eure of the French Revolution. But I suppose it was the latter who carried and transformed the art of manufacturing moral gunpowder in France to the making material explosives in America. Yes, moral or physical, we are all but gunpowder and smoke—pulvis et umbra sumus!

There was a morning paper in Philadelphia which grieved me sore by pilfering my news items as I wrote them. So I one day gave a marvellous account of the great Volatile Chelidonian or Flying Turtle of Surinam, of which a specimen had just arrived in New York. It had a shell as of diamonds blent with emeralds and rubies, and bat-like wings of iridescent hue surpassing the opal, and a tail like a serpent. Our contemporary, nothing doubting, at once published this as original matter in a letter from New York, and had to bear the responsibility. But I did not invest my inventiveness wisely; I should have shared the idea with Barnum.

There was in Philadelphia at this time a German bookseller named Christern. It was the thought of honourable and devoted men which recalled him to my mind. I had made his acquaintance long before in Munich, where he had been employed in the principal bookseller’s shop of the city. His “store” in Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, became a kind of club, where I brought such of my friends as were interested in German literature. We met there and talked German, and examined and discussed all the latest European works. He had a burly, honest, rather droll assistant named Ruhl, who had been a student in Munich, then a Revolutionist and exile, and finally a refugee to America. To this shop, too, came AndrÉkovitch, whom I had last known in Paris as a speculator on the Bourse, wearing a cloak lined with sables. In America he became a chemical manufacturer. When at last an amnesty was proclaimed, his brother asked him to return to Poland, promising a support, which he declined. He too was an honourable, independent man. About this time the great—I forget his name; or was it SchÖffel?—who had been President of the Frankfort Revolutionary Parliament, opened a lager-beer establishment in Race Street. I went there several times with Ruhl.

George Boker and Frank Wells, who subsequently succeeded me on the Bulletin, would drop in every day after the first edition had gone to press, and then there would be a lively time. Frank Wells was, par Éminence, the greatest punster Philadelphia ever produced. He was in this respect appalling. We had a sub-editor or writer named Ernest Wallace, who was also a clever humorist. One day John Godfrey Saxe came in. He was accustomed among country auditors and in common sanctums to carry everything before him with his jokes. In half-an-hour we extinguished him. Having declared that no one could make a pun on his name, which he had not heard before, Wallace promptly replied, “It’s axing too much, I presume; but did you ever hear that?” Saxe owned that he had not.

George H. Boker, whose name deserves a very high place in American literature as a poet, and in history as one who was of incredible service, quietly performed, in preserving the Union during the war, was also eminently a wit and humorist. We always read first to one another all that we wrote. He had so trained himself from boyhood to self-restraint, calmness, and the nil admirari air, which, as Dallas said, is “the Corinthian ornament of a gentleman” (I may add especially when of Corinthian brass), that his admirable jests, while they gained in clearness and applicability, lost something of that rattle of the impromptu and headlong which renders Irish and Western humour so easy. I recorded the bon mots and merry stories which passed among us all in the sanctum in articles for our weekly newspaper, under the name of “Social Hall Sketches” (a social hall in the West is a steamboat smoking-room). Every one of us received a name. Mr. Peacock was Old Hurricane, and George Boker, being asked what his pseudonym should be, selected that of Bullfrog. These “Social Hall Sketches” had an extended circulation in American newspapers, some for many years. One entirely by me, entitled “Opening Oysters,” is to be found in English almanacs, &c., to this day.

It was, I think, or am sure, in 1855 that some German in Pennsylvania, instead of burying his deceased wife, burned the body. This called forth a storm of indignant attack in the newspapers. It was called an irreligious, indecent act. I wrote an editorial in which I warmly defended it. According to Bulwer in the “Last Days of Pompeii,” the early Christians practised it. Even to this day Urns and torches are common symbols in Christian burying-grounds, and we speak of “ashes” as more decent than mouldering corpses. And, finally, I pointed out the great advantage which it would be to the coal trade of Pennsylvania. A man of culture said to me that it was the boldest editorial which he had ever read. Such as it was, I believe that it was the first article written in modern times advocating cremation. If I am wrong, I am willing to be corrected.

To those who are unfamiliar with it, the life in an American newspaper office seems singularly eventful and striking. A friend of mine who visited a sanctum (ours) for the first time, said, as he left, that he had never experienced such an interesting hour in his life. Firstly, came our chief city reporter, exulting in the manner in which he had circumvented the police, and, despite all their efforts, got, by ways that were dark, at all the secrets of a brand-new horrible murder. Secondly, a messenger with an account of how I, individually, had kicked up the very devil in the City Councils, and set the Mayor to condemning us, by a leader discussing certain municipal abuses. Thirdly, another, to tell how I had swept one-half the city by an article exposing its neglect, and how the sweepers and dirt-carts were busy where none had been before for weeks, and how the contractor for cleaning wanted to shoot me. Fourthly, a visit from some great dignitary, who put his dignity very much À l’abri in his pocket, to solicit a puff. Fifthly, a lady who, having written a very feeble volume of tales which had merely been gently commended in our columns, came round in a rage to shame me by sarcasm, begging me as a parting shot to at least read a few lines of her work. Sixthly, a communication from a great New York family, who, having been requested to send a short description of a remarkable wedding-cake, sent me one hundred and fifty pages of minute history of all their ancestors and honours, with strict directions that not a line should be omitted, and the article printed at once most conspicuously. [225] Seventhly, . . . but this is a very mild specimen of what went on all the time during office-hours. And on this subject alone I could write a small book.

