Part 5

The continuous application of three acute and powerful minds along the same line of thought, in the first half of the last century--an unconscious or undesigned collaboration (so to speak) of Lamarck, St. Beuve, and Hippolyte Taine--evolved a marvelous instrument of critical and philosophic research; furnishing for every capable thinker a method adapted to the investigation of all subjects, great and small; neglecting no phase, shrinking from no interpretation, rejecting no authentic fact, and having in perfection the magical quality of adjustment to conditions described in the Arabian tale. In his English notes, for example, M. Taine, if too frank, is singularly felicitous and discriminative in his physical descriptions of certain Anglican types of race--presenting, first, the beastly, repulsive traits of the _MALE_; the lowering, dog-like physiognomy, the huge jowl; the dull red eyes; the gluttonous chops; the swinish snout, the congested facial tissues; the gross, unwieldy figure, the bloated features and the protuberant accumulations of abdominal fat--thus graphically depicting, by way of philosophical illustration, an anthropoid incarnation of animal appetite. The picture is not flattering, but it certainly embodies some familiar traits, of which it is entirely pardonable to make a philosophic use. Next he introduces the Boadicean or Brobdingnagian _FEMALE_--"broad, stiff, and destitute of ideas"--with heavy features, lifeless, fishy eyes, coarse, congested complexion, a clumsy figure, large feet, unshapely hands, and an utter lack of style and taste--notably in the bizarre combinations of color in her dress. Moreover, he says, two out of every three have their feet shod with stout masculine boots, and as to their long, projecting teeth--huge white teeth--it is impossible to train oneself to endure them. "Is this," he inquires philosophically, "a cause or an effect of the carnivorous regime?" Plainly enough the cause--the remote cause at least--the determining cause, is what is designated by M. Taine elsewhere as "the hereditary conformation of race." These fat, huge, fierce, vicious, dull, ill-shaped creatures are distinctly of a Saxon strain. In Cedric's day they were the Gurths who herded the swine, and the "gigantic jades" who in the very teeth of Mother Church persisted in a merciless disciplinary "flogging of their slaves." Suggestions of racial derivation are seldom questioned in ordinary life. Every English thinker recognizes the fact. The biographer of an eminent English lawyer says that he combined, in the most pleasing fashion, fineness of physical texture with courage, high character, and the perfection of personal charm. The same writer thinks it necessary to explain that on the maternal side the gifted lawyer "came of gentle blood." Apart from personal characteristics, the very name of the maternal _gens_ bore witness to her Norman descent--a name that has been familiar in Kentucky from the foundation of the State. According to the same biographer the conditions on the paternal side were quite different. An uncle, of the ruder strain, declared, in view of prospective Revolutionary tribunals, that _his_ veins were "uncontaminated with one drop of gentility." He stood among the intellectual aristocracy of England just the same.

But, if the philosophic Taine is severe in his characterization of the "carnivorous types" of the English race, he makes ample amends in his descriptions of others. Not every Englishman is like the landlord in Barnaby Rudge--"half ox, half bull." "On the contrary," says this admirable Frenchman, "when the person is a cultured and intelligent gentleman, the phlegmatic temperament imparts to the English personality a perfectly noble air. I have several of them in my memory, with pale complexion, clear blue eyes, regular features, constituting one of the finest types of the human species. There is no excess of cavalierism, of glittering gallantry after the style of the French gentleman; one is conscious of a mind wholly self-contained, a brain which can not lose its balance. They elevate this quality of their temperament into a virtue; according to them the chief merit of a man is always to have a clear and cool head. They are right; nothing is more desirable in misfortune and in danger. This is one of their national traits." Taine's historic ideal of this type is William Pitt. The awkwardness and erubescent bashfulness, so often observed in English social life, "is wholly physical," says M. Taine, "and a peculiarity of _Teutonic_ nations." It is certainly not the fine repose that is supposed to mark the caste of Never Care. _Another_ type admired by this clever Frenchman is thus described: "The blond maiden with downcast eyes, purer than one of Raffaelle's Madonnas, a sort of Eve, incapable of falling, whose voice is music, adorable in candour, gentleness, and goodness, and before whom one is tempted to lower the eyes out of respect. Since Virginia, Imogen, and the other women of Shakespeare or his great contemporaries--from these to Esther and to the Agnes of Dickens--English literature has placed them in the foreground; they are the perfect flower of the land."

