Closely engaged with his literary employments, and more quiet than ever, he took less active part in the last election. But when the menace of treason became an aggressive act, he saw very clearly the inevitable necessity of arms. We all talked of it constantly,—watching the news,—chafing at the sad necessity of delay, which was sure to confuse foreign opinion and alienate sympathy, as has proved to be the case. As matters advanced and the war-cloud rolled up thicker and blacker, he looked at it with the secret satisfaction that war for such a cause opened his career both as thinker and actor. The admirable coolness, the promptness, the cheerful patience, the heroic ardor, the intelligence, the tough experience of campaigning, the profound conviction that the cause was in truth “the good old cause,” which was now to come to the death-grapple with its old enemy, Justice against Injustice, Order against Anarchy,—all these should now have their turn, and the wanderer and waiter “settle himself” at last.
We took a long walk together on the Sunday that brought the news of the capture of Fort Sumter. He was thoroughly alive with a bright, earnest forecast of his part in the coming work. Returning home with me, he sat until late in the evening talking with an unwonted spirit, saying playfully, I remember, that, if his friends would only give him a horse, he would ride straight to victory. Especially he wished that some competent person would keep a careful record of events as they passed; “for we are making our history,” he said, “hand over hand.” He sat quietly in the great chair while he spoke, and at last rose to go. We went together to the door, and stood for a little while upon the piazza, where we had sat peacefully through so many golden summer-hours. The last hour for us had come, but we did not know it. We shook hands, and he left me, passing rapidly along the brook-side under the trees, and so in the soft spring starlight vanished from my sight forever. The next morning came the President’s proclamation. Winthrop went immediately to town and enrolled himself in the artillery corps of the Seventh Regiment. During the two or three following days he was very busy and very happy. On Friday afternoon, the 19th of April, 1861, I stood at the corner of Courtland Street and saw the regiment as it marched away. Two days before, I had seen the Massachusetts troops going down the same street. During the day the news had come that they were already engaged, that some were already dead in Baltimore. And the Seventh, as they went, blessed and wept over by a great city, went, as we all believed, to terrible battle. The setting sun in a clear April sky shone full up the street. Mothers’ eyes glistened at the windows upon the glistening bayonets of their boys below. I knew that Winthrop and other dear friends were there, but I did not see them. I saw only a thousand men marching like one hero. The music beat and rang and clashed in the air. Marching to death or victory or defeat, it mattered not. They marched for Justice, and God was their captain.
From that moment he has told his own story until he went to Fortress Monroe, and was made acting military secretary and aid by General Butler. Before he went, he wrote the most copious and gayest letters from the camp. He was thoroughly aroused, and all his powers happily at play. In a letter to me soon after his arrival in Washington, he says:—
“I see no present end to this business. We must conquer the South. Afterward we must be prepared to do its police in its own behalf, and in behalf of its black population, whom this war must, without precipitation, emancipate. We must hold the South as the metropolitan police holds New York. All this is inevitable. Now I wish to enroll myself at once in the Police of the Nation, and for life, if the nation will take me. I do not see that I can put myself—experience and character—to any more useful use . . . My experience in this short campaign with the Seventh assures me that volunteers are for one purpose and regular soldiers entirely another. We want regular soldiers for the cause of order in these anarchical countries, and we want men in command who, though they may be valuable as temporary satraps or proconsuls to make liberty possible where it is now impossible, will never under any circumstances be disloyal to Liberty, will always oppose any scheme of any one to constitute a military government, and will be ready, when the time comes, to imitate Washington. We must think of these things, and prepare for them . . . Love to all the dear friends . . . This trip has been all a lark to an old tramper like myself.”
