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Children of the Market Place, a novel by Edgar Lee Masters |
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Chapter 44 |
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_ CHAPTER XLIV Barnum had been taken by De Quincey as an epitome of America: "A great hulk of a continent, that the very moon finds fatiguing to cross, produces a race of Barnums on a pre-Adamite scale, corresponding in activity to its own enormous proportions." Barnum had resorted to daily advertising, a great sensationalism to keep up interest in the arrival of the singer. We went from our table to the pier to see her descend from the steamer. Triumphal arches of evergreens and flowers had been erected over the way she passed. A great crowd had collected. Bands were playing. Her face came into view. Shouts arose. She bowed and smiled to the wild throngs about her as she rode with Barnum to the Astor House. Here the Swedish and American flags floated in her honor. New York was in a frenzy of delight. But the tickets to hear her! All this excitement had been worked up for use at the box office. And Aldington could not afford the price. We wished Abigail and Aldington to be with us. I therefore submitted to the Barnum extortion for the whole party. Jenny Lind sang at Castle Garden, where I had sat nearly twenty years before, when New York had about half the population. The crowds pressed around the entrances. Those who could not afford to enter hoped to get a glimpse of her anyway. It was an enormous audience, and all of distinguished New York was there. Senator Webster had been one of those to receive her at the pier, and he was in the audience too. We were all deeply moved by this wonderful voice. Poor Dorothy was frequently drying her eyes. And when she sang one of her own national airs, Webster sat entranced. At its close she courtesied to him. He arose and bowed to her with the majestic manner of a great monarch. The audience went into a fury of applause. Every one spoke of her as good of heart, sweet and natural of manner. She had given her share of the proceeds of this concert to various charities in New York City. A feeling of uplifted life spread over the metropolis. She melted the souls of thousands, and purged the craft of money getting. We came away from her as from a higher realm. "What," said Abigail, "is anything in the world, money or statesmanship, what, of all these things of which we have talked to-day can be compared to an art like that, a divine influence like song?" After this we started on a round of the theaters. I prevailed upon our friends to prolong their stay, to be our guests. We saw Burton and Edwin Booth. We went to the Opera, saw the ballet which Fannie Ellsler had previously inaugurated. The _Independent_ was denouncing the theater as an unmitigated evil; the ballet was a shocking exhibition of legs. Still they had come, and New York had them. We dined at Niblo's, at Castle Garden. We drove about the city. We went out to see Trenton Falls where Jenny Lind had been taken as part of her entertainment, and where she had sung in the woods and been answered by the birds. I began to notice that Dorothy was unusually quiet. She complained of fatigue, of pain. We had done too much perhaps. One morning she could not arise. Abigail and Aldington were returning to Chicago. We had expected to go with them. But Dorothy could not travel now--she could not stand that terrible journey of boats and cars, of changes and delays. So we bade adieu to our friends. Dorothy did not rally, as I had expected. She grew weaker day by day. She became gravely ill. In the midst of the extra labor thrown upon Mammy, she too was compelled to take to her bed. I was forced to look about for servants, finding two Irish girls at last. Then quite suddenly Mammy died. She was very old. And thus we were cut off from all our past, Nashville, the old days. And I stayed almost constantly by Dorothy's side, trying to bring back her strength. It entered my mind at times that after all I was not as tender a husband to Dorothy as I should have been. I was with her a good deal, to be sure. At the same time, I was much preoccupied. She did not like politics, and could not share my interest in that direction. The condition of the country really distressed her. She had seen slavery in its benign aspect, and she was impatient with any criticism of the institution. It was months before Dorothy sat up and began to walk again. I could see that she was frailer than before and might never be strong again. Our boy Reverdy was not robust. And the winter was coming on. At the same time Dorothy did not wish to return to Washington. She wanted to hear no more of politics. I had to select her books for her, something that soothed her, led her into dreams. _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ was now appearing in serial form. I was reading it with great amusement. But I dared not show it to Dorothy. I had heard Beecher and knew his sentimental attitude. This book had for me the same quality. Yet it helped me to pass many hours while watching by Dorothy's side. Somehow I felt that it would produce a storm akin to the religious psychology which was sweeping the country. Critics were already noting its moral effect. Mrs. Stowe was hailed by Sumner as a "Christian genius," a Joan of Arc. Garrison said that it would make two million abolitionists. In Paris it was compared to Dumas' _The Three Guardsmen_ as a popular _tour de force_. Others detected in it a resemblance to Rousseau's _Nouvelle Heloise_. One pleaded for the liberty of the slave, the other for the rights of the peasant. But I knew that the book was not really true. It forefronted the brutality of slavery, it minimized the benevolent aspects of the institution, which I had myself seen. It was written with intensity of feeling, with the revivalist's method and emotion. It was like her brother's sermons, and equally unauthentic. Yet how strangely was this book received. It won Macaulay and Longfellow and George Sand, and stirred the heart of Heine. It exasperated the South. The winds of destiny previously let loose were blowing madly now. In the midst of my own cares I awoke one morning to read that Douglas was on his way to Cuba. The thought went through my mind, why not take Dorothy and go in order to give her the benefit of this summer climate through