The Section of the Association at Newcastle which listened to the paper of M. Du Chaillu with an air of courteous self-restraint, listened also, and apparently in a like mood, to Sir William Turner in the reading of his very able paper on the pathological aspect of the doctrine of "Heredity," as recently expounded in the revolutionary hypothesis of Professor Weismann, a famous German pundit in pathology. It was the first appearance of the so-called Weismann "theory" before the scientific public of England. Professor Weismann rejects the view that the characteristics acquired by parents through their own experiences or environment can be transmitted to their offspring. It is only those characteristics that have pre-existed in the germ of reproduction: that is, the congenital peculiarities alone; those which distinguish the race and breed that can be transmitted, according to the teachings of Professor Weismann. A German philosopher, for example, may transmit a superfluous toe or a prognathic jaw, but not his portentously developed brain. Sir William Turner did not accept in full the German's "theory." Under the exclusive operation of a law which transmits only from congenital variations, how is it conceivable that the development of species can be brought about? On the other hand, does not the law of the survival of the fittest operate to correct the tendency to transmit defects of structure and organization? Thus, affirmed our sturdy Anglo-Saxon savant, the hereditary tendency, properly understood, is in perfect harmony with the theory of natural selection. It is needless to say that the Section and the speaker were quite at one upon these perplexing points. The conclusions of Darwin upon "Descent" were as little open to assault as their own conviction as to the origin of the Anglo-Saxon race. At all events, an Englishman's established opinions would not tumble at the first blast of a ram's horn from Germany or France.

The discussion of the physical peculiarities of our ancestors never loses its interest among the thinkers of the various branches of the English race. How trippingly upon the tongue of the Anglo-Saxon child come the familiar lines of the English poet, a bard of the Georgian period:

"Deep-blooming, strong, And yellow-haired, the blue-eyed Saxon came."

a pleasing description of peculiarities which holds good of the Northern races to this day. But by a process of ethnic differentiation the separate or divergent races, with changed _milieu_ and lapse of time, took on some structural change; the Scandinavian, for example (and possibly the Kentuckian), coming to the front with cranial dimensions exceptionally large and mental capacities to correspond. Laing's curious note to Snorro Sturleson (quoted by Lytton) says that in the Antiquarian Museum of Copenhagen the handles of almost all the swords of the early ages, in these collections, "indicate a size of hand very much smaller than the hands of modern people of any class or race." The Norman is said to have retained this peculiarity of physical structure longer than the Scandinavian from whom he sprang. It was probably the result of social conditions which soon ceased to exist. "Here and there," says an eminent English writer, "amongst plain countryfolk settled from time immemorial in the counties peopled with the Anglo-Dane (Scandinavian), may be found the 'Scythian hand and foot,' the high features, and the reddish auburn hair." "But amongst the far more mixed breed," he adds, "of the larger landed proprietors (comprehended in the peerage), the Saxon attributes of race are strikingly conspicuous, and amongst them the large hand and foot common to all of the Germanic tribes." (Lord Lytton.) Virginia and the Virginian States were peopled chiefly from the former class. If any inquirer wishes to prosecute this inquiry under favorable conditions, he may find a contemporary transmission of racial peculiarities in the vast Scandinavian population in our Northern belt or tier of States--men of the old blood, in a broad, congenial field, with boundless energy and big brains.