Now, at this time there came about a very great change in my life, or an event which ultimately changed it altogether. My father had, for about two years past, fallen into a very sad state of mind. His large property between Chestnut and Bank Streets paid very badly, and his means became limited. I was seriously alarmed as to his health. My dear mother had become, I may say, paralytic; but, in truth, the physicians could never explain the disorder. To the last she maintained her intellect, and a miraculous cheerfulness unimpaired.

All at once a strange spirit, as of new life, came suddenly over my father. I cannot think of it without awe. He went to work like a young man, shook off his despair, financiered with marvellous ability, borrowed money, collected old and long-despaired of debts, tore down the old hotel and the other buildings, planned and bargained with architects—it was then that I designed the faÇade before described—and built six stores, two of them very handsome granite buildings, on the old site. In short, he made of it a very valuable estate. And as he superintended with great skill and ability the smallest details of the building, which was for that time remarkably well executed, I thought I recognised whence it was that I derived the strongly developed tendency for architecture which I have always possessed. I have since made 400 copies of old churches in England.

This was a happy period, when life was without a cloud, excepting my mother’s trouble. As my father could now well afford it, he made me an allowance, which, with my earnings from the Bulletin and other occasional literary work, justified me in getting married. I had had a long but still very happy engagement. So we were married by the Episcopal ceremony at the house of my father-in-law in Tenth Street, and a very happy wedding it was. I remember two incidents. Before the ceremony, the Reverend Mr., subsequently Bishop Wilmer, took me, with George Boker, into a room and explained to me the symbolism of the marriage-ring. Now, if there was a subject on earth which I, the old friend of Creuzer of Heidelberg, and master of Friedrich’s Symbolik, and Durandus, and the work “On Finger-Rings,” knew all about, it was that; and I never shall forget the droll look which Boker threw at me as the discourse proceeded. But I held my peace, though sadly tempted to set forth my own archÆological views on the subject.

The second was this: Philadelphia, as Mr. Philipps has said, abounds in folk-lore. Some one suggested that the wedding would be a lucky one because there was only one clergyman present. But I remarked that among our coloured waiters there was one who had a congregation (my wife’s cousin, by the way, had a coloured bishop for coachman). However, this sable cloud did not disturb us.

We went to New York, and were visited by many friends, and returned to Philadelphia. We lived for the first year at the La Pierre Hotel, where we met with many pleasant people, such as Thackeray, Thalberg, Ole Bull, Mr. and Mrs. Choteau, of St. Louis, and others. Of Thalberg I have already remarked, in my notes to my translation of Heine’s Salon, that he impressed me as a very gentlemanly, dignified, and quietly remarkable man, whom it would be difficult to readily or really understand. “He had unmistakably the manner peculiar to many great Germans, which, as I have elsewhere observed, is perceptible in the maintien and features of Goethe, Humboldt, Bismarck,” and Brugsch, of Berlin (whom I learned to know in later years). Thalberg gave me the impression, which grew on me, of a man who knew many things besides piano-playing, and that he was born to a higher specialty. He was dignified but affable. I remember that one day, when he, or some one present, remarked that his name was not a common one, I made him laugh by declaring that it occurred in two pieces in an old German ballad:—

“Ich that am Berge stehen,
Und sohaute in das Thal;
Da hab’ ich sie gesehen,
Zum aller letzten mal.”

“I stood upon the mountain,
And looked the valley o’er;
There I indeed beheld her,
But saw her never more.”

Thalberg’s playing was marvellously like his character or himself: Heine calls it gentlemanly. Thackeray was marked in his manner, and showed impulse and energy in small utterances. I may err, but I do not think he could have endured solitude or too much of himself. He was eminently social, and rather given at times to reckless (not deliberate or spiteful), sarcastic or “ironic” sallies, in which he did not, with Americans, generally come off “first best.” There was a very beautiful lady in Boston with whom the great novelist was much struck, and whom he greatly admired, as he sent her two magnificent bronzes. Having dined one evening at her house, he remarked as they all entered the dining-room, “Now I suppose that, according to your American custom, we shall all put our feet up on the chimney-piece.” “Certainly,” replied his hostess, “and as your legs are so much longer than the others, you may put your feet on top of the looking-glass,” which was about ten feet from the ground. Thackeray, I was told, was offended at this, and showed it; he being of the “give but not take” kind. One day he said to George Boker, when both were looking at DÜrer’s etching of “Death, Knight, and the Devil,” of which I possess a fine copy, “Every man has his devil whom he cannot overcome; I have two—laziness, and love of pleasure.” I remarked, “Then why the devil seek to overcome them? Is it not more noble and sensible to yield where resistance is in vain, than to fight to the end? Is it not a maxim of war, that he who strives to defend a defenceless place must be put to death? Why not give in like a man?”

