Chapter 12

Few New England villages have retained so much of the charm and peacefulness of country life as has Concord, and few dwellings in Concord have to-day so nearly the aspect they presented fifty years ago as does the Manse, where Hawthorne passed three of the happiest years of his life.

In the "American Note-Book," there is a charming description of the pleasure the romancer and his young wife experienced in renovating and refurnishing the old parsonage which, at the time of their going into it, was "given up to ghosts and cobwebs." Some of these ghosts have been shiveringly described by Hawthorne himself in the marvellous paragraph of the introduction already referred to: "Our [clerical] ghost used to heave deep sighs in a particular corner of the parlour, and sometimes rustle paper, as if he were turning over a sermon in the long upper entry--where, nevertheless, he was invisible, in spite of the bright moonshine that fell through the eastern window. Not improbably he wished me to edit and publish a selection from a chest full of manuscript discourses that stood in the garret.

"Once while Hillard and other friends sat talking with us in the twilight, there came a rustling noise as of a minister's silk gown sweeping through the very midst of the company, so closely as almost to brush against the chairs. Still there was nothing visible.

"A yet stranger business was that of a ghostly servant-maid, who used to be heard in the kitchen at deepest midnight, grinding coffee, cooking, ironing,--performing, in short, all kinds of domestic labour--although no traces of anything accomplished could be detected the next morning. Some neglected duty of her servitude--some ill-starched ministerial band--disturbed the poor damsel in her grave, and kept her at work without wages."

The little drawing-room once remodelled, however, and the kitchen given over to the Hawthorne pots and pans--in which the great Hawthorne himself used often to have a stake, according to the testimony of his wife, who once wrote in this connection, "Imagine those magnificent eyes fixed anxiously upon potatoes cooking in an iron kettle!"--the ghosts came no more. Of the great people who in the flesh passed pleasant hours in the little parlour, Thoreau, Ellery Channing, Emerson, and Margaret Fuller are names known by everybody as intimately connected with the Concord circle.

Hawthorne himself cared little for society. Often he would go to the village and back without speaking to a single soul, he tells us, and once when his wife was absent he resolved to pass the whole term of her visit to relatives without saying a word to any human being. With Thoreau, however, he got on very well. This odd genius was as shy and ungregarious as was the dark-eyed "teller of tales," but the two appear to have been socially disposed toward each other, and there are delightful bits in the preface to the "Mosses" in regard to the hours they spent together boating on the large, quiet Concord River. Thoreau was a great voyager in a canoe which he had constructed himself (and which he eventually made over to Hawthorne), as expert indeed in the use of his paddle as the redman who had once haunted the same silent stream.

Of the beauties of the Concord River Hawthorne has written a few sentences that will live while the silver stream continues to flow: "It comes creeping softly through the mid-most privacy and deepest heart of a wood which whispers it to be quiet, while the stream whispers back again from its sedgy borders, as if river and wood were hushing one another to sleep. Yes; the river sleeps along its course and dreams of the sky and the clustering foliage...."

Concerning the visitors attracted to Concord by the great original thinker who was Hawthorne's near neighbour, the romancer speaks with less delicate sympathy: "Never was a poor little country village infested with such a variety of queer, strangely dressed, oddly behaved mortals, most of whom look upon themselves to be important agents of the world's destiny, yet are simply bores of a very intense character." A bit further on Hawthorne speaks of these pilgrims as "hobgoblins of flesh and blood," people, he humourously comments, who had lighted on a new thought or a thought they fancied new, and "came to Emerson as the finder of a glittering gem hastens to a lapidary to ascertain its quality and value." With Emerson himself Hawthorne was on terms of easy intimacy. "Being happy," as he says, and feeling, therefore, "as if there were no question to be put," he was not in any sense desirous of metaphysical intercourse with the great philosopher.

It was while on the way home from his friend Emerson's one day that Hawthorne had that encounter with Margaret Fuller about which it is so pleasant to read because it serves to take away the taste of other less complimentary allusions to this lady to be found in Hawthorne's works:

"After leaving Mr. Emerson's I returned through the woods, and entering Sleepy Hollow, I perceived a lady reclining near the path which bends along its verge. It was Margaret herself. She had been there the whole afternoon, meditating or reading, for she had a book in her hand with some strange title which I did not understand and have forgotten. She said that nobody had broken her solitude, and was just giving utterance to a theory that no inhabitant of Concord ever visited Sleepy Hollow, when we saw a group of people entering the sacred precincts. Most of them followed a path which led them away from us; but an old man passed near us, and smiled to see Margaret reclining on the ground and me standing by her side. He made some remark upon the beauty of the afternoon, and withdrew himself into the shadow of the wood. Then we talked about autumn, and about the pleasures of being lost in the woods, and about the crows whose voices Margaret had heard; and about the experiences of early childhood, whose influence remains upon the character after the recollection of them has passed away; and about the sight of mountains from a distance, and the view from their summits; and about other matters of high and low philosophy."