VIII

One of the most interesting results of a very prolonged process of ethnic differentiation is mentioned by John Fiske, in comparing two remote branches of the so-called "Aryan" race--the short, fat, pursy Hindoo, and the wiry, long-limbed Kentuckian. It is not incredible that these were simply original marks of race--"Scythian," in the one instance; Scandinavian in the other. It is a far cry, too, from old Benares to the Bluegrass; but it is possible that if missionaries from Kentucky could remain in Hindustan long enough there might be a gradual reversion of the Occidental variety to the ancient or original type. If Mr. Fiske's deductions be correct, as possibly they are, the Aryan brothers have wandered far apart, and perhaps it is hardly safe, in studying the genetic conditions of development in the Bluegrass, to stray beyond the broad, well-traveled highway that reaches from the Baltic Sea through Normandy and the British Isles to the shores of the Old Dominion, to the Blue Ridge Mountains, the "Hills of Breathitt," and the Bluegrass lowlands of Kentucky. The streams of population from the Scandinavian seas are still flowing, and in all likelihood the Scandinavians of the Virginian States (the old settled populations of the States of the South and West) will ultimately fuse with the Scandinavian populations of the North and establish in the heart of the continent the empire of the world. The great Scandinavian settlements of the Northwest are now almost equal in numbers to the Anglo-Norman populations that from the days of the Virgin Queen have been gathering and growing in Old Virginia and in the Virginian sisterhood of States. Coleridge once said that England's insular position had made her a mother of nations. It would seem that like conditions--an environing wilderness and an estranging sea--have helped to make Virginia a "mother of States." The lawless elements that poured into Kentucky were not segregated by social or other necessities, and, cast out by time or poverty, permanently isolated in one rude locality. This was at one time a popular theory among the savants. But there was always a tendency to _lawlessness_ wherever the Anglo-Norman went. If any "convict" blood muddied the turbulent, brawling stream of migration, it was not from the _race_, but from the chance intermingling of a degenerate _caste_ or _breed_, and whether you find that degenerate admixture in the rugged highlands or in the lovely champaign country at their feet, the convict blood is still there. In the highlands or the lowlands, in the mountains or the Bluegrass, generation after generation is weighted with the curse. The family, the clan, the community never loses the criminal taint. But the great, strong, daring, gifted _race_ sweeps on untouched by the vile marks of degeneracy that would put a proud, ambitious caste to shame.

The trade of political assassination was plied with great activity in the good old Norman times, but apparently there was nothing that was beastly, or basely criminal, in the work; on the contrary, it seems to have been palliated almost invariably by the conditions of a traditional feud, and, where sentiment or authority was very exacting, the offense was sometimes justified under "the forms of law." This was not murder in any ordinary or vulgar sense. It was merely an indispensable _modus vivendi_ in times that imperiled men's bodies as well as tried their souls; one of those protective devices conceived by the savagery of mediæval statecraft in a transition period of Christian civilization. Even at this day it is difficult for a competent and experienced Anglo-Norman jury to detect decisive evidence of crime when looking through the subtile meshes of a technical defense. William himself had a strong disinclination to take life under the forms of law; and, possibly, had his loyal guardians yielded to a like weakness in the early days of his succession, the solid fabric of English or Anglo-Norman civilization would now be as unsubstantial as a castle in Spain. But they did not share the weakness of their ward, and promptly settled the right of succession by assassinating all troublesome pretenders to the throne. The only sin of blood upon William's soul--"the blackest act of his life"--was the execution of a judicial sentence against Waltheof upon the hill of St. Giles. The only inexplicable crime of Waltheof's life was his murder of the brothers Carl, staunch comrades who had stood by his side at York. The judicial murder was wrought by the orders of a _Norman king_. It was apparently premeditated, and done with the utmost deliberation and under established forms of law. The Carl brothers were the victims of an ancient feud. Their grandsire had slain the father of Waltheof, and the grandsons of the murderer were slain to avenge this ancient deed of blood. They were the victims of a transmitted _hate_: of a vindictive passion that had lost its heat. But the murderer perished at last, under the forms of law which he had denied to the innocent victims of a feud. He could slay with impunity on his own account, but he was not allowed to conspire even in thought against the king. He, too, suffered the penalty long years after the offense. Waltheof was the last of the _Saxon earls_.

