XXXVI Migration Northward — Acclimation — Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, in New York — Political Portents
One who had known my husband well for fifty years, wrote of him soon after his translation: “More than any other man I ever knew, he had a genius for friendship.”
This testimony is amply supported by the fact that he kept, to his journey’s end, the friends whose loving confidence he gained during the five years of his Charlotte pastorate. Those who loved him in his youth loved him to the end—or so many of them as remained to see the beautiful close of his long day.
We left our Parsonage home and the parish, which was our first love, laden with proofs of the deep affection inspired by devoted service in behalf of a united constituency, and the rare personal gifts of the man who suffered, in the parting, a wrench as sharp as that which made the separation a grief to each member of the flock he was leaving. It was a just tribute to his integrity of purpose and conscientiousness that the purity of his motives in deciding upon the step were never questioned. Leading men in the church said openly that they could not have hoped to keep him, after his talents and his ability to fill worthily a wider field were recognized in the world outlying this section of the Great Vineyard. They had foreseen that the parting must come, and that before long. He was a growing man, and the sphere they offered was narrow.
It was in no spirit of Christian philosophy that I dismantled the nest among the oaks, and packed my Lares and Penates with a fair show of cheerfulness. Inly, I was in high revolt for a full week after the die was cast. The final acceptance of the inevitable, and the steadfast setting of my face Northward, ensued upon the persuasion that the one and only thing for a sensible, God-fearing woman to do was to make the very best of what no human power could avert.
It is a family saying, based upon the assertion of my eldest daughter, that “if mother were set down in the middle of the Desert of Sahara, and made to comprehend that she must spend the rest of her days there, she would, within ten minutes, begin to expatiate upon the many advantages of a dry climate as a residential region.”
By the time we stayed our flight in Richmond, where we spent our Christmas, I took from the worn and harassed man of the hour the burden of explanation and defence of the reasons for tearing ourselves up by the roots and transplanting the tender vine into what some of our best wishers called, “alien soil.” I had worked myself into an honest defender of the Middle States in contradistinction to “Yankee land,” before we departed, bag, baggage, and baby, for the new home.
Mr. Terhune had preached twice in Newark, in December, after formally accepting the call. We removed to that city in February of 1859.
With the Saharan spirit in full flow, I met the welcoming “people”; settled in the house we bought in a pleasant quarter of the growing city—then claiming a population of less than seventy-five thousand—installed white servants; received and returned calls, and was, for the first time in my life, homesick at heart for three months.
In the recollection of the eighteen years that succeeded that period of blind rebellion against the gentle leading which was, for us, wisdom and loving-kindness throughout, I write down the confession in shame and confusion of face, and abasement of soul.
I stay the course of the narrative at this point to record, devoutly and gratefully, that never had pastor and pastor’s wife, in any section of our land, a parish in which “pleasant places” did more richly abound. I would write down, yet more emphatically and thankfully, the amazing fact that, in the dozen-and-a-half years of my dwelling among them, I never had a word of unkind criticism of myself and my ways; not a remark that could wound or offend was ever addressed to me.
I wish I might have that last paragraph engraved in golden capitals and set to the everlasting credit of that Ideal Parish! To this hour, I turn instinctively in times of joy and of sorrow, as to members of the true household of faith, to the comparatively small band of the once large congregation who are left alive upon the earth.
For eighteen years I walked up the central aisle of the church, as I might tread the halls and chambers of my father’s house in that far Southern town, with the consciousness that we were surrounded by an atmosphere of affectionate appreciation, at once comforting and invigorating.
All this—and I understate, rather than exaggerate, the real state of circumstance and feeling I am trying to depict—was the more surprising, because I went to this people young, and with little experience as a clergyman’s wife. In Charlotte, I had, as we have seen, done no “church work.” I was petted and made much of, in consideration of my position as the wife of the idolized pastor, and my newness to the duties of country housekeeping and the nursery. In Newark, I was gradually to discover that I could not shirk certain obligations connected with parish and city charities. The logic of events—never the monitions of friends and parishioners—opened my eyes to the truth. When, at length, I took charge of a girls’ Bible Class, and, some years after, worked up the Infant Class from tens to hundreds, there was much expression of unfeigned gratification and eager rallying to my help, not an intimation of relief that I “had, at last, seen my way clear to the performance of what everybody else had expected of a minister’s wife.”
I have never had a higher compliment than was paid me by the invitation, a dozen years back, to address the Alumni of Union Theological Seminary in New York City upon the subject of “Ministers’ Wives.”
I took occasion, in the presence of that grave and reverend assembly of distinguished theologues, to pay a brief tribute, as strong as words could make it, to that Ideal Parish. I could not withhold it then. I cannot keep it back now. I believe my experience in this regard to be highly exceptional. More’s the pity and the shame!
Five children were born to us in those happy, busy years. Each was adopted lovingly by the people, so far as prideful affection and generous deeds implied adoption. We were all of one family.