I had just published my translation of Heine’s Reisebilder, and Bayard Taylor had a copy of it. He went in company with Thackeray to New York, and told me subsequently that they had read the work aloud between them alternately with roars of laughter till it was finished; that Thackeray praised my translation to the skies, and that his comments and droll remarks on the text were delightful. Thackeray was a perfect German scholar, and well informed as to all in the book.

Apropos of Heine, Ole Bull had known him very well, and described to me his brilliancy in the most distinguished literary society, where in French the German wit bore away the palm from all Frenchmen. “He flashed and sprayed in brilliancy like a fountain.” Ole Bull by some chance had heard much of me, and we became intimate. He told me that I had unwittingly been to him the cause of great loss. I had, while in London, become acquainted with an odd and rather scaly fish, a German who had been a courier, who was the keeper of a small cafÉ near Leicester Square, and who enjoyed a certain fame as the inventor of the poses plastiques or living statues, so popular in 1848. This man soon came over to America, and called on me, wanting to borrow money, whereupon I gave him the cold shoulder. According to Ole Bull, he went to the great violinist, represented himself as my friend and as warmly commended by me, and the heedless artist, instead of referring to me directly, took him as impresario; the result being that he ere long ran away with the money, and, what was quite as bad, Ole Bull’s prima-donna, who was, as I understood, specially dear to him. Ole Bull’s playing has been, as I think, much underrated by certain writers of reminiscences. There was in it a marvellous originality.

While I was there, in the La Pierre Hotel, the first great meeting was held at which the Republican party was organised. Though not an appointed delegate from our State, I, as an editor, took some part in it. Little did we foresee the tremendous results which were to ensue from that meeting! It was second only to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and on it was based the greatest struggle known to history. I could have, indeed, been inscribed as a constitutional member of it for the asking or writing my name, but that appeared to me and others then to be a matter of no consequence compared to the work in hand. So the Bulletin became Republican; Messrs. Cummings and Peacock seeing that that was their manifest destiny.

From that day terrible events began to manifest themselves in American politics. The South attempted to seize Kansas with the aid of border ruffians; Sumner was caned from behind while seated; the Southern press became outrageous in its abuse of the North, and the North here and there retaliated. All my long-suppressed ardent Abolition spirit now found vent, and for a time I was allowed to write as I pleased. A Richmond editor paid me the compliment of saying that the articles in the Bulletin were the bitterest and cleverest published in the North, but inquired if it was wise to manifest such feeling. I, who felt that the great strife was imminent, thought it was. Mr. Cummings thought differently, and I was checked. For years there were many who believed that the fearfully growing cancer could be cured with rose-water; as, for instance, Edward Everett.

While on the Bulletin I translated Heine’s Pictures of Travel. For it, poetry included, I was to receive three shillings a page. Even this was never paid me in full; I was obliged to take part of the money in engravings and books, and the publisher failed. It passed into other hands, and many thousands of copies were sold; from all of which I, of course, got nothing. I also became editor of Graham’s Magazine, which I filled recklessly with all or any kind of literary matter as I best could, little or nothing being allowed for contributions. However, I raised the circulation from almost nothing to 17,000. For this I received fifty dollars (£10) per month. When I finally left it, the proprietors were eighteen months in arrears due, and tried to evade payment, though I had specified a regular settlement every month. Finally they agreed to pay me in monthly instalments of fifty dollars each, and fulfilled the engagement.

Talking of the South, I forget now at what time it was that Barnum’s Museum in Philadelphia was burned, but I shall never forget a droll incident which it occasioned. Opposite it was a hotel, and the heat was so tremendous that the paint on the hotel was scorched, and it had begun to burn in places. By the door stood a friend of mine in great distress. I asked what was the matter. He replied that in the hotel was a Southern lady who would not leave her trunks, in which there were all her diamonds and other valuables, and that he could not find a porter to bring them down. I was strong enough in those days. “What is the number of her room?” “No. 22.” I rushed up—it was scorching hot by this time—burst into No. 22, and found a beautiful young lady in dire distress. I said abruptly, “I come from Mr. --- ---; where are your trunks?” She began to cry confusedly, “Oh, you can do nothing; they are very heavy.”

Seeing the two large trunks, I at once, without a word, caught one by each handle, dragged them after me bumping downstairs, the lady following, to the door, where I found my friend, who had a carriage in waiting. From the lady’s subsequent account, it appeared that I had occasioned her much more alarm than pleasure. She said that all at once a great tall gentleman burst into her room, seized her trunks without a word of apology, and dragged them downstairs like a giant; she was never so startled in all her life! It was explained to me that, as in the South only negroes handle trunks, the lady could not regard me exactly as a gentleman. She was within a short ace of being burnt up, trunks and all, but could not forget that she was from the “Sa-outh,” and must needs show it.

Apropos of this occurrence, I remember something odd which took place on the night of the same day. There was a stylish drinking-place, kept by a man named Guy, in Seventh Street. In the evening, when it was most crowded, there entered a stranger, described as having been fully seven feet high, and powerful in proportion, who kept very quiet, but who, on being chaffed as the giant escaped from Barnum’s Museum, grew angry, and ended by clearing out the barroom—driving thirty men before him like flies. Aghast at such a tremendous feat, one who remained, asked, “Who in God’s wrath are you?—haven’t you a name?”