Later he writes:—
“It is the loveliest day of fullest spring. An aspen under the window whispers to me in a chorus of all its leaves, and when I look out, every leaf turns a sunbeam at me. I am writing in Viele’s quarters in the villa of Somebody Stone, upon whose place or farm we are encamped. The man who built and set down these four great granite pillars in front of his house, for a carriage-porch, had an eye or two for a fine site. This seems to be the finest possible about Washington. It is a terrace called Meridian Hill, two miles north of Pennsylvania Avenue. The house commands the vista of the Potomac, all the plain of the city, and a charming lawn of delicious green, with oaks of first dignity just coming into leaf. It is lovely Nature, and the spot has snatched a grace from Art. The grounds are laid out after a fashion, and planted with shrubbery. The snowballs are at their snowballiest . . . Have you heard or—how many times have you used the simile of some one, Bad-muss or Cadmus, or another hero, who sowed the dragon’s teeth, and they came up dragoons a hundred-fold and infantry a thousand-fold? Nil admirari is, of course, my frame of mind; but I own astonishment at the crop of soldiers. They must ripen awhile, perhaps, before they are to be named quite soldiers. Ripening takes care of itself; and by the harvest-time they will be ready to cut down.
“I find that the men best informed about the South do not anticipate much severe fighting. Scott’s Fabian policy will demoralize their armies. If the people do not bother the great Cunctator to death before he is ready to move to assured victory, he will make defeat impossible. Meanwhile there will be enough outwork going on, like those neat jobs in Missouri, to keep us all interested . . . Know, O comrade, that I am already a corporal,—an acting corporal, selected by our commanding officer for my general effect of pipe-clay, my rapidity of heel and toe, my present arms, etc., but liable to be ousted by suffrage any moment. Quod faustum sit, . . . I had already been introduced to the Secretary of War . . . I called at ——’s and saw, with two or three others, —— on the sofa. Him my prophetic soul named my uncle Abe . . . But in my uncle’s house are many nephews, and whether nepotism or my transcendent merit will prevail we shall see. I have fun,—I get experience,—I see much,—it pays. Ah, yes! But in these fair days of May I miss my Staten Island. War stirs the pulse, but it wounds a little all the time.
“Compliment for me Tib [a little dog] and the Wisterias,—also the mares and the billiard-table. Ask —— to give you t’ other lump of sugar in my behalf . . . Should —— return, say that I regret not being present with an unpremeditated compliment, as thus,—‘Ah! the first rose of summer!’ . . . I will try to get an enemy’s button for ——, should the enemy attack. If the Seventh returns presently, I am afraid I shall be obliged to return with them for a time. But I mean to see this job through, somehow.”
In such an airy, sportive vein he wrote, with the firm purpose and the distinct thought visible under the sparkle. Before the regiment left Washington, as he has recorded, he said good-bye and went down the bay to Fortress Monroe. Of his unshrinking and sprightly industry, his good head, his warm heart, and cool hand, as a soldier, General Butler has given precious testimony to his family. “I loved him as a brother,” the General writes of his young aid.
The last days of his life at Fortress Monroe were doubtless also the happiest. His energy and enthusiasm, and kind, winning ways, and the deep satisfaction of feeling that all his gifts could now be used as he would have them, showed him and his friends that his day had at length dawned. He was especially interested in the condition and fate of the slaves who escaped from the neighboring region and sought refuge at the fort. He had never for an instant forgotten the secret root of the treason which was desolating the land with war; and in his view there would be
no peace until that root was destroyed. In his letters written from the fort he suggests plans of relief and comfort for the refugees; and one of his last requests was to a lady in New York for clothes for these poor pensioners. They were promptly sent, but reached the fort too late.
As I look over these last letters, which gush and throb with the fulness of his activity, and are so tenderly streaked with touches of constant affection and remembrance, yet are so calm and duly mindful of every detail, I do not think with an elder friend, in whom the wisdom of years has only deepened sympathy for all generous youthful impulse, of Virgil’s Marcellus, “Heu, miserande puer!” but I recall rather, still haunted by Philip Sidney, what he wrote, just before his death, to his father-in-law, Walsingham,—“I think a wise and constant man ought never to grieve while he doth play, as a man may say, his own part truly.”