Nothing that Hawthorne has ever written of Concord is more to be cherished to-day than this description of a happy afternoon passed by him in Sleepy Hollow talking with Margaret Fuller of "matters of high and low philosophy." For there are few parts of Concord to which visitors go more religiously than to the still old cemetery, where on the hill by Ridge Path Hawthorne himself now sleeps quietly, with the grave of Thoreau just behind him, and the grave of Emerson, his philosopher-friend, on the opposite side of the way. A great pine stands at the head of Hawthorne's last resting-place, and a huge unhewn block of pink marble is his formal monument.

Yet the Old Manse will, so long as it stands, be the romancer's most intimate relic, for it was here that he lived as a happy bridegroom, and here that his first child was born. And from this ancient dwelling it was that he drew the inspiration for what is perhaps the most curious book of tales in all American literature, a book of which another American master of prose[13] has said, "Hawthorne here did for our past what Walter Scott did for the past of the mother-country; another Wizard of the North, he breathed the breath of life into the dry and dusty materials of history, and summoned the great dead again to live and move among us."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 12: "Historic Towns of New England." G. P. Putnam's Sons.]

[Footnote 13: Henry James.]

SALEM'S CHINESE GOD

Of the romantic figures which grace the history of New England in the nineteenth century, none is to be compared in dash and in all those other qualities that captivate the imagination with the figure of Frederick Townsend Ward, the Salem boy who won a generalship in the Chinese military service, suppressed the Tai-Ping rebellion, organised the "Ever-Victorious Army"--for whose exploits "Chinese" Gordon always gets credit in history--and died fighting at Ning Po for a nation of which he had become one, a fair daughter of which he had married, and by which he is to-day worshipped as a god. Very far certainly did this soldier of fortune wander in the thirty short years of his life from the peaceful red-brick Townsend mansion (now, alas! a steam bread bakery), at the corner of Derby and Carleton Streets, Salem, in which, in 1831, he was born.

This house was built by Ward's grandfather, Townsend, and during Frederick's boyhood was a charming place of the comfortable colonial sort, to which was joined a big, rambling, old-fashioned garden, and from the upper windows of which there was to be had a fascinating view of the broad-stretching sea. To the sea it was, therefore, that the lad naturally turned when, after ending his education at the Salem High School, he was unable to gain admission to the military academy at West Point and follow the soldier career in which it had always been his ambition to shine. He shipped before the mast on an American vessel sailing from New York. Apparently even the hardships of such a common sailor's lot could not dampen his ardour for adventure, for he made a number of voyages.

At the outbreak of the Crimean war young Ward was in France, and, thinking that his long-looked for opportunity had come, he entered the French army for service against the Russians. Enlisting as a private, he soon, through the influence of friends, rose to be a lieutenant; but, becoming embroiled in a quarrel with his superior officer, he resigned his commission and returned to New York, without having seen service either in Russia or Turkey.

The next few years of the young man's life were passed as a ship broker in New York City, but this work-a-day career soon became too humdrum, and he looked about for something that promised more adventures. He had not to look far. Colonel William Walker and his filibusters were about to start on the celebrated expedition against Nicaragua, and with them Ward determined to cast in his lot. Through the trial by fire which awaited the ill-fated expedition, he passed unhurt, and escaping by some means or other its fatal termination, returned to New York.

California next attracted his attention, but here he met with no better success, and after a hand-to-mouth existence of a few months he turned again to seafaring life, and shipped for China as the mate of an American vessel. His arrival at Shanghai in 1859 was most opportune, for there the chance for which he had been longing awaited him.

The great Tai-Ping rebellion, that half-Christian, wholly fanatical uprising which devastated many flourishing provinces, had, at this time, attained alarming proportions. Ching Wang, with a host of blood-crazed rebels, had swept over the country in the vicinity of Shanghai with fire and sword, and at the time of Ward's arrival these fanatics were within eighteen miles of the city.

The Chinese merchants had appealed in vain to the foreign consuls for assistance. The imperial government had made no plans for the preservation of Shanghai. So the wealthy merchants, fearing for their stores, resolved to take the matter into their own hands, and after a consultation of many days, offered a reward of two hundred thousand dollars to any body of foreigners who should drive the Tai-Pings from the city of Sungkiang.

Salem's soldier of fortune, Frederick T. Ward, responded at once to the opportunity thus offered. He accepted in June, 1860, the offer of Ta Kee, the mandarin at the head of the merchant body, and in less than a week--such was the magnetism of the man--had raised a body of one hundred foreign sailors, and, with an American by the name of Henry Burgevine as his lieutenant, had set out for Sungkiang. The men in Ward's company were desperadoes, for the most part, but they were no match, of course, for the twelve thousand Tai-Pings. This Ward realised as soon as the skirmishing advance had been made, and he returned to Shanghai for reinforcements.

