Read Ebook: The Friendly Club and Other Portraits by Parsons Francis

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IN the Spring of 1869 Gideon Welles, who had been appointed Secretary of the Navy by Lincoln and had served to the end of the Johnson administration, returned to Hartford where he lived till his death in 1878. His diary for May 2, 1869, contains the following entry:

"We left New York at 3 P. M. and reached Hartford at seven, stopping at the Allyn House. Nearly four years have passed since I have been here, more than eight since I left and took up my residence in Washington. . . . Hartford itself has greatly altered--I might say improved--for it has been beautified and adorned by many magnificent buildings, and the population has increased. These I see and appreciate; but I feel more sensibly than these, other changes which come home to my heart. A new and different people seem to move in the streets. Few, comparatively, are known to me. A new generation which knows not Joseph is here."

Perhaps it was natural that the retiring secretary of the navy, returning quietly and unannounced and with possibly a trace of the depression that comes with the relinquishment of great affairs, should fancy a certain lack of enthusiasm in his welcome. But a little later, when he had bought the house, now No. 11 Charter Oak Place, which was to be his future home, and his presence was more widely known, he found his friends more appreciative.

"During the week," he writes some days later, "old friends have called and welcomed me back. . . . My old friend, Calvin Day, was absent from the city when I arrived and did not get home till midnight on Saturday. As soon as he knew I was here, on Monday morning, he called. H. A. Perkins, Mrs. Colt, Beach, Seymour, etc., etc., called. Mark Howard is absent. Governor Hawley saw me at breakfast on Wednesday last and immediately came and greeted me."

It is not without interest to note that the servant question was at the time a great problem. This, and the confusion of getting settled, of unpacking loads of furniture, of arranging the contents of two hundred and twenty-four boxes that arrived from Washington, while Mrs. Welles was confined to her room as the result of a fall, "have made me," he writes, "unused as I am to these matters, exceedingly uncomfortable." Nevertheless, there is some mitigation, as this entry shows:

"Met Mr. Hamersley--who invited me to his store, where we had an hour, on political subjects chiefly. It is somewhere about fifteen years since we have had such and so long a conversation. So far as I have met and seen old friends, I have had every reason to be satisfied. Though not very demonstrative or forward in calling, they have without exception been cordial and apparently sincere."

During the nine remaining years of his life Mr. Welles lived quietly, devoting most of his time to writing, his chief pieces of work being an elaborate article claiming for the navy, which he felt had never received its proper share of the credit, the most important part in the capture of New Orleans, and a little volume entitled "Lincoln and Seward."

The career which he looked back upon in these last years was one which should have brought to any man the satisfactions that come from important work well done. There were, of course, elements that would naturally interfere with such satisfactions--and these a man like Gideon Welles took to heart more seriously than another might have done. No one could have served as he did in high administration during those eight eventful years without a sense of the blundering, the waste, the cross-purposes, the petty motives, and even the treachery that were exhibited in such a disheartening fashion to those behind the scenes. But through all this he pursued steadfastly his honest and able way, not exempt from bitter criticism, like all his colleagues, nor from spiteful intrigue. He seems such a unique and stalwart figure that one is led to inquire, as one reads his history and his personal record, why he was not more famous in his day and time.

Perhaps one reason is that while he had a remarkable gift of common sense, he lacked a sense of humor and the sense of proportion that accompanies it. His diary, it is quite true, is at times what one would call humorous reading, but the humor is either unconscious or partakes of sarcasm. He took life pretty seriously--and indeed he had occasion to do so.