The sketches of the campaign in Virginia, which Winthrop had commenced in the Atlantic Monthly Magazine, would have been continued, and have formed an invaluable memoir of the places, the men, and the operations of which he was a witness and a part. As a piece of vivid pictorial description, which gives the spirit as well as the spectacle, his “Washington as a Camp” is masterly. He knew not only what to see and to describe, but what to think; so that in his papers you are not at the mercy of a multitudinous mass of facts, but understand their value and relation.
* * *
The disastrous day of the 10th of June, at Great Bethel, need not be described here. It is already written with tears and vain regrets in our history. It is useless to prolong the debate as to where the blame of the defeat, if blame there were, should rest. But there is an impression somewhat prevalent that Winthrop planned the expedition, which is incorrect. As military secretary of the commanding general, he made a memorandum of the outline of the plan as it had been finally settled. Precisely what that memorandum (which has been published) was, he explains in the last letter he wrote, a few hours before leaving the fort. He says: “If I come back safe, I will send you my notes of the plan of attack, part made up from the General’s hints, part my own fancies.” This defines exactly his responsibility. His position as aid and military secretary, his admirable qualities as adviser under the circumstances, and his personal friendship for the General, brought him intimately into the council of war. He embarked in the plan all the interest of a brave soldier contemplating his first battle. He probably made suggestions some of which were adopted. The expedition was the first move from Fort Monroe, to which the country had been long looking in expectation. These were the reasons why he felt so peculiar a responsibility for its success; and after the melancholy events of the earlier part of the day, he saw that its fortunes could be retrieved only by a dash of heroic enthusiasm. Fired himself, he sought to kindle others. For one moment that brave, inspiring form is plainly visible to his whole country, rapt and calm, standing upon the log nearest the enemy’s battery, the mark of their sharpshooters, the admiration of their leaders, waving his sword, cheering his fellow-soldiers with his bugle voice of victory,—young, brave, beautiful, for one moment erect and glowing in the wild whirl of battle, the next falling forward toward the foe, dead, but triumphant.
On the 19th of April, 1861, he left the armory-door of the Seventh, with his hand upon a howitzer; on the 21st of June his body lay upon the same howitzer at the same door, wrapped in the flag for which he gladly died as the symbol of human freedom. And so, drawn by the hands of young men lately strangers to him, but of whose bravery and loyalty he had been the laureate, and who fitly mourned him who had honored them, with long, pealing dirges and muffled drums, he moved forward.
Yet such was the electric vitality of this friend of ours, that those of us who followed him could only think of him as approving the funeral pageant, not the object of it, but still the spectator and critic of every scene in which he was a part. We did not think of him as dead. We never shall. In the moist, warm midsummer morning, he was alert, alive, immortal.
Cecil Dreeme
1
Stillfleet and His News
Home!
The Arago landed me at midnight in midwinter. It was a dreary night. I drove forlornly to my hotel. The town looked mean and foul. The first omens seemed unkindly. My spirits sank full fathom five into Despond.
But bed on shore was welcome after my berth on board the steamer. I was glad to be in a room that did not lurch or wallow, and could hold its tongue. I could sleep, undisturbed by moaning and creaking woodwork, forever threatening wreck in dismal refrain.
It was late next morning when a knock awoke me. I did not say, “Entrez,” or “Herein.”
Some fellows adopt those idioms after a week in Paris or a day in Heidelberg, and then apologize,—“We travellers quite lose our mother tongue, you know.”
“Come in,” said I, glad to use the vernacular.
A Patrick entered, brandishing a clothes-broom as if it were a shillalah splintered in a shindy.
“A jontlemin wants to see yer honor,” said he.