“Yes, I have a name,” replied the Berserker; “I’m Charles Leland!” saying which he vanished.

The next day it was all over Philadelphia that I had cleared out John Guy’s the night before, sans merci. True, I am not seven feet high, but some men (like stories) expand enormously when inflated or mad; so my denial was attributed to sheer modesty. But I recognised in the Charles Leland a mysterious cousin of mine, who was really seven feet high, who had disappeared for many years, and of whom I have never heard since.

While editing Graham’s Magazine, I had one day a space to fill. In a hurry I knocked off “Hans Breitmann’s Barty” (1856). I gave it no thought whatever. Soon after, Clark republished it in the Knickerbocker, saying that it was evidently by me. I little dreamed that in days to come I should be asked in Egypt, and on the blue Mediterranean, and in every country in Europe, if I was its author. I wrote in those days a vast number of such anonymous drolleries, many of them, I daresay, quite as good, in Graham’s Magazine and the Weekly Bulletin, &c., but I took no heed of them. They were probably appropriated in due time by the authors of “Beautiful Snow.”

I began to weary of Philadelphia. New York was a wider field and more congenial to me. Mr. Cummings had once, during a financial crisis, appealed to my better feelings very touchingly to let my salary be reduced. I let myself be touched—in the pocket. Better times came, but my salary did not rise. Mr. Cummings, knowing that my father was wealthy, wanted me to put a large sum into his paper, assuring me that it would pay me fifteen per cent. I asked how that could be possible when he could only afford to pay me so very little for such hard work. He chuckled, and said, “That is the way we make our money.” Then I determined to leave.

Mr. George Ripley and Charles A. Dana, of the Tribune, were then editing in New York Appletons’ CyclopÆdia. Mr. Ripley had several times shown himself my friend; he belonged to the famous old band of Boston Transcendentalists who were at Brook Farm. I wrote to him asking if I could earn as much at the CyclopÆdia as I got from the Bulletin. He answered affirmatively; so we packed up and departed. I had a sister in New York who had married a Princeton College-mate named Thorp. We went to their house in Twenty-second Street near Broadway, and arranged it so as to remain there during the winter.

In the CyclopÆdia rooms I found abundance of work, though it was less profitable than I expected. For after an article was written, it passed through the hands of six or seven revisers, who revised not always wisely, and frequently far too well. They made their objections in writing, and we, the writers, made ours. I often gained a victory, but the victory cost a great deal of work, and of time which was not paid for. Altogether, I wrote about two hundred articles, great and small, for the CyclopÆdia. On the other hand, there was pleasant and congenial society among my fellow-workmen, and the labour itself was immensely instructive. If any man wishes to be well informed, let him work on a cyclopÆdia. As I could read several languages, I was additionally useful at times. The greatest conciseness of style is required for such work. In German cyclopÆdias this is carried to a fault.

After a while I began to find that there was much more money to be made outside the CyclopÆdia than in it. William H. Hurlbut, whom I had once seen so nearly shot, had been the “foreign editor” of the New York Times. Mr. Henry Raymond, its proprietor, had engaged a Mr. Hammond to come after some six months to take his place, and I was asked to fill it ad interim. I did so, so much to Mr. Raymond’s satisfaction, that he much regretted when I left that he had not previously engaged me. He was always very kind to me. He said that now and then, whenever he wanted a really superior art criticism, I should write it. He was quite right, for there were not many reporters in New York who had received such an education in Æsthetics as mine. When Patti made her dÉbut in opera for the first time, I was the only writer who boldly predicted that she would achieve the highest lyrical honours or become a “star” of the first magnitude. Apropos of Hurlbut, I heard many years after, in England, that a certain well-known litterateur, who was not one of his admirers, having seen him seated in close tÊte-À-tÊte with a very notorious and unpopular character, remarked regretfully, “Just to think that with one pistol-bullet both might have been settled!” Hurlbut was, even as a boy, very handsome, with a pale face and black eyes, and extremely clever, being facile princeps, the head of every class, and extensively read. But there was “a screw loose” somewhere in him. He was subject, but not very frequently, to such fits of passion or rage, that he literally became blind while they lasted. I saw him one day in one of these throw his arms about and stamp on the ground, as if unable to behold any one. I once heard a young lady in New York profess unbounded admiration for him, because “he looked so charmingly like the devil.” For many years the New York Herald always described him as the Reverend Mephistopheles Hurlbut. There was another very beautiful lady who afterwards died a strange and violent death, as also a friend of mine, an editor in New York, both of whom narrated to me at very great length “a grotesque Iliad of the wild career” of this remarkable man.

It never rains but it pours. Frank Leslie, who had been with me on Barnum’s Illustrated News, was now publishing half-a-dozen periodicals and newspapers, and offered me a fair price to give him my mornings. I did so. Unfortunately, my work was not specified, and he retained his old editors, who naturally enough did not want me, although they treated me civilly enough. One of these was Thomas Powell, who had seen a great deal of all the great English writers of the last generation. But there was much rather shady, shaky Bohemianism about the frequenters of our sanctum, and, all things considered, it was a pity that I ever entered it.