Then one infers another characteristic which is so difficult to define and in its way so subtle that one hesitates to be dogmatic about it. Yet reading between the lines of the diary, which is one of the frankest human documents in the world, one reader at least gains the impression that the author, perhaps realizing the innate tendency, which the diary shows, to pronounce judgment, felt before the world the necessity of putting a curb upon this propensity. In public he never seems to have asserted himself in the Rooseveltian manner. He had decided opinions of his own and was altogether an independent, fearless person, but he appears to have been one of the rather reticent members of the cabinet. A friend tells him on one occasion that he should have been more forward in expressing his views and the diary has many references to times when he judged silence the better course--as very likely it was--for with him silence never went so far as to constitute consent to anything he disapproved. Far more single-minded and straightforward than some of the other cabinet ministers, he apparently lacked the art, which many men of smaller caliber possessed, of getting his personality in a large way before the country.

One feels that here was a capable and high-minded public servant, with many qualities which in another personality would have produced a great leader of men. But there was always this reticence. Was it possibly the inheritance of a New England ancestry?

However, if in his life-time Gideon Welles lacked the gift for individual prominence that with some of his contemporaries seemed to be the main object of life, the publication of his remarkable "Diary" has, long after his death, immortalized him. In this journal we have both a revelation of personal character that is illuminating and a historic document that is invaluable.

It is fortunate for us that when Gideon Welles sat down to his diary all restraint and repression disappeared. His clarity of vision, his firmness in his belief of what was just and right, his devotion to duty, his singular ability to estimate men and to portray character--all this gives even a casual reader a very clear conception of what manner of man he himself was. As for others, the figures that live forever in these pages are real people, wrestling in their various characteristic ways with portentous problems, the solutions of which we now look back upon as historic matters long since worked out, but which in many instances presented very different aspects at the time from those which now are obvious to us. It is remarkable how the judgment of posterity as to individuals has confirmed Welles's contemporary estimate.

To cite these portraits in detail would be to give a catalogue of the prominent characters of the day. At once the greatest and, to the modern reader the most interesting, is that of Abraham Lincoln. His personality does not appear complete and finished in any one description, but is a composite of comment, conversation and action recounted from time to time in the pages covering the period that elapsed before his death. Thus we see the gradual growing appreciation of his character from that early day when Welles noted that "much had been said and was then uttered by partisans of the incompetency of Mr. Lincoln and his unfitness," to that later cloudy morning when, by the bed on which the murdered President had to be laid diagonally because of his great height, Welles "witnessed the wasting life of the good and great man who was expiring before me." Any reader of the diary who is also familiar with the latest study of the war President--that by Lord Charnwood--and who has read or seen Drinkwater's "Lincoln," is instantly aware of the value of this journal to the historian and the dramatist.

The suggestions of a certain reserve in public must not be interpreted as implying any hesitation to express the diarist's convictions when he considered that the occasion called for them. Far otherwise. Read, for example, the careful recitals of those deliberate, overwhelming, sledgehammer conversational blows the secretary inflicted on the head of Senator Hale when the opportunity at last came of loosing long pent-up emotions. The senator must have emerged from that interview a stunned, if wiser, man.

And very early in their mutual official connection the Secretary of State discovered that Mr. Welles, and only Mr. Welles, was going to run the Navy Department. When Seward attempted to interfere surreptitiously with the naval expedition to relieve Sumter he found himself in a great deal of trouble, the net result of which may be summarized in the following quotation from the diary:

"On our way thither Mr. Seward remarked that, old as he was, he had learned a lesson from this affair, and that was, he had better attend to his own business and confine his labors to his own department. To this I cordially assented."

The return of the Secretary to Hartford brought many memories of old times--days, when as editor of the "Hartford Times" he had worked for Jackson's election, later days when, slavery being injected as a moral issue into politics, he had abandoned the democratic creed and adopted the republican. Then there were the years when he had served as postmaster, as member of the general assembly, as state comptroller--and, again, that searching period when for the sake of his convictions he was willing to face sure defeat as republican candidate for governor. For eight years he had served as a member of the republican national committee and he was chairman of his state delegation to the convention that nominated for the presidency the man who was to be afterward his chief and his staunch friend--Abraham Lincoln. We have Lincoln's own word for it, as reported verbatim in the diary, that there was no wire-pulling in connection with Gideon Welles's appointment. The fact that he was a New England man may have had something to do with it, but the real consideration was his record.