A gentleman to see me! Who can it be? I asked myself. Not Densdeth already! No, he is probably also making a late morning of it after our rough voyage. I fear I should think it a little ominous if he appeared at the threshold of my home life, as my first friend in America. Bah! Why should I have superstitions about Densdeth? Our intimacy on board will not continue on shore. What’s Hecuba to me, or I to Hecuba?
“A jontlemin to see yer honor,” repeated the Pat, with a peremptory flourish of his weapon.
“What name, Patrick?”
“I misremember the name of him, yer honor. He’s a wide-awake jontlemin, with three mustasshes,—two on his lip, and one at the point of his chin.”
Can it be Harry Stillfleet? I thought. He cannot help being wide-awake. He used to wear his beard à la three-moustache mode. His appearance as my first friend would be a capital omen. “Show him up, Pat!” said I.
“He shows himself up,” said a frank, electric voice. “Here he is, wide-awake, three moustaches, first friend, capital omen. Hail Columbia! beat the drums! Robert Byng, old boy, how are you?”
“Harry Stillfleet, old boy, how are you?”
“I am an old boy, and hope you are so too.”
“I trust so. It is the best thing that can be said of a full-grown man.”
“I saw your name on the hotel book,” Stillfleet resumed. “Rushed in to say, ‘How d’ ye do?’ and ‘Good-bye!’ I’m off to-day. Any friends out in the Arago?”
“No friends. A few acquaintances,—and Densdeth.”
“Name Densdeth friend, and I cut you bing-bang!”
“What! Densdeth, the cleverest man I have ever met?”
“The same.”
“Densdeth, handsome as Alcibiades, or perhaps I should say Absalom, as he is Hebrewish?”
“That very Alcibiades,—Absalom,—Densdeth.”
“Densdeth, the brilliant, the accomplished,—who fascinates old and young, who has been everywhere, who has seen everything, who knows the world de profundis,—a very Midas with the gold touch, but without the ass’s ears? Densdeth, the potent millionnaire?”
“Yes, Byng. And he can carry a great many more adjectives. He has qualities enough to make a regiment of average men. But my friends must be built of other stuff.”
“So must mine, to tell the truth, Harry. But he attracts me strangely. His sardonic humor suits one side of my nature.”
“The cynical side?”
“If I have one. The voyage would have been a bore without him. I had never met and hardly heard of him before; but we became intimate at once. He has shown me much attention.”
“No doubt. He knows men. You have a good name. You are to be somebody on your own account, we hope. Besides, Densdeth was probably aware of your old friendship with the Denmans.”
“He never spoke of them.”
“Naturally. He did not wish to talk tragedy.”
“Tragedy! What do you mean?”
“You have not heard the s
tory of Densdeth and Clara Denman!” cried Stillfleet, in surprise.
“No. Shut up in Leipsic, and crowding my studies to come home, I have not heard a word of New York gossip for six months.”
“This is graver than gossip, Byng. It happened less than three months ago. Densdeth was to have married Clara Denman.”
“The cynical Densdeth marry that strange child!”
“You forget your ten years’ absence. The strange child grew up a noble woman.”
“Not a beauty,—that I cannot conceive.”
“No; but a genius. Once in a century Nature sends such a brave, earnest, tender, indignant soul on this low earth. All the men of genius were in love with her, except myself. But Densdeth, a bad genius, seemed to have won her. The wedding-day was fixed, cards out, great festivities; you know how a showy man like Denman would seize the occasion for splendor. One night she disappeared without sign. Three days afterward she was floated upon the beach down the bay,—drowned, poor thing!”
“What!” cried I, “Clara Denman, my weird little playmate! Dead! Drowned! I did not imagine how tenderly I had remembered her.”
“I was not her lover,” said Harry, “only a friend; but the world has seemed a mean and lonely place since she passed away so cruelly.”
The mercurial fellow was evidently greatly affected.
“She had that fine exaltation of nature,” continued he, “which frightens weak people. They said her wild, passionate moods brought her to the verge of madness.”
“A Sibylline soul.”
Cecil Dreeme Page 3
