Part 6

Evil days came to Ben's master, and Ben was sold--becoming the joint chattel of the young swells of the poker-room. But the joint chattel proved to be too versatile for his vocation, and one of the stockholders denounced him as "a damned kinky-headed _corporation_," _and kicked him downstairs_. As Governor Desha, in a recent message to the Legislature, had effectively arraigned those "dangerous corporations which embodied the interests of powerful men," the prompt action of the stockholder at the old tavern brought great relief to the public mind. It showed that corporations could be _reached_--that, contrary to the general impression, they had "bodies that could be kicked and souls that could be damned."

The advent of the abolition "emissary," the emancipated negro, and the "burnt cork" minstrel was practically contemporaneous in Kentucky. In the gentle mid-century days a company of strolling minstrels had announced an entertainment at the old county seat of Mason--the town where Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe (a frequent guest of Mrs. Marshall Key) first witnessed a "sale" of negro slaves. On the evening announced for the entertainment, the Courthouse was packed from floor to dome. Among the conspicuous figures toward the front was Colonel Robert B., a fine old Kentuckian of antique Norman type--tall, ruddy, high-featured, light haired; hearty, convivial, and profane--a boon companion and _bon vivant_. He sat expectantly but at ease, a bandaged arm resting upon the seat in front. He was cordially greeted by kinsmen and friends in every part of the house. The curtain rose and the minstrels filed upon the stage, looking for all the world like a lot of "free nigger" swells. Their very appearance was an offense, and provoked at once a collision with the young Mohawks of the town. The violoncello was shivered into splinters, and the flutes, fiddles, and castanets went singing through the air. No trace of harmony was left. There was a universal dash for windows and doors; none stood upon the order of his going. All went at once--all except "Colonel Bob," who sat unmoved, fixed to his seat as if fascinated by the moving scene in front. The spectators were amazed. "Hell's fire, Bob!" exclaimed an anxious friend, "don't you know there is a _fight_ going on down there?" The Colonel looked incredulous. "I wish I may be damned," he said, "if I didn't think it was _part of the play_!" There was universal condemnation of these minstrel folk by persons who did not see the show; but the Colonel, who was a "stayer," insisted that "the niggers made a good fight."

Unquestionably there is a certain lack of modernity, or at least of civilized amenity, in such a manifestation as this: but there was a spontaneous and elemental vivacity in their unpremeditated assault upon the counterfeit African bucks which betrayed the rude fantastic humor of their Norman blood, and imparted a pleasant tang to the crude flavor of early plantation life. Mr. Barrett Wendell finds in the still earlier life of the West conditions described as existing in the times of the Plantagenet kings; and Mr. Owen Wister seems inclined to adopt his startling views. Apparently, then, we must count with inherited conditions and characteristics even in the politics of the times. The modern world is probably not ideally moral, but it is sensitively fastidious and scrupulously observant of "good form." It would wreck a railway, perhaps, or deplete a bloated insurance exchequer, but it would not launch an ungentlemanly imprecation or utter a trivial or unproductive oath. It even discountenances the _oath in court_-- a solemn asseveration or attestation before a judge. It utterly discredits--socially and otherwise--the blas-_phe_-mous ejaculation or the vulgar "cuss-word," or the light conversational "swear" familiar in the dialect of the "back shop," the groggery, and the street. The variety of oath known as a "swear," considered psychologically, is not a very serious offense. In a philosophical aspect, indeed, it is in some sense a temperamental necessity, dependent on physiological conditions, and is essentially the result of a defensive or protective instinct. Where not merely idle, wanton, and unmeaning, it is a psychological _regulator nervorum_. It is the unpremeditated product of a prompt cerebral reaction. It gives the centers of speech a chance to rally when thrown into disorder by a sudden attack. There is no time for the picking and arranging of words, and, except in persons of lymphatic temperament, no capacity for the leisurely elaborations of speech. One is confronted, not with a problem, or theory or condition, but with an _emergency_ that must be decisively met. Silence perhaps is golden, but there is a certain steel-like quality in trenchant speech. Profane, "rapid-fire" ejaculation is not only a deeply implanted instinct, but by frequent indulgence becomes an invincible habit--a habit so odious and offensive as to make even a Chesterfield swear. As a racial instinct it survives transplantation to any clime, and religious training of every sort. Even the disciplinary methods of Calvinism fail to eradicate it. But an "inherited drill" may at times soften, or modify, or mask the _mode_ of _manifestation_, as is cleverly illustrated in the familiar lines--

"The Blue Light Elder knows 'em well-- Says he--'There's Banks, we'll give him--well! That's Stonewall Jackson's way.'"