It was a life full of service for his country and of devotion to the faith that was in him, that the old man looked back upon in the closing years.

ABOUT six months before Gideon Welles returned to his old home, an ensign in that navy of which Mr. Welles was, under the President, commander-in-chief, landed in the port of New York on the U. S. steam frigate "Franklin". The "Franklin" bore the flag of Admiral Farragut, who was returning from a two-year command of our European Squadron, and the ensign, Henry Howard Brownell, of East Hartford, was a member of the great sailor's personal staff on which he had served during the war.

It was the end of Brownell's service and travels. Four years later, on October 31, 1872, at the height of the Grant-Greeley campaign, he died at the family homestead after a long and distressing illness. He had been born in 1820. Seven years before his death Dr. Holmes, in a review in the "Atlantic" of one of his slim volumes of verse, had called him "Our Battle Laureate."

Uneven as his verse was, he was a true poet. A spark of the divine fire had fallen upon him. Other activities had been attempted, but for him there clearly was in them no satisfaction. As a youth he tried mercantile life in New York, but abandoned it after less than a year. Teaching seems to have been the practical--if poetry is not "practical"--pursuit which proved most congenial and it is singular that his first work as a teacher was in Mobile near which the great experience of his life later occurred. This short sojourn in the South came after his graduation in 1841 from Trinity College and was followed by study of the law in Hartford where he was admitted to the bar and for a short time practiced in partnership with his brother Charles.

". . . . the fragrant breath Of unknown tropic flowers came o'er my path, Wafted--how pleasantly! for I had been Long on the seas, and their soft, waveless glare Had made green fields a longing."

It would be difficult to improve on that last line. Again--to most readers there will come a swift and dramatic vision from the two stanzas of "Qu'il Mourut"--

"Not a sob, not a tear be spent For those who fell at his side-- But a moan and a long lament For him--who might have died!

"Who might have lain, as Harold lay, A King, and in state enow-- Or slept with his peers, like Roland In the Straits of Roncesvaux."

In all his early verse there is much that is haunting and memorable, together with much that is trivial and even flippant, It was the coming of the Civil War that made Henry Brownell known as a poet. Indeed he published little before that time.

To these portentous messages and alarms, borne on every breath of the wandering breezes of those tense days, the spirit of Henry Brownell responded with an intuitive instinct, a poetic eloquence, akin to that of the seers and the prophets.

"World, art thou 'ware of a storm? Hark to the ominous sound, How the far-off gales their battle form, And the great sea swells feel ground!"

In 1860, the Hartford papers were full of his "fiery lyrics" and the writer--was it Hawley or Warner?--of an appreciation of Brownell in the "Courant" shortly after his death tells how well he remembered the day in the anxious winter of 1860-61 when Brownell brought into the office of the old "Evening Press" the manuscript of "Annus Memorabilis"--verses breathing a resolution and exaltation of courage that brought a generous measure of fame. There is something about "Annus Memorabilis"--not only the meter which is the same--that suggests Macaulay's "Naseby," something, too, remotely suggestive of Kipling. Into this mood of exaltation there ran occasionally a vein of humor that only deserves mention in the case of the verses "Let Us Alone," inspired by Jefferson Davis's statement in his inaugural address, "All we want is to be left alone." Though of little poetic merit these lines caught the popular fancy and were long remembered and quoted.

And so the war came on, and the poet's vision, which had been laughed at by some readers, was justified by events. There came defeats, almost countless deaths, occasional victories, doubts of final victory--all the ebb and flow and waste of war--and to it all the sensitive but vigorous spirit responded in many chords. Of the gentler lays, the most winning to the writer are the verses called "The Battle Summers." Here are a few of the stanzas--

"All vain--Fair Oaks and Seven Pines! A deeper hue than dying Fall May lend, is yours!--yet over all The mild Virginian autumn smiles,

. . . . .