Not long ago that eminent publicist, Mr. Andrew D. White, delivered an address on the subject of "High Crime in the United States." The following excerpt will be read with interest:

"Simply as a matter of fact the United States is, among all civilized nations of the world, the country in which the crime of murder is most frequently committed and least frequently punished. Deaths by violence are increasing rapidly. Our record is now larger than that of any other country in the world. The number of homicides that are punished by lynching exceeds the number punished by due process of law.

"There is too much overwrought sentimentality in favor of the criminal. The young ward toughs look up with admiration to local politicians who have spent a part of their lives in State prison. Germs of maudlin sentimentality are widespread. On every hand we hear slimy, mushy-gushy expressions of sympathy; the criminal called 'plucky,' 'nervy,' 'fighting against fearful odds for his life.'

"It may be said that society must fall back on the law of self-preservation. It should cut through and make war, in my opinion, for its life. Life imprisonment is not possible, because there is no life imprisonment.

"_In the next year nine thousand people will be murdered._ As I stand here to-day, I tell you that nine thousand are doomed to death with all the cruelty of the criminal heart, and with no regard for home and families, and two thirds will be due to the maudlin sentiment sometimes called mercy. I have no sympathy for the criminal. My sympathy is for those who will be murdered, for their families, and for their children."

IX

The Normans were a brilliant and enterprising race; but what before all things (says Freeman) "distinguished them from other nations, was their _craft_." This was manifest in everything, at all times, and everywhere--in statesmanship, in war, in traffic, and in the trivial interactions of social and domestic life. Craft was no more characteristic of a Norman king in the past than of a Norman trader in modern times. It is as distinctly racial as the commercial "cuteness" or cleverness universally attributed to the American people of to-day. Lord Wolseley may have noted this trait when he said of our people, "They are a race of English-speaking Frenchmen." He may have observed, too, even during the War between the States, that Americans were at times exceedingly _profane in their speech_, just as in the olden time it was said that the Normans were "peculiarly fond of oaths." Camden tells us that when Carolus Stultus made over Normandy to Rollo, the rude ingrate refused to kiss the king's foot. When urged to do so he viciously exclaimed, "_Ne se, by God!_" "Whence"--adds the chronicler--"the Normans were familiarly known as _Bigodi_ or _Bigods_." At every other word, he says, they swore by God. For a like reason, at a later day, the English were known throughout Europe as the English "Goddams." All of us know how terribly the army swore in Flanders. The profane tendencies of the race seemed to have been stimulated by war. "Then, the SOLDIER," says Shakespeare, "full of strange oaths." Was it not one of our innocent Bluegrass girls who declared that up to the close of her "teens" she believed the familiar phrase "damned Yankee" to be a _single_ word? But it was the Conqueror of England and the founder of the Anglo-Norman race that swore the greatest oath of all. When the merry burghers of Alençon were hurling insults from their walls upon the burly son of Arletta and upon her sire--the tanner of Falaise--the infuriated Norman swore an oath which lights up the page of history like the flare of a conflagration--"By the splendor of God!" he exclaimed as he swept to his wild revenge. The profanest Kentuckian in his palmiest days never rose in his profanity to such a plane as this. He preferred the direct and trenchant speech of that Virgin Queen who helped to shape the destiny of our common race. "Do as I say," she said to a recalcitrant prelate, "or by God I will _unfrock_ you!" Even her stately ministers were not safe from the fire of her Anglo-Norman wrath. In the royal council-chamber she sometimes fell to cursing like a very drab. In certain Virginian circles profane swearing seemed to have been proscribed except in a softened or attenuated form, such as "Jeems' River," as an ejaculatory substitute for a very blasphemous phrase. Thomas Jefferson did not regard profane "expletives" as a very rational or philosophic mode of speech; but George