Chapter 21

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 cafe 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 pounds) 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' Cyclopaedia_. 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 _Cyclopaedia_ 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 _Cyclopaedia_ 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 _Cyclopaedia_. 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 cyclopaedia. As I could read several languages, I was additionally useful at times. The greatest conciseness of style is required for such work. In German cyclopaedias this is carried to a fault.

After a while I began to find that there was much more money to be made outside the _Cyclopaedia_ 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 aesthetics as mine. When Patti made her _debut_ 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 _tete-a-tete_ 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 _gerant_ 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, naif, 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 _employes_ 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 beante_, _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.