A Kentuckian casually encountering a distinguished New Englander at the buffet of an exclusive Eastern club, exclaimed: "Does a _Puritan_ drink?" "I would not give a damn," was the decisive answer, "for a Puritan that could not drink, pray, and fight." It is probably no secret that in our amphibious Scandinavian, General William Nelson, the swearing instinct was abnormally developed. He did not swear "like a sailor," to be sure; nor "like a trooper" of the olden time; since neither soldier nor sailor of the ordinary type was ever gifted with his extraordinary abundance and facility of profane expression. It is but just to say, however, that at times he struggled manfully against the habitual inclination. "Christ give me patience!" he cried when his favorite aide, Colonel Samuel Owens (a joker of the Norman type), inadvertently "sat down" upon his military hat. The utterance was a sincere and reverent appeal for Divine help. He instinctively shrank from the coming torrent of profane ejaculation, and with a prayerful effort was bracing himself against the flood.

"There is some soul of goodness in things evil"; but in this instance one does not lessen the force of the evil by modifying or "softening" the form of the oath. The essence remains unchanged. When Pecksniff slams the door in a rage, he simply "swears" what Hood describes as a "wooden damn." The devout Moslem will not tread upon a scrap of paper in his path, "Lest," he says, "the name of God be written upon it"; but the impetuous Anglo-Norman recklessly flings the name of God into the contaminated environment of his daily life. And he has done so, history attests, since the day he sprang full-armed upon the planetary sphere--the most portentous apparition of mediæval days. "Long ago," says Canon Bardsley, "under the offensive title of _Jean Gotdam_, we [the English] had become known as a people given to strange and unpleasant oaths." The very name--_Jean Gotdam_--vouches for its antiquity, as well as for the fearless sincerity of him who swore.

There came into one of our Bluegrass communities just after the war a clever Confederate adventurer, who speedily established very pleasant social relations by exploiting his military record. A venerable Kentuckian, who had come through the war with his Confederate principles and Virginian prejudices intact, was asked by a friend how he liked their Virginian visitor--the ci-devant "aide to General Lee." "I don't _like_ him, sir," he said with vicious emphasis, "he is not what he professes to be; I never in my life heard a Virginian gentleman say 'God _dern_!' He either swore or he _didn't_ swear." He had no indulgence for a marked card nor for an emasculated oath. He would not substitute a sickly, modernized variant for a venerated traditional form. By "Gad" or by "gosh" or by "gobbs" was good enough for a reforming purist; for himself he preferred to say, with the irascible Robert of Normandy, "Ne se, by God!" It is not the form, after all, but the sentiment or suggestion, that lies behind the "swear."

It is discouraging to the spirit of philosophic optimism to note the slinking figure of the iconoclast now running amuck in every field. The instinct and habit of reverence is almost gone, and the solidest traditional reputations are no longer safe. We no longer say with Wallenstein--

"There is a consecrating power in Time, And what is gray with years to man is godlike."

Even the fine historic character of WASHINGTON is "at a discount" in the modern world--partly on account of his alleged indulgence in profane speech, but chiefly because of his recognized incapacity to tell a lie. He had not only lost (we are told by one biographer) the useful--the indispensable--instinct of "prevarication," but (as we are told by another) "when deeply angered, he would _swear a hearty English oath_." One may survive in the Darwinian struggle without the capacity to _swear_, but scarcely without the capacity to deceive. There seems to be no salvation in this life except for the successful liar; but for the man of many oaths there appears to be no salvation either in this life or the next. Happily, the material prosperity of Virginia was but little affected by the ethics of the Washingtonian Code. Her commercial instincts had been powerfully quickened in her early years by an admonitory imprecation from a royal, or official, source. When the Commissioners of Virginia were pleading the interests of "learning and religion" before the Attorney-General of Charles II (an Anglo-Norman lawyer, no doubt), he promptly responded with a hearty English oath--"Damn your souls! _Grow tobacco!_" There is no need for such an adjuration to the planters of the fine old Anglo-Norman Commonwealth of Kentucky. The tobacco will be planted, whatever may become of their souls.