"We pass--we sink like summer's snow-- Yet on the mighty Cause shall move, Though every field a Cannae prove, And every pass a Roncesvaux.

"Through every summer burn anew A battle summer,--though each day We name a new Aceldema, Or some dry Golgotha re-dew."

On the whole, however, it was the magnificence, the drama, of the struggle that possessed him--sometimes the realization of the tremendous stakes for which the game was played, sometimes the actual, objective romance of events, as in the beginning of the famous "River Fight"--

"Would you hear of the River Fight? It was two of a soft spring night-- God's stars looked down on all, And all was clear and bright. But the low fog's chilling breath-- Up the River of Death Sailed the Great Admiral."

His own participation in the fighting came about in a strange way. He paraphrased in verse, first published in the "Evening Press," the rather dramatic general orders preparatory to the "River Fight." Poetically it was not a great performance, but in some way it came to the attention of Farragut who was greatly impressed. The acquaintance thus begun resulted in the unusual appointment of Brownell as master's mate on Farragut's staff and, shortly thereafter, as ensign, with the duties of secretary.

One can fancy the lift and glory in the heart of this rather retiring poet and teacher, with a hitherto unsatisfied thirst for action and drama, as he stood on the quarter-deck of the "Hartford" fighting her way up Mobile Bay on that early August morning in 1864. At last he was in the midst of great events. This was his crowded hour--and the gods gave him full measure. Even in plain prose it is a gallant story. What a life-time must have been lived in those moments when Craven's monitor "Tecumseh", off to port, making for the Confederate ram "Tennessee", struck a torpedo and went down; when the "Brooklyn", leading the column, just ahead of the "Hartford", backed down upon the flag-ship, in fear of more torpedoes; when Farragut, lashed in the rigging, saw his line doubling up in confusion close under the Confederate batteries! It was then occurred the famous colloquy and order. "What is the trouble?" was asked of the "Brooklyn" by the flag-ship and the answer--"Torpedoes." "Damn the torpedoes!" shouted the Admiral. "Captain Drayton, go ahead! Jouett, full speed!" And the "Hartford," increasing speed rapidly, passed under the stern of the "Brooklyn" and took the lead, firing her starboard batteries as fast as the men could work. One did not need to be a poet to secure a thrill from such a situation, but what must it have meant to the creative imagination that till then had pictured such scenes only in fancy!

And this was only the early part of the fight. Through it all Brownell took notes, as he had been ordered, of the progress of the action and literally wrote at least one stanza of "The Bay Fight." During the battle he dropped one of his papers which was later found and returned to him with an expression of admiration that he could write so legibly in the midst of such excitement. "If I were killed," he replied, "I didn't want any of you to think I'd been afraid."

Probably "The Bay Fight" was Brownell's most famous poem, though "The River Fight" is generally classed with it. The ballad has its faults. It is too long and too detailed for modern taste. It is ragged in places--the poet made his own versification much of the time. But it has vigor, vividness and sincere emotion, and through it all runs the turmoil and thunder of the battle. "The Bay Fight" has been compared to the work of Campbell, Drayton and Tennyson--yet no one has suggested a special likeness in temper and methods, in its narrative portions, to "The Ballad of the Revenge" of which it reminded one reader. At the close, where the meter changes to a quieter rhythm, there are a tenderness and aspiration and felicity of phrasing that arrest even the casual reader--

"Be strong; already slants the gold Athwart these wild and stormy skies; From out this blackened waste, behold, What happy homes shall rise!

. . . . . .

"And never fear a victor foe-- Thy children's hearts are strong and high, Nor mourn too fondly--well they know On deck or field to die."

