XXVI Literary Well-Wishers — George D. Prentice — Mrs. Sigourney — Grace Greenwood — H. W. Longfellow — James Redpath — “The Wandering Jew”
Authors were not so plentiful then as to attract no attention in a crowd of non-literary people. Men and women who had climbed the heights had leisure to glance down at those nearer the foot of the hill, and to send back a cheering hail. I had twenty letters from George D. Prentice, known of all men as the friend and helper of youthful writers. All were kind and encouraging. By-and-by, they were fatherly and familiar. As when I lamented that I had never been able to make my head work without my heart, he responded, “Hearts without heads are too impulsive, sometimes too hot. Heads without hearts are too cold. Suppose you settle the matter by giving the heart into my keeping, in trust for the happy man who will call for it some day?”
His letters during the war were tinged with sadness. In one he wrote: “My whole heart is one throbbing prayer to the God of Nations that He will have mercy upon my beloved country.”
In reply to a letter of sympathy after the death of a gallant young son, who fell on the battle-field, he said:
“My dear boy never gave me a pang except by entering the army (in obedience to what he felt was the call of duty), and in dying. A nobler, more dutiful son never gladdened a father’s heart.”
Our correspondence was continued as long as the poet-editor lived. I owe him much. I wish I had made him comprehend how much.
Mrs. Sigourney, then on “the retired list” of American authors, sent me a copy of her latest volume of poems—A Western Home—and three or four letters of motherly counsel, one of which advised me to take certain epochs of American history as foundation-stones for any novels I might write in future, and bidding me “God-speed!”
Grace Greenwood opened a correspondence with the younger woman who had admired her afar off, and we kept up the friendship until she went abroad to live, resuming our intercourse upon her return to New York in the early eighties.
From Mr. Longfellow I had two letters. One told me that Mrs. Longfellow was “reading Alone in her turn.”
“I am pleased to note upon the title-page of my copy, ‘Sixth Edition.’ That looks very like a guide-board pointing to Fame. I should think you would feel as does the traveller in the Tyrol who sees, at a turn in the rocky pass, a finger-post with the inscription—‘To Rome.’ Hoping that you will not be molested by the bandits who sometimes infest that route, I am sincerely yours,
Henry W. Longfellow.”
I have carried the letter, word for word, in my heart for more than half a century. A patent of nobility would not have brought me keener and more exquisite pleasure.
Not that I deceived myself, for one mad hour, with the fancy that I could ever gain the right to stand for one beatific moment on a level with the immortals whom I worshipped. In the first flush of my petty triumph, I felt my limitations. The appreciation of these has grown upon me with each succeeding year. “Fred” Cozzens, the “Sparrowgrass” of humorous literature, said to me once when I expressed something of this conviction:
“Yet you occupy an important niche.”
I replied in all sincerity: “I know my place. But the niche is small, and it is not high up. All that I can hope is to fill it worthily, such as it is.”
The history of one bulky packet of letters takes me back to the orderly progress of my story, and to the most singular and romantic episode of that first year of confessedly literary life.
Alone had been out in the world about three months, when I received a letter from a stranger, postmarked “Baltimore,” and bearing the letter-head of a daily paper published in that city. The signature was “James Redpath.” The writer related briefly that, chancing to go into Morris’s book-store while on a visit to Richmond, he had had from the publisher a copy of my book, and read it. He went on to say:
“It is full of faults, as you will discover for yourself in time. Personally, I may remark, that I detest both your politics and your theology. All the same, you will make your mark upon the age. In the full persuasion of this, I write to pledge myself to do all in my power to forward your literary interests. I am not on the staff of the Baltimore paper, although now visiting the editor-in-chief. But I have influence in more than one quarter, and you will hear from me again.”
I laid the queer epistle before my father, and we agreed that my outspoken critic was slightly demented. I was already used to odd communications from odd people, some from anonymous admirers, some from reviewers, professional and amateur, who sought to “do me good,” after the disinterested style of the guild.
I was therefore unprepared for the strenuous manner in which Mr. James Redpath proceeded to keep his pledge. Not a week passed in which he did not send me a clipping from some paper, containing a direct or incidental notice of my book, or work, or personality. Now he was in New Orleans, writing fiery Southern editorials, and insinuating into the body of the same, adroit mention of the rising Southern author. Now he slipped into a Cincinnati paper a poem taken from Alone, with a line or two, calling attention to the novel and the author; then a fierce attack upon the “detested politics and theology” flamed among book-notices in a Buffalo journal, tempered by regrets that “real talent should be grossly perverted by sectional prejudice and superstition.” Anon, a clever review in a Boston paper pleased my friends in the classic city so much that they sent a marked copy to me, not dreaming that I had already had the critique, with the now familiar “J. R.” scrawled in the margin. The climax of the melodrama was gained during the struggle over “bleeding Kansas” in 1855. A hurried note from the near neighborhood of Leavenworth informed me that a pro-slavery force, double the size of the abolitionist militia gathered to resist it, was advancing upon the position held by the latter. My dauntless knight wrote:
“Farewell, dear and noble lady! If I am not killed in the fight, you will hear from me again and again. Should I be translated to another sphere, I shall still (if possible) rap back notices of your work through the Fox sisters or other mediums.”