X

An English scholar of sound judgment and exceptionally sound views has recently said that the Emperor Napoleon was the greatest administrator of all time. His greatest work, perhaps, is the system of administrative centralization which, through a century of the severest tests that political madness could apply, has maintained the conditions of social order even in the midst of war and under every form of organized misrule, and secured almost unparalleled prosperity for the municipalities and provinces of France. But it must not be forgotten that William the Norman solved a like problem with apparently even greater success, and under antagonizing conditions which only a statesman of original genius could successfully confront. Not for one century, only, of marvelous effectiveness in civic administration, but for eight hundred years of advancing and expanding _civilization_, the conceptions evolved by the Norman's brain have been doing their beneficent work; and great as was the genius of the Corsican adventurer, it is not incredible that even he, the master of Europe, did not disdain the lesson which had been taught the nations by that magnificent Son of France. The Corsican was a close student of military history, and secretly meditated a descent upon modern England in imitation of the earlier Conqueror's work. It is not likely that he would overlook the methods of reorganization that followed the war, with its machinery of sheriffs, judges, justiciaries, etc.--executive officers directly responsible to the king--bringing the throne in direct touch with the people, and drawing every subject, at least in every central shire, in direct personal allegiance to the throne. The _Marquessess_, or wardens of the Marches, were able and ambitious warriors whose sole concern was with dangers from _without_. But even Napoleon could not foresee, in this guarded initiatory recognition of the landowner, the ultimate evolution of a territorial democracy that was to affect the political and social destinies of the English race. Monarchs of a later date--Henry the Eighth and his masterful daughter Elizabeth--saw in the people the sole source of _power_; and the loyal Englishman even of this generation will proudly tell you that in his country the sole fountain of _honor_ is the _king_. There were at least two American statesmen who were illustrious disciples of the Norman's political school. They were men of Norman blood, who wrought in American statecraft with the Norman's constructive brain--and there was still another of the same imperial strain who, with a philosophic conception of all that was of value in the principles of Anglo-Norman administration and a just appreciation by actual experience of government as a practical art, never failed throughout a long, brilliant, and successful career to teach the doctrine that the _People Themselves_ were the sole fountain of honor and the exclusive source of power--a principle in the philosophy of government and in political administration equally patent to William the Conqueror, when he anxiously sought a declaration of "personal" allegiance _from the subjects_ in that great gathering of potential "sovereigns" upon Salisbury Plain. In the long succession of administrators that followed the Norman king, there was none that seems to have grasped so completely and applied so skillfully his principles and methods of political administration as a daughter of the Tudor race. She may not have loved the people in any modern sense; but she knew their power, she recognized their rights; she studied their interests, and her jeweled finger was always upon their pulse. The best of all treatment, she thought, was to anticipate with soothing remedies the rude distempers of the times. She considered rather the Constitution of the Subject than the Constitution of the State; since, collectively, one embraced the other.

Mr. Barrett Wendell, in his admirable work, "A Literary History of America," discourses with great brilliancy and charm upon the Elizabethan influences that governed in a large measure the development of the Puritan and the Virginian race. The reader of the present paper will note with curious interest the bearing of the following quotations from this work upon the theories which the present writer has discussed. "Broadly speaking," he says, "all our Northern colonies were developed from those planted in Massachusetts; and all our Southern from that planted in Virginia." The statement is "socially" true, he says, to an extraordinary degree. The Elizabethan type of character "displayed a marked power of _assimilating_ whatever came within its influence." This trait, akin to that which centuries before had made the conquered English slowly but surely _assimilate their Norman conquerors_, the Yankees of our own day have not quite lost. Our native type still "absorbs" the foreign. The children of immigrants insensibly become native. The irresistible power of a _common language_ and of the _common ideals_ which underlie it still dominates. This tendency, he adds, declared itself from the earliest settlements of Jamestown and Plymouth. "North and South alike may be regarded as regions finally settled by Elizabethan Englishmen." The dominant traits of the English race of that time were "spontaneity, enthusiasm, and versatility." But the Elizabethan English of _Virginia_, he says, were notably different in this: they were men of a less "austere" type of character than their compatriots of the North; of more adventurous "instincts," and were "men of action" as the New Englanders were "men of God." The peculiar power of assimilation and the "pristine alertness of mind" were the same in both. The economic superiority of the North was manifest; the political ability of the South seemed generally superior. Pleasantly putting aside the traditional claims of exclusive "cavalier" descent, Mr. Wendell says: "At least up to the Civil War the personal temper of the better classes in the South remained more like that of the better classes in Seventeenth Century England than anything else in the modern world." He frankly concedes that the most eminent statesmen of Colonial and Revolutionary days were Virginians. Recalling what has been said in regard to the constitutional sluggishness of the Anglo-Saxon, his mental inertness, his settled or stereotyped habits of thought, and his absolute lack of racial initiative _until the Norman came_, we read the following passage from Mr. Wendell with curious interest: "Such literature as the English world has left us bespeaks a public whose spontaneous alertness of mind, whose instant perception of every subtle variety of phrase and allusion, was more akin to that of our _contemporary French_ than to anything which we are now accustomed to consider native to insular England." This transformation Mr. Wendell attributes to "the spontaneous, enthusiastic versatility of the English temperament," in the spacious Elizabethan days. What has produced or determined this extraordinary differentiation of race? What are the original, genetic factors behind this varied manifestation of power in that old, Elizabethan stock? With the advent of the Seventeenth Century; with the turbulence, and trouble, and austerity of Cromwellian days; with migrations following Cromwellian war; with the evolution of a transatlantic type of the English race, there came an end to those spacious and splendid days--to the creative, prolific epoch of the Virgin Queen.