From the Chinese imperial troops he obtained men to garrison whatever courts the foreign legation might capture, an arrangement which left the adventurers free to go wherever their action could be most effective.

Thus reinforced, Ward once more set out for Sungkiang. Even on this occasion his men were outnumbered one hundred to one, but, such was the desperation of the attacking force, the rebels were driven like sheep to the slaughter, and the defeat of the Tai-Pings was overwhelming. It was during this battle, it is interesting to know, that the term "foreign devils" first found place in the Chinese vocabulary.

The promised reward was forthwith presented to the gifted American soldier, and immediately Ward accepted a second commission against the rebels at Singpo. The Tai-Pings of this city were under the leadership of a renegade Englishman named Savage, and the fighting was fast and furious. Ward and his men performed many feats of valour, and actually scaled the city wall, thirty feet in height, to fight like demons upon its top. But it was without avail. With heavy losses, they were driven back.

But the attempt was not abandoned. Retiring to Shanghai, Ward secured the assistance of about one hundred new foreign recruits, and with them returned once more to the scene of his defeat. Half a mile from the walls of Singpo the little band of foreign soldiers of fortune and poorly organised imperial troops were met by Savage and the Tai-Pings, and the battle that resulted waged for hours. The rebels were the aggressors, and ten miles of Ward's retreat upon Sungkiang saw fighting every inch of the way. The line of retreat was strewn with rebel dead, and such were their losses that they retired from the province altogether.

Later Savage was killed, and the Tai-Pings quieted down. For his exploits Ward received the monetary rewards agreed upon, and was also granted the button of a mandarin of the fourth degree.

He had received severe wounds during the campaigns, and was taking time to recuperate from them at Shanghai when the jealousy of other foreigners made itself felt, and the soldier from Salem was obliged to face a charge before the United States consul that he had violated the neutrality laws. The matter was dropped, however, because the hero of Sungkiang promptly swore that he was no longer an American citizen, as he had become a naturalised subject of the Chinese emperor!

Realising the value of the Chinese as fighting men, Ward now determined to organise a number of Chinese regiments, officer them with Europeans, and arm and equip them after American methods. This he did, and in six months he appeared at Shanghai at the head of three bodies of Chinese, splendidly drilled and under iron discipline. He arrived in the nick of time, and, routing a vastly superior force, saved the city from capture.

After this exploit he was no longer shunned by Europeans as an adventurer and an outlaw. He was too prominent to be overlooked. His Ever-Victorious Army, as it was afterward termed, entered upon a campaign of glorious victory. One after another of the rebel strongholds fell before it, and its leader was made a mandarin of the highest grade, with the title of admiral-general.

Ward then assumed the Chinese name of Hwa, and married Changmei, a maiden of high degree, who was nineteen at the time of her wedding, and as the daughter of one of the richest and most exalted mandarins of the red button, was considered in China an exceedingly good match for the Salem youth. According to oriental standards she was a beauty, too.

Ward did not rest long from his campaigns, however, for we find that he was soon besieged in the city of Sungkiang with a few men. A relieving force of the Ever-Victorious Army here came to his assistance.

He did not win all his victories easily. In the battle of Ningpo, toward the end of the first division of the Tai-Ping rebellion, the carnage was frightful. Outnumbered, but not outgeneralled, the government forces fought valiantly. Ward was shot through the stomach while leading a charge, but refused to leave the field while the battle was on. Through his field officers he directed his men, and when the victory was assured, fell back unconscious in the arms of his companion, Burgevine. He was carried to Ningpo, where he died the following morning, a gallant and distinguished soldier, although still only thirty years old.

In the Confucian cemetery at Ningpo his body was laid at rest with all possible honours and with military ceremony becoming his rank. Over his grave, and that of his young wife, who survived him only a few months, a mausoleum was erected, and monuments were placed on the scenes of his victories. The mausoleum soon became a shrine invested with miraculous power, and a number of years after his death General Ward was solemnly declared to be a joss or god. The manuscript of the imperial edict to this effect is now preserved in the Essex Institute.

The command of the Ever-Victorious army reverted to Burgevine, but later, through British intrigue, to General Gordon. It was Ward, however, the Salem lad, who organised the army by which Chinese Gordon gained his fame. The British made a saint and martyr of Gordon, and called Ward an adventurer and a common sailor, but the Chinese rated him more nearly as he deserved.