Und noch weiter. There was published in New York at that time (1860) an illustrated comic weekly called Vanity Fair. There was also in the city a kind of irregular club known as the Bohemians, who had been inspired by Murger’s novel of that name to imitate the life of its heroes. They met every evening at a lager-beer restaurant kept by a German named Pfaff. For a year or two they made a great sensation in New York. Their two principal men were Henry Clapp and Fitz-James O’Brien. Then there were Frank Wood and George Arnold, W. Winter, C. Gardette, and others. Wood edited Vanity Fair, and all the rest contributed to it. There was some difficulty or other between Wood and Mr. Stephens, the gÉrant of the weekly, and Wood left, followed by all the clan. I was called in in the emergency, and what with writing myself, and the aid of R. H. Stoddard, T. B. Aldrich, and a few more, we made a very creditable appearance indeed. Little by little the Bohemians all came back, and all went well.

Now I must here specify, for good reasons, that I held myself very strictly aloof from the Bohemians, save in business affairs. This was partly because I was married, and I never saw the day in my life when to be regarded as a real Bohemian vagabond, or shiftless person, would not have given me the horrors. I would have infinitely preferred the poorest settled employment to such life. I mention this because a very brilliant and singular article entitled “Charles G. Leland l’ennemi des Allemands” (this title angered me), which appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes in 1871, speaks of me by implication as a frequenter of Pfaff’s, declaring that I there introduced Artemus Ward to the Bohemian brotherhood, and that it was entirely due to me that Mr. Browne was brought out before the American World. This is quite incorrect. Mr. Browne had made a name by two or three very popular sketches before I had ever seen him. But it is very true that I aided him to write, and suggested and encouraged the series of sketches which made him famous, as he himself frankly and generously declared, for Charles Browne was at heart an honest gentleman, if there ever was one; which is the one thing in life better than success.

Mr. Stephens realising that I needed an assistant, and observing that Browne’s two sketches of the Showman’s letter and the Mormons had made him well known, invited him to take a place in our office. He was a shrewd, naÏf, but at the same time modest and unassuming young man. He was a native of Maine, but familiar with the West. Quiet as he seemed, in three weeks he had found out everything in New York. I could illustrate this by a very extraordinary fact, but I have not space for everything. I proposed to him to continue his sketches. “Write,” I said, “a paper on the Shakers.” He replied that he knew nothing about them. I had been at Lenox, Massachusetts, where I had often gone to New Lebanon and seen their strange worship and dances, and while on the Illustrated News had had a conference with their elders on an article on the Shakers. So I told him what I knew, and he wrote it, making it a condition that I would correct it. He wrote the sketch, and others. He was very slow at composition, which seemed strange to me, who was accustomed to write everything as I now do, currente calamo (having written all these memoirs, so far, within a month—more or less, and certainly very little more). From this came his book.

When he wrote the article describing his imprisonment, there was in it a sentence, “Jailor, I shall die unless you bring me something to eat!” In the proof we found, “I shall die unless you bring me something to talk.” He was just going to correct this, when I cried, “For Heaven’s sake, Browne, let that stand! It’s best as it is.” He did so, and so the reader may find it in his work.

Meanwhile the awful storm of war had gathered and was about to burst. I may here say that there was a kind of literary club or association of ladies and gentlemen who met once a week of evenings in the Studio Buildings, where I had many friends, such as Van Brunt, C. Gambrell, Hazeltine, Bierstadt, Gifford, Church, and Mignot. At this club I constantly met General Birney, the great Abolitionist, whose famous charge at Gettysburg did so much to decide the battle. Constant intercourse with him and with C. A. Dana greatly inspired me in my anti-slavery views. The manager of Vanity Fair was very much averse to absolutely committing the journal to Republicanism, and I was determined on it. I had a delicate and very difficult path to pursue, and I succeeded, as the publication bears witness. I went several times to Mr. Dana, and availed myself of his shrewd advice. Browne, too, agreed pretty fairly with me. I voted for Abraham Lincoln at the first election in New York. I voted on principle, for I confess that every conceivable thing had been said and done to represent him as an ignorant, ungainly, silly Western Hoosier, and even the Republican press had little or nothing to say as to his good qualities. Horace Greeley had “sprung him” on the Convention at the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute as the only available man, and he had been chosen as our candidate to defeat Douglas.

Let me here relate two anecdotes. When my brother heard of Lincoln’s “candidacy” he said—

“I don’t see why the people shouldn’t be allowed to have a President for once.”

A Copperhead friend of mine, who was always aiming at “gentility,” remarked to me with an air of disgust on the same subject—

“I do wisht we could have a gentleman for President for oncet.”

The said Copperhead became in due time a Republican office-holder, and is one yet.