The verse of the Great War and that of the Civil War show one marked contrast. The best poetry of the recent titanic struggle is individualistic. It reflects the re-actions of personality to the stress and tension, the long-drawn, desperate drudgery, the tragedy, and sometimes the humor, of the strange experience. It pictures the dreams of home and peace. Most of the best of it has been written by young soldiers, many of whom were novices in the poetic r?le. On the whole the well-known poets did not come up to expectations. There were of course exceptions, but most of this recent verse, appealing and beautiful as it is, misses the higher vision, perhaps because the immediate scene and the personal experience were so overwhelming. The poets of our Civil War, however, were obsessed with the meaning of it all, with the hopes and fears for the country's future. Have we as yet anything in American verse about the Great War that we can place beside the best war poetry of Holmes and Whittier? Can we find sustained poetic inspiration that compares with Lowell's "Commemoration Ode"? Whereas to this recent conflict is the lyric power of the "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"? And, coming down to mere narrative and descriptive verse, what incident of this modern Armageddon has found among us its immortal ballad, as the battle of Mobile Bay found its eloquent poetic record in "The Bay Fight"?

TO older citizens the Wadsworth Atheneum has an especial and peculiar charm. Doubtless more recent residents also feel this attraction, but it is natural that to those who as children lived in its shadow, as it were, the appeal should be strongest.

Here we were wont to go on rainy afternoons to look at the illustrated papers in the reading room. In the historical society's quarters upstairs it used to give one a peculiar thrill to sit on the link of the chain which during the Revolution was stretched across the Hudson at West Point, and which we had read about in the "Boys of 'Seventy-Six." There was, too, a certain ghastly emotional experience to be derived from an inspection of the sword holes, just over the heart, in the waistcoat and shirt of Colonel Ledyard. Then there were those Saturday mornings spent with the good friend of all children in the weekly proceedings at the Atheneum of the old "Agassiz Association."

In those days we were reading "Kenilworth" and "Woodstock" and the castellated structure acquired in our minds a quality of mystery and romance. Certain precincts of the building were denied us and an impression gained credence that somewhere in the edifice, the plan of which we never fathomed, were secret rooms, passages and staircases. Certainly if ghosts walked anywhere the place where you would be most likely to find them was on some Hallowe'en midnight among these relics of the past. But we never got in at midnight--in fact nothing could have persuaded us to attempt such an entry.

More mature experience removed something of the mystery, but the charm never entirely vanished. It came, however, to be exercised in different ways. Perhaps it was necessary during vacations to supplement college reading by the use of the historical society's library, then installed in the delightful quarters that had been the first home of the Watkinson collection. In many ways it seems a pity that this old library, with its oak bookshelves, arranged in alcoves, its galleries and delightful little staircases, has been abandoned for modern, but less atmospheric quarters. It was a charming room and the only place of its kind in the state, except the old library at Yale, the proposed alteration of which recently created such a storm of opposition.

It was discovered, however, that the newer and larger Watkinson Library also offered a quiet refuge when one wanted to study or read without interruption. Here, too, were and still are alcoves, galleries and staircases, but loftier, more imposing and triumphant than in the intimate and friendly and older library. The main room of the Watkinson is, however, an alluring spot where one may escape from the financial implications of the immediate environment into a world with which money and business have little to do.

Increasing years brought an interest in the old portraits. Our childhood acquaintance with the pictorial features of the Atheneum was chiefly confined to Trumbull's paintings of the Revolutionary battles. These seemed to us at the time perfect representations of what really happened at Bunker Hill, Princeton and Quebec. But the inevitable development of a more catholic artistic sense led us to dwell with a growing interest on the work of some of the great masters displayed in the art gallery. With these the portraits of state and local worthies in the historical society's rooms could not compete very successfully from the standpoint of workmanship, but these local portraits acquired a new importance as the story of the state and the old town took its place in our enlarging appreciation of relative values. At least we could gather from them some idea of what the people looked like who had walked the streets where we had played as children and who had taken their parts in the building of the city, the state and the nation.

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