Hearing nothing more of or from him for two months, I was really unhappy in the apprehension that his worst fears had been realized. I had grown to like him, and my gratitude for his disinterested championship was warm and deep. My father expressed his conviction that the eccentric was the Wandering Jew, and predicted his safe deliverance from the pro-slavery hordes, and reappearance in somebody’s editorial columns. His prophecy was fulfilled in a long report in a Philadelphia sheet of a meeting with the “new star of the South,” in the vestibule of the church attended by the aforesaid. Nothing that escaped my lips was set down, but my dress and appearance, my conversational powers and deportment were painted in glowing colors, the veracious portraiture concluding with the intelligence that I would shortly be married to the son of a former Governor of Virginia—“a man, who, despite his youth, has already distinguished himself in the political arena, and we are glad to say, in the Democratic ranks.”
I thought my father would have an apoplectic fit when he got to that!
“See here, my child! I don’t presume to interfere with Salathiel, or by what other name your friend may choose to call himself, and there are all manner of tricks in the trade editorial, but this is going a little too far. He sha’n’t marry you off, without your consent—and to a Democrat!”
I had the same idea, and hearing directly from Mr. Redpath soon afterward, I said as much, as kindly as I could. The remonstrance elicited a gentlemanly rejoinder. While the style of the “report” was “mere newspaper lingo,” he claimed that the framework was built by an attaché of the Philadelphia daily, whom he (Redpath) had commissioned to glean all he could of my appearance, etc., during a flying trip to Richmond. The young fellow had written the article and sent it to press without submitting it to Salathiel. The like should not occur again. In my answer to the apology, I expressed my profound sense of gratitude to my advocate, and confessed my inability to divine the motive power of benefactions so numerous and unsolicited. His reply deepened the mystery:
“Your book held me back from infidelity. Chapter Sixteenth saved my life. Now that you know thus much, we will, if you please, have no more talk on your part of gratitude.”
Five years elapsed between the receipt of that first note signed “James Redpath,” and the explanation of what followed. I may relate here, in a few sentences, what he wrote to me at length, and what was published in an appreciative biographical sketch written by a personal friend after his death.
He was born in Scotland; emigrated in early manhood to America, and took up journalistic work. Although successful for a while, a series of misfortunes made of him a misanthropic wanderer. His brilliant talents and experience found work and friends wherever he went, and he remained nowhere long. Disappointed in certain enterprises upon which he had fixed his mind and expended his best energies, he found himself in Richmond, with but one purpose in his soul. He would be lost to all who knew him, and leave no trace of the failure he believed himself to be. He put a pistol in his pocket and set out for Hollywood Cemetery. There were sequestered glens there, then, and lonely thickets into which a world-beaten man could crawl to die. On the way up-town, he stopped at the book-store and fell into talk with the proprietor, who, on learning the stranger’s profession, handed him the lately-published novel. Arrived at the cemetery, Redpath was disappointed to see the roads and paths gay with carriages, pedestrians, and riding-parties. He would wait until twilight sent them back to town. He lay down upon the turf on a knoll commanding a view of the beautiful city and the river, took out his book and began reading to while away the hours that would bring quiet and solitude. The sun was high, still. He had the editorial knack of rapid reading. The dew was beginning to fall as he finished the narrative of the interrupted duel in the sixteenth chapter.
I believed then, and I am yet more sure, now, that other influences than the crude story told by one whose experience of life was that of a child by comparison with his, wrought upon the lonely exile during the still hours of that perfect autumnal day. It suited his whim to think that the book turned his thoughts from his design of self-destruction.
Before he slept that night he registered a vow—thus he phrased it in his explanatory letter—to write and publish one thousand notices of the book that had saved his life.
When the vow was fulfilled—and not until then—did I get the key to conduct that had puzzled me, and baffled the conjectures of the few friends to whom I had told the tale.
I met James Redpath, face to face, but once, and that was—if my memory serves me aright—in 1874. He was in Newark, New Jersey, in the capacity of adviser-in-chief, or backer, of a friend who brought a party of Indians from the West on a peaceful mission to Washington and some of the principal cities, in the hope of exciting philanthropic interest in their advancement in civilization.
“He is as enthusiastic in faith in the future of the redman as I was once in the belief that the negro would arise to higher levels,” remarked Salathiel, with a smile that ended in a sigh. “Heigho! youth is prone to ideals as the sparks to fly upward.”
Learning that I was in the opera-house where the “show” was held, he had invited me into his private stage-box, and there, out of sight of the audience, and indifferent to the speech-making and singing going on, on the stage, we talked for an hour with the cordial ease of old friends. My erst knight-errant was a well-mannered gentleman, still in the prime of manhood, with never a sign of the eccentric “stray” in feature, deportment, or the agreeable modulations of his voice. He told me of his wife. He had written to me of his marriage some years before. She was his balance-wheel, he said. I recollect that he likened her to Madam Guyon. At the close of the entertainment, we shook hands cordially and exchanged expressions of mutual regard. We never met again.
How much or how little I was indebted to him for the success of my first book, I am unable to determine. I shall ever cherish the recollection of his generous spirit and steadfast adherence to his vow of service, as one of the most interesting and gratifying episodes of my authorly career.