Lincoln was elected. Then came the storm. Our rejoicings were short. Sumter was fired on. Up to that time everybody, including President Lincoln, had quite resolved that, if the South was resolved to secede, it must be allowed to depart in peace. There had been for many years a conviction that our country was growing to be too large to hold together. I always despised the contemptible idea. I had been in correspondence with the Russian Iskander or Alexander Herzen, who was a century in advance of his time. He was the real abolisher of serfdom in Russia, as history will yet prove. I once wrote a very long article urging the Russian Government to throw open the Ural gold mines to foreigners, and make every effort to annex Chinese territory and open a port on the Pacific. Herzen translated it into Russian (I have a copy of it), and circulated twenty thousand copies of it in Russia. The Czar read it. Herzen wrote to me: “It will be pigeon-holed for forty years, and then perhaps acted on. The Pacific will be the Mediterranean of the future.” With such ideas I did not believe in the dismemberment of the United States. [237]

But Sumter was fired on, and the whole North rose in fury. It was the silliest act ever committed. The South, with one-third of the votes, had two-thirds of all the civil, military, and naval appointments, and every other new State, and withal half of the North, ready to lick its boots, and still was not satisfied. It could not go without giving us a thrashing. And that was the drop too much. So we fought. And we conquered; but how? It was all expressed in a few words, which I heard uttered by a common man at a Bulletin board, on the dreadful day when we first read the news of the retreat at Bull Run: “It’s hard—but we must buckle up and go at it again.” It is very strange that the South never understood that among the mud-sills and toiling slaves and factory serfs of the North the spirit which had made men enrich barren New England and colonise the Western wilderness would make them buckle up and go at it again boldly to the bitter end.

One evening I met C. A. Dana on Broadway. War had fairly begun. “It will last,” he said, “not less than four years, but it may extend to seven.”

Trouble now came thick and fast. Vanity Fair was brought to an end. Frank Leslie found that he no longer required my services, and paid my due, which was far in arrears, in his usual manner, that is, by orders on advertisers for goods which I did not want, and for which I was charged double prices. Alexander Cummings had a very ingenious method of “shaving” when obliged to pay his debts. His friend Simon Cameron had a bank—the Middleton—which, if not a very wild cat, was far from tame, as its notes were always five or ten per cent. below par, to our loss—for we were always paid in Middleton. I have often known the clerk to take a handful of notes at par and send out to buy Middleton wherewith to pay me. I am sorry to say that such tricks were universal among the very great majority of proprietors with whom I had dealings. To “do” the employÉs to the utmost was considered a matter of course, especially when the one employed was a “literary fellow” of any kind or an artist.

I should mention that while in New York I saw a great deal of Bayard Taylor and his wife. I had known him since 1850 and was intimate with him till his death. He occupied the same house with the distinguished poet R. H. Stoddard. I experienced from both much kindness. We had amusing Saturday evenings there, where droll plays were improvised, and admirable disguises made out of anything. In after years, in London, Walter H. Pollock, Minto (recently deceased), and myself, did the same. One night, in the latter circle, we played Hamlet, but the chief character was the Sentinel, who stared at the Ghost with such open-jawed horror—“bouche bÉante, rechignez!”—and so prominently, that poor Hamlet was under a cloud. Pollock’s great capuchon overcoat served for all kinds of mysterious characters. We were also kindly entertained many a time and oft in New York by Mr. and Mrs. Charles A. Dana.

My engagement expired on the Times—where, by the way, I was paid in full in good money—and I found myself without employment in a fearful financial panic. During the spring and early summer we had lived at the Gramercy Park Hotel; we now went to a very pleasant boarding-house kept by Mrs. Dunn, on Staten Island. My old friend, George Ward, and G. W. Curtis, well known in literature and politics (who had been at Mr. Greene’s school), lived at no great distance from us. The steamboats from New York to Staten Island got to racing, and I enjoyed it very much, but George Ward and some of the milder sort protested against it, and it was stopped; which I thought rather hard, for we had very little amusement in those dismal days. I was once in a steamboat race when our boat knocked away the paddle-box from the other and smashed the wheel. From the days of the Romans and Norsemen down to the present time, there was never any form of amusement discovered so daring, so dangerous, and so exciting as a steamboat race, and nobody but Americans could have ever invented or indulged in it.

The old Knickerbocker Magazine had been for a long time running down to absolutely nothing. A Mr. Gilmore purchased it, and endeavoured to galvanise it into life. Its sober grey-blue cover was changed to orange. Mr. Clark left it, to my sorrow; but there was no help for it, for there was not a penny to pay him. I consented to edit it for half ownership, for I had an idea. This was, to make it promptly a strong Republican monthly for the time, which was utterly opposed to all of Mr. Clark’s ideas.

I must here remark that the financial depression in the North at this time was terrible. I knew many instances in which landlords begged it as a favour from tenants that they would remain rent-free in their houses. A friend of mine, Mr. Fales, one day took me over two houses in Fifth Avenue, of which he had been offered his choice for $15,000 each. Six months after the house sold for $150,000. Factories and shops were everywhere closing, and there was a general feeling that far deeper and more terrible disasters were coming—war in its worst forms—national disintegration—utter ruin. This spirit of despair was now debilitating everybody. The Copperheads or Democrats, who were within a fraction as numerous as the Republicans, continually hissed, “You see to what your nigger worship has brought the country. This is all your doing. And the worst is to come.” Then there was soon developed a class known as Croakers, who increased to the end of the war. These were good enough Union people, but without any hope of any happy issue in anything, and who were quite sure that everything was for the worst in this our most unfortunate of all wretched countries. Now it is a law of humanity that in all great crises, or whenever energy and manliness is needed, pessimism is a benumbing poison, and the strongest optimism the very elixir vitÆ itself. And by a marvellously strange inspiration (though it was founded on cool, far-sighted calculation), I, at this most critical and depressing time, rose to extremest hope and confidence, rejoicing that the great crisis had at length come, and feeling to my very depths of conviction that, as we were sublimely in the right, we must conquer, and that the dread portal once passed we should find ourselves in the fairy palace of prosperity and freedom. But that I was absolutely for a time alone amid all men round me in this intense hope and confidence, may be read as clearly as can be in what I and others published in those days, for all of this was recorded in type.