The most trivial fact that connects the name of Shakespeare with Virginia is of interest to the Virginian and his multitudinous clans. Captain Newport, Vice-Admiral of Virginia, commanded the ship _Sea Adventure_, which was wrecked on the Devil's Islands. Sir George Somers, sitting on the poop and misled by a flaming apparition on the masts, unconsciously guided the vessel in a fatal course. William Strachey, "Secretary in Virginia," wrote the account of the "Tempest" published in Purchas. Thus was the "king's ship" boarded and burned by the spirit Ariel at the command of his master Prospero, and wrecked on those "Bermoothes" which are "still vext" by that rude, tempestuous sea. It is of interest, too, to note that the special Supervisors and Directors of this Elizabethan colony were William Shakespeare's friends--the Earl of Southampton; the Earl of Pembroke; the Earl of Montgomery; Viscount Lisle (brother of Sir Philip Sidney); Lord Howard of Walden; Lord Sheffield; and Lord Carew of Clopton, who sold Shakespeare, in 1597, the house in which he lived till 1616--all of them Elizabethan cavaliers derived from Anglo-Norman stock. There is another Elizabethan name of still greater interest to all people of the Anglo-Virginian race--Sir Edwin Sandys, the author of the political charters upon which the free institutions of Virginia rest; and not only Virginia, but the United States. Educated at Geneva and the son of an English Archbishop, he was thoroughly seasoned with the doctrines of the Genevan school; and aimed not only to found the American Republic on Genevan lines by the creation of a "free state" on the Atlantic coast, but to make ample provision _in the charter itself_ for the ultimate "expansion" of the young republic toward the Pacific Ocean. This statement may not, even yet, be universally accepted; but it is incontestably true.

XI

In the spring of 1885, a pamphlet was published by a citizen of Kentucky directing attention to the effect of certain racial influences in molding the institutions of this State. It was entitled "The Genesis of a Pioneer Commonwealth." The suggestions offered by the writer as to the sources of our organic life were subsequently illustrated and confirmed by an eminent Virginian scholar, Dr. Alexander Brown, in his "Genesis of the United States," published in 1890--a marvel of masterly investigation; a work which throws a flood of light upon the broad expanse of early American history, and is especially remarkable for the critical elaboration, lucidity, and acuteness with which the author has arranged the results of his extensive scheme of historic research. In this work he has noted and traced, from English records contemporary with the first settlement of Virginia, the beginnings of that great duel between conflicting civilizations which closed with the destruction of Spain's naval power at Manila and Santiago. And every scholar who seeks a precise comprehension of the _origines_ of the late war should closely follow the course of investigation pursued by Dr. Brown. Every accessible detail of the desperate and protracted Anglo-Spanish conflict--including the exploits of Elizabeth's captains and the destruction of the Great Armada--come out under this historic searchlight as distinctly and vividly as material objects under the light of day. To citizens of Kentucky who have a critical and philosophic interest in the historic evolution of the Commonwealth, it will be peculiarly attractive in the circumstance that it connects, and in a special sense includes, the Genesis of Kentucky with that of the United States. He suggests in a most interesting way that this Commonwealth is not only a lineal product of the Elizabethan civilization which he has sought to trace, but that--cartographically at least--_it formed an integral part of the first Republic established in the New World_. In an explanatory communication addressed some years ago to the present writer, Dr. Brown says: "The bounds of the charters which contained the _popular charter rights_ which were the germ of this republic extended between thirty-four degrees (34°) and forty degrees (40°) north latitude, and from ocean to ocean. Kentucky, therefore, was embraced within the first Republic in America."