Washington, though puritanically truthful, would sometimes infuse into an imprecation the spirit and effectiveness of a prayer. We have all heard of Stonewall Jackson's "teamster" and the moving quality of his profane speech; but Jubal Early never allowed the words to be taken out of his mouth in this way. He did his own swearing, and, presumably, did it well. Swearing or fighting by proxy was not his forte. Judged by military results, Jackson's was probably the better method. As a tactical incentive upon the firing line nothing could be more effective than one of Early's oaths; but for general strategic purposes, nothing could surpass the effectiveness of the deadly imprecations that lurked in Stonewall Jackson's prayer. This was a Cromwellian modification of the Anglo-Norman oath. In the good old Commonwealth of Kentucky there seems to have been a relapse into the simpler forms of profanity--Anglo-Norman and Early English. The historian Collins tells us that one of the pioneer Governors having refused to notice the "challenge" of a truculent upstart, the fellow threatened to "post him a coward." "Post and be damned," said the old soldier, "you will only post yourself a damned liar!" The retort was profane, but it was in punctilious accord with the spirit and habits of the time. Better still, it was more effective than a "gut-shot" at short range. As a rule, the Kentuckian had an instinctive aversion for puritanic oaths. That consecrated phrase, "Jeems' River," had a brief career in this State. The last person to use it, probably, was an elderly, smooth, genial, charming gentleman at the bar who was for many years the judge of a local court in the good old County of Fleming. He was in many respects a marked exception to the common rule.[5] It might have been different had he left the Old Dominion at an earlier date. What brandy is for heroes, strong oaths were for the pioneer. Not mere dicer's oaths; nor the mauldin imprecations of a sot, nor the rounding touches of a raconteur; but good, honest, English oaths, such an oath as that which settled the insistent Corporal Trim--the generous and daring oath that our Uncle Toby swore when the young Lieutenant lay sick of a fever. "'He shall not die, by God,' cried my Uncle Toby." And the accusing spirit that "flew to Heaven's chancery with the oath" had the grace to blush when he gave it in. God bless our Uncle Toby; he was the Uncle Toby of us all, and is as fresh in our remembrance as the good old uncles who told his story and praised his virtues and swore his oaths by the family fireside in the auld lang syne. Tradition throws a strong light on one of these old Kentuckians who denounced with suggestive picturesqueness of phrase a ruthless master who had sold and separated a family of hereditary slaves:--"He is the damnedest scoundrel between hell and Guinea!" the old gentleman exclaimed, giving in effect a touch of lurid or local color to his imprecatory speech. But when one of his own negroes--a broken, helpless creature--was accused of marketing for his own benefit the products of the farm, he gently answered, "Ah, well, I am not sure that, after all, the old slave is not _taking his own_!" As one recalls that kindly speech, with its reminiscent touch of Uncle Toby, he recalls, likewise, the sentiment of a famous line from a foreign source tenderly adapted to a modern taste--

"_Mais où sont les nègres d'antan?_"

Where are those dusky bondsmen of the past? They mingle their dust with the dust of them they served: and resting in old country graveyards, in the peace of immemorial graves, they await the Morning Light and the Master's Call.

[5] In an admirable letter written in pioneer times to Bolling Stith, in Kentucky, by his Virginian mother, she says: "I hear you have become a notorious rattle and never open your mouth without an oath." To correct this vicious tendency she recommends the example of the "great and good General Washington." Excellent advice. The General's oaths were not so frequent as Bolling's. They were louder, deeper, "heartier."

The English traveler, Fordham, says that the Virginians of that day were "addicted to oaths."

Among the most popular of the well-trained African servitors of the mid-century days in the Bluegrass was our versatile drudge, Ben Briler, one of the most active and useful functionaries of that old-time tavern life.

"Ben Briler swept the poker-room-- And gathered up the 'chips'; Was 'mixer,' bootblack, cook, and groom, And salted down the 'tips.'"