Bayard Taylor had been down to the front, and remarked carelessly to me one day that when he found that there was already a discount of 40 per cent. on Confederate notes, he was sure that the South would yield in the end. This made me think very deeply. There was no reason, if we could keep the Copperheads subdued, why we should not hold our own on our own territory. Secondly, as the war went on we should soon win converts. Thirdly, that the North had immense resources—its hay crop alone was worth more than all the cotton crop of the South. And fourthly, that when manufacturing and contract-making for the army should once begin, there would be such a spreading or wasting of money and making fortunes as the world never witnessed, and that while we grew rich, the South, without commerce or manufactures, must grow poor.

I felt as if inspired, and I wrote an article entitled, “Woe to the South.” At this time, “Woe to the North” was the fear in every heart. I showed clearly that if we would only keep up our hearts, that the utter ruin of the South was inevitable, while that for us there was close at hand such a period of prosperity as no one ever dreamt of—that every factory would soon double its buildings, and prices rise beyond all precedent. I followed this article by others, all in a wild, enthusiastic style of triumph. People thought I was mad, and the New York Times compared my utterances to the outpourings of a fanatical Puritan in the time of Cromwell.

But they were fulfilled to the letter. There is no instance that I know of in which any man ever prophesied so directly in the face of public opinion and had his predictions so accurately fulfilled. I was all alone in my opinions. At all times a feeling as of awe at myself comes over me when I think of what I published. For, with the exception of Gilmore, who had a kind of vague idea that he kept a prophet—as Moses the tailor kept a poet—not a soul of my acquaintance believed in all this.

Then I went a step further. I found that the real block in the way of Northern union was the disgust which had gathered round the mere name of Abolitionist. It became very apparent that freeing the slaves would, as General Birney once said to me, be knocking out the bottom of the basket. And people wanted to abolitionise without being “Abolitionists”; and at this time even the New York Tribune became afraid to advocate anti-slavery, and the greatest fanatics were dumb with fear.

Then I made a new departure. I advocated emancipation of the slaves as a war measure only, and my cry was “Emancipation for the sake of the White Man.” I urged prompt and vigorous action without any regard to philanthropy. As publishing such views in the Knickerbocker was like pouring the wildest of new wine into the weakest of old bottles, Gilmore resolved to establish at once in Boston a political monthly magazine to be called the Continental, to be devoted to this view of the situation. It was the only political magazine devoted to the Republican cause published during the war. That it fully succeeded in rapidly attracting to the Union party a vast number of those who had held aloof owing to their antipathy to the mere word abolition, is positively true, and still remembered by many. [242] Very speedily indeed people at large caught at the idea. I remember the very first time when one evening I heard Governor Andrews say of a certain politician that he was not an Abolitionist but an Emancipationist; and it was subsequently declared by my friends in Boston, and that often, that the very bold course taken by the Continental Magazine, and the creation by it of the Emancipationist wing, had hastened by several months the emancipation of the slaves by Abraham Lincoln. It was for this alone that the University of Cambridge, Massachusetts, afterwards, through its president, gave me the degree of A. M., “for literary services rendered to the country during the war,” which is as complete a proof of what I assert as could be imagined, for this was in very truth the one sole literary service which I performed at that time, and there were many of my great literary friends who declared their belief in, and sympathy with, the services which I rendered to the cause. But I will now cite some facts which fully and further confirm what I have said.

The Continental Magazine was, as I may say, a something more than semi-official organ. Mr. Seward contributed to it two anonymous articles, or rather their substance, which were written out and forwarded to me by Oakey Hall, Esq., of New York. We received from the Cabinet at Washington continual suggestions, for it was well understood that the Continental was read by all influential Republicans. A contributor had sent us a very important article indeed, pointing out that there was all through the South, from the Mississippi to the sea, a line of mountainous country in which there were few or no slaves, and very little attachment to the Confederacy. This article, which was extensively republished, attracted great attention. It gave great strength and encouragement to the grand plan of the campaign, afterwards realised by Sherman. By official request, to me directed, the author contributed a second article on the subject. These articles were extensively circulated in pamphlet form or widely copied by the press, and created a great sensation, forming, in fact, one of the great points made in influencing public opinion. Another of the same kind, but not ours, was the famous pamphlet by Charles Stille, of Philadelphia, “How a Free People Conduct a Long War,” in which it was demonstrated that the man who can hold out longest in a fight has the best chance, which simple truth made, however, an incredible popular impression. Gilmore and our friends succeeded, in fact, in making the Continental Magazine “respected at court.” But I kept my independence and principles, and thundered away so fiercely for immediate emancipation that I was confidentially informed that Mr. Seward once exclaimed in a rage, “Damn Leland and his magazine!” But as he damned me only officially and in confidence, I took it in the Pickwickian sense. And at this time I realised that, though I was not personally very much before the public, I was doing great and good work, and, as I have said, a great many very distinguished persons expressed to me by letter or in conversation their appreciation of it; and some on the other side wrote letters giving it to me per contra, and one of these was Caleb Cushing. Cushing in Chinese means “ancient glory,” but Caleb’s renown was extinguished in those days.