In a little red-bound volume printed in Shanghai in 1863, and translated from the Chinese for the benefit of a few of General Ward's relatives in this country--a work which I have been permitted to examine--the native chronicler says of our hero:

"What General Ward has done to and for China is as yet but imperfectly known, for those whose duty it is to transfer to posterity a record of this great man are either so wrapped in speculation as to how to build themselves up on his deeds of the past time, or are so fearful that any comment on any subject regarding him may detract from their ability, that with his last breath they allow all that appertains to him to be buried in the tomb. Not one in ten thousand of them could at all approach him in military genius, in courage, and in resource, or do anything like what he did."

In his native land Ward has never been honoured as he deserves to be. On the contrary, severe criticism has been accorded him because he was fighting in China for money during our civil war, "when," said his detractors, "he might have been using his talents for the protection of the flag under which he was born."

But this was the fault of circumstances rather than of intention. Ward wished, above everything, to be a soldier, and when he found fighting waiting for him in China, it was the most natural thing in the world for him to accept the opportunity the gods provided. But he did what he could under the circumstances for his country. He offered ten thousand dollars to the national cause--and was killed in the Chinese war before the answer to his proffer of financial aid came from Minister Anson Burlingame.

It is rather odd that just the amount that he wished to be used by the North for the advancement of the Union cause has recently (1901) been bequeathed to the Essex Institute at Salem by Miss Elizabeth C. Ward, his lately deceased sister, to found a Chinese library in memory of Salem's soldier of fortune. Thus is rounded out this very romantic chapter of modern American history.

THE WELL-SWEEP OF A SONG

That the wise Shakespeare spoke the truth when he observed that "one touch of nature makes the whole world kin" has never been better exemplified than in the affectionate tenderness with which all sorts and conditions of men join in singing a song like "The Old Oaken Bucket." As one hears this ballad in a crowded room, or even as so often given--in a New England play like "The Old Homestead," one does not stop to analyse one's sensations; one forgets the homely phrase; one simply feels and knows oneself the better for the memories of happy and innocent childhood which the simple song invokes.

Dear, delightful Goldsmith has wonderfully expressed in "The Deserted Village" the inextinguishable yearning for the spot we call "home":

"In all my wanderings round this world of care, In all my griefs--and God has given my share-- I still had hopes, my long vexations past, Here to return and die at home at last,"

and it is this same lyric cry that has been crystallised for all time, so far as the American people are concerned, in "The Old Oaken Bucket."

The day will not improbably come when the allusions in this poem will demand as careful an explanation as some of Shakespeare's archaic references now call for. But even when this time does come, and an elaborate description of the strange old custom of drawing water from a hole in the ground by means of a long pole and a rude pail will be necessary to an understanding of the poem, men's voices will grow husky and their eyes will dim at the music of "The Old Oaken Bucket."

It is to the town of Scituate, Massachusetts, one of the most ancient settlements of the old colony, that we trace back the local colour which pervades the poem. The history of the place is memorable and interesting. The people come of a hardy and determined ancestry, who fought for every inch of ground that their descendants now hold. To this fact may perhaps be attributed the strength of those associations, clinging like ivy around some of the most notable of the ancient homesteads.

The scene so vividly described in the charming ballad we are considering is a little valley through which Herring Brook pursues its devious way to meet the tidal waters of North River. "The view of it from Coleman Heights, with its neat cottages, its maple groves, and apple orchards, is remarkably beautiful," writes one appreciative author. The "wide-spreading pond," the "mill," the "dairy-house," the "rock where the cataract fell," and even the "old well," if not the original "moss-covered bucket" itself, may still be seen just as the poet described them.

In quaint, homely Scituate, Samuel Woodworth, the people's poet, was indeed born and reared. Although the original house is no longer there, a pretty place called "The Old Oaken Bucket House" still stands, a modern successor to the poet's home, and at another bucket, oaken if not old, the pilgrim of to-day may stop to slake his thirst from the very waters, the recollection of which gave the poet such exquisite pleasure in after years. One would fain have the surroundings unchanged--the cot where Woodworth dwelt, the ponderous well-sweep, creaking with age, at which his youthful hands were wont to tug strongly; and finally the mossy bucket, overflowing with crystal nectar fresh from the cool depths below. Yet in spite of the changes, one gets fairly well the illusion of the ancient spot, and comes away well content to have quaffed a draught of such excellent water to the memory of this Scituate poet.

The circumstances under which the popular ballad was composed and written are said to be as follows: Samuel Woodworth was a printer who had served his apprenticeship under the veteran Major Russell of the _Columbian Centinel_, a journal which was in its day the leading Federalist organ of New England. He had inherited the wandering propensity of his craft, and yielding to the desire for change he was successively in Hartford and New York, doing what he could in a journalistic way. In the latter city he became associated, after an unsuccessful career as a publisher, in the editorship of the _Mirror_. And it was while living in New York in the Bohemian fashion of his class, that, in company with some brother printers, he one day dropped in at a well-known establishment then kept by one Mallory to take a social glass of wine.