Returning to the direct line of my narrative—the spring of 1860 found us well, at work, and contented. I had good servants, kindly neighbors, and a growing host of congenial acquaintances. Our proximity to New York was an important factor in the lives of both of us, bringing us, as it did, within easy reach of the best libraries and shops in the country, and putting numberless means of entertainment and education at our very door. There were two babies by now—healthy, happy, bright—in every way thoroughly satisfactory specimens of infant humanity. In the matter of children’s nurses, I have been extraordinarily blessed among American women. In the twenty-one years separating the birth of our elder boy from the day when the younger was released from nursery government, I had but three of these indispensable comforts. Two married after years of faithful service; the third retired upon an invalid’s pension. All were Irish by birth. After much experience in, and more observation of, the Domestic Service of these United States, I incline to believe that, as a rule, we draw our best material from Celtic emigrant stock.
So smoothly ran the sands of life that I recall but one striking incident in the early part of 1860. That was the visit of the Prince of Wales to this country. We witnessed the passage of the long procession that received and escorted him up-town, to his quarters at the, then, new and fashionable hostelry—the Fifth Avenue Hotel. My husband went down to the Battery to see the princeling’s review of the regiments drawn up in line before him, as he rode from end to end of the parade-ground.
Joining us at the window, from which we had a splendid view of the pageant, the critic, who was an accomplished horseman, reported disdainfully that “the boy was exceedingly awkward. He had no seat to speak of, leaning forward, until his weak chin was nearly on a line with the horse’s ears, and sticking his feet out stiffly on each side.”
Our impression of the imperial youth was not more agreeable. He sat back in the open coach, “hunched” together in an ungainly heap, looking neither to the right nor the left, evincing no consciousness of the existence of the shouting throngs that lined the pavements ten deep, other than by raising, with the lifeless precision of a mechanical toy, the cocked hat he wore as part of the uniform of a British colonel.
There was a big ball the next night, at which gowns of fabulous prices were sported, and reported by the newspapers, and Albert Edward flitted on to his mother’s dominions of Canada, leaving not a ripple in the ocean of local and national happenings.
That ocean was stilling and darkening with the brooding of a threatening storm. Newspapers bristled with portents and denunciations; demagogues bellowed themselves hoarse in parks and from stumps; torchlight processions displayed new and startling features.
“So much for so little!” sighed I, upon our return from a lookout at the nearest corner, commanding long miles of marching men. “It was ingenious and amusing; but what a deal of drilling those embryo patriots must have gone through to do it so well! And for what? The President will be elected, as other Presidents have been, and as maybe a hundred others will be, and there the farce will end. Does it pay to amuse themselves so very hard?”
“If we could be sure that it would end there!” answered my husband, with unexpected gravity. “The sky is red and lowering in the South. Between politicians, and the freedom of the press to play with all sorts of explosives, there is no telling what the rabble may do.”
I looked up, startled.
“You are not in earnest? The good Ship of State has been driving straight on to the rocks ever since I can recollect, and she has not struck yet. Think of the Clay and Polk campaign!”
“Child’s play compared with the fight that is on now!” was the curt retort.
Something—I know not what—in his manner moved me to put a leading question.
“Have you made up your mind how you will vote?”
“Yes.”
“A month ago, you said you had not.”
“A good deal has happened in that month.”
It was not like him to be sententious with me, but I pushed the subject.
“I have never interfered with your political opinions, as you know, and I don’t care to vote, myself; but if I had a vote, I should be in no doubt where to cast it. Lovers of peace and concord should unite upon Bell and Everett. That party seems to me to represent the sanest element in this mammoth muddle.”
He smiled.
“To say nothing of your fondness for Mr. Everett. A charming gentleman, I grant. But the helm of state is not to be in his hands. Even, supposing”—grave again, and sighing slightly—“that they are strong enough to hold it in a storm.”
There was a boding pause. Then I spoke, and unadvisedly:
“I ask no questions that I think you would not care to answer. But I do hope you are not thinking of voting for Abraham Lincoln? Think of him in the White House! Mr. Buchanan may be weak—and a Democrat. I heard father say, as the one drop of comfort he could express from his election: ‘At any rate, he is a gentleman by birth and breeding.’ Mr. Lincoln is low-born, and has no pretensions to breeding.”
“Then, if I should be so far lost to the proprieties as to vote for him, I would better not let either of you know.” And he glanced teasingly at Alice, who had just entered the room.
“I could never respect you if you did!” she said, spiritedly. “I am persuaded better things of you.”
A teasing rejoinder was all she got out of him. The matter was never brought up again by any of us. When Election Day came, I was too proud to seem inquisitive. But in my inmost soul I was assured that reticence boded no good to my hope of one gallant gentleman’s vote for Bell and Everett.
Months afterward, when we were once again of one mind with respect to the nation’s peril and the nation’s need, he told me that he had kept his own counsel, not only because the truth might grieve me, but that party feeling ran so high in his church he thought it best not to intimate to any one how he meant to vote.
“And, like Harry Percy’s wife, I could be trusted not to tell what I did not know?” said I.
“You might have been catechised,” he admitted. “There are times when the Know-nothing policy is the safest.”