I may add that not only did H. W. Longfellow express to me his sympathy for and admiration of my efforts to aid the Union cause, but at one time or another all of my literary friends in Boston, who perfectly understood and showed deep interest in what I was doing. Which can be well believed of a city in which, above all others in the world, everybody sincerely aims at culture and knowledge, the first principle of which—inspired by praiseworthy local patriotism—is to know and take pride in what is done in Boston by its natives.

Meanwhile the G.O.C. was planning for the execution of the 145th Brigade a task, which sounds prosaic enough on paper, but which demanded for its success minute organisation and a high state of discipline in all concerned—namely, the digging of a forward trench in front of our own wire. Our line between HÉbuterne and Serre sagged back in a westerly direction from Trench Hoche to Trench Bouillon, thereby interposing 800-900 yards between ourselves and the Germans, with an intervening rise in No Man's Land. This configuration of the ground presented three obvious defects for offensive operations. It was impossible for the gunners to get direct observation on the sector of enemy trench opposite; it meant that troops deploying for the attack would get out of trenches facing in three directions, and would have to cross an unnecessary depth of shell-swept ground before getting to the assault. It was, therefore, determined to straighten out the line between the two points mentioned above. The battalions concerned assiduously practised wire-cutting, filing silently through the gaps, and night-digging. Our Battalion, which was to find the covering parties, took over the part of the line affected (J Sector, from Serre road to Trench Lassalle) a week beforehand, and every effort was made by means of patrols, two or three of which went out each night, to locate any forward posts or rifle pits from which the enemy might get wind of or interfere with the digging of the new trench. On the night of the 9th-10th April the scheme was carried out under the direction of Major Clissold (1st/1st Field Company, South Midland R.E.'s), an unfailing friend of the infantry, who was killed in the autumn of 1917. About 1,500 men in all were engaged; the digging was done by the 4th Oxfords and the 5th Gloucesters, while covering parties and fatigues were provided by the Bucks Battalion and ourselves. About six hours were allotted for the completion of the work, from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. The moon, which was near the full, shone brilliantly, though at times obscured by clouds, so that there was no fear of the confusion which arises from darkness, but rather of detection by the enemy's posts. Soon after 8.30 p.m. A Company, who were responsible for the protection from the right to the Puisieux road, strung themselves out into groups of three, some 20 yards apart, about 70 paces in front of the tape which marked the course of the proposed trench. While Captain Crouch, of the Bucks, was similarly employed on the left, some of his men, losing touch, ran into the vision of Hun sentries at the Poplars and were received with shots and bombs, which caused uneasy anticipations of discovery, happily unfulfilled. The diggers got to work behind their screen, and ate into the ground with remarkable speed, for stray rounds of shrapnel, intermittent sniping, and the constant discharge of Verey lights throughout the night, suggested that the Hun had some uneasy suspicion that all was not quite as usual; and indeed it seems almost incredible that the clash of the tools, the whispered orders, and the movements of the wiring parties should have entirely failed to strike the ear of a vigilant sentry at 250 yards. By 2 a.m. the work was almost finished; nothing remained but to strengthen the parapet of the new trench and to fill up the spaces between the knife-rests, which defended it some 40 yards in front, with screw pickets and loose strands of wire. By 3.20 a.m. all the diggers had returned to the old line, and the weary covering party, who had lain out for seven tedious hours, came home to get a hot drink, which they had well earned. Only 15 casualties were reported from the whole Brigade, none of which fell to the share of our Battalion. The trench was held by a few posts until dawn and then evacuated. About noon next day an enemy aeroplane flew along it, and the observer could be plainly seen leaning out and taking photographs of this mushroom growth. Almost immediately every battery from La Brayelle to Serre began to register upon it, and for weeks it was rendered unwholesome by the constant attention of artillery and mine-throwers. A poem of Lieut. Downs' preserves the air of mystery in which the whole scheme was so fortunately conceived and executed.

A whisper wandered round
Of a plan of the G.O.C's,
And figures surveyed the ground
In stealthy groups of threes;
But the whole Brigade were there,
Or pretty well all the lot,
When we dug the trench at Never-mind-where,
On April the Never mind-what.

The What's-a-names dug the trench,
The Who-is-its found the screen,
And we mustn't forget to mench
The Thingumies in between;
The Tothermies built the fence,
And the R.E.'s "also ran,"
For we didn't spare any expense,
With labour a shilling a man.

There isn't much else to tell,
Though the enemy made a song.
And tried to blow it to Hell,
But got the address all wrong;
For you'll find it's still out there
In the bally old self-same spot,
That trench which we built at Never-mind-where,
On April the Never-mind-what.