the winter? As Douglas had traveled by way of New Orleans he had stopped in Memphis and I read in the _Tribune_ what he had said to the people there: "If old Joshua R. Giddings should raise a colony in Ohio and settle down in Louisiana he would be the strongest advocate of slavery in the South; he would find when he got there that his opinion would be very much modified; he would find on those sugar plantations that it was not a question between the white man and the negro, but between the negro and the crocodile. You come right back to the principle of dollars and cents." At New Orleans he had uttered the God of nature doctrine: "There is a line or belt of country meandering through the valleys and over the mountain tops which is a natural barrier between free territory and slave territory, on the south of which are to be found the productions suitable to slave labor, while on the north exists a country adapted to free labor alone. But in the great central region, where there may be some doubt as to the effect of natural causes, who ought to decide the question except the people residing there, who have all their interests there, who have gone there to live with their wives and children?" No recognition of a right and a wrong, to be sure. But no express advocacy of a wrong. I could not see then, and have never been able to see since, why Douglas with this practical facing of the business of life could not fare equally well with public opinion as Hamilton has fared with it, who advocated corruption in government as a means to a national power. I went to Dorothy with my plan about Cuba, telling her that Douglas had gone there. It stirred her languid spirits. She was all eagerness to start. We took passage from New York, sailing around Florida, at last around Morro Castle into the harbor of Havana. The blueness of the water, with the balmy wind blowing almost incessantly began to restore Dorothy. The Spanish city lying before our eyes, yellow and continental, awoke her interest. At the dock there were crowds of idlers, Spaniards, negroes, to see us fasten and disembark. With Dorothy and our son and two maids we made our way to a hotel near the water. I was anxious to look up Douglas; but it was impossible the first evening, owing to Dorothy's indisposition. She had been seasick and the journey had fatigued her. Nevertheless we went to the roof of the hotel together and sat there until nearly midnight, inhaling the luxurious breeze from the gulf and gazing up at the brilliant stars of this tropical sky. The next morning I was down to breakfast early, leaving Dorothy to be served in her room. The hotel was drab and decayed exteriorly; but the dining room was a continental elegance of marble, gilt, and mirrors. Douglas was not stopping here, as I had already learned. I concluded that he would be at one of the better known hotels on the Prado, and I hurried thither as fast as I could. I soon located him; but he had gone out for a few days, was making something of a tour of the island, including a visit to the celebrated cave of Matanzas. Leaving a note for Douglas which apprised him of my hotel, I hurried back to Dorothy. The city was so brilliant under the golden sunshine, and the air so delightful, that I wished to spend these wonderful hours in seeing the city. Havana was as novel to me as to Dorothy. It was Spanish, therefore having no resemblance to London or any other English town. It seemed to me to be about the size that New York was in 1833. We spent three days driving through the Paso de Paula, along the Malecon, up and down the Prado lined with laurels and distinguished for fine houses and clubs. We visited the parks, the Exchange, the old churches, the navy yard, La Fueza, built by De Soto, the old markets of Colon and Tacon, the Palace; and we stood in the Cathedral before the medallion which marked the burial place of Columbus when his remains were removed here from Santa Domingo in 1796. We dined about the cafes and hotels, and attended the theater, and walked, when Dorothy felt equal to it, through the parks, or along the wall of the sea which stretched from the punta. I have already recorded so much of wrangling politics and the debates of infuriate minds that one might infer that I was leading no life of my own. Do you think that I am only a shadow or a registering machine, and that Dorothy is not flesh and blood? Sometimes it occurs to me that I am not treating her as a woman in spite of my desire to be thoughtful. A vast world of rich imagination, of vital emotion was in truth moving about me all the while, and in breasts that I did not comprehend. For all my life up to this time and beyond it, as you shall see, was occupied with money making and with watching principally the epic development of America. But I was later to awake as from a day dream or from a life in a shell, to the consciousness of a brighter world of sunlight and of wings. I was at peace now, and with Dorothy, whose frailty required my watchfulness and my care, and whom I delighted to please with lovely things. That was the extent of my emotional life. And so we drove, and visited the shops in Opispo Street. For I was waiting for Douglas. I wanted to take him off to a bull fight or a cock fight. And I was eager to hear him talk of his plans, of America, of anything that came from his fluent and restless mind. One evening when Dorothy and I were in the comfortable lounging chairs on the roof of the hotel, looking over toward Morro Castle, counting the largest of the richly brilliant stars, Douglas came upon us. He had returned from his trip only that afternoon. Finding my note, and leaving other engagements, he had come over to call, delighted and surprised to find that we were in Havana. Cuba already had a railroad, but it was not of much extent. He had been traveling by carriage, and in the hillier localities in a vehicle of two enormous wheels, drawn by horses driven in tandem. He had seen the cave, the pineapple fields, the sugar plantations. His imagination was already at work for America. He went on to say to me that whenever the people of Cuba should show themselves worthy of freedom by asserting their independence and should apply for annexation to the United States, they ought to be annexed. And that whenever Spain should be ready to sell Cuba, with the consent of its inhabitants, the United States should accept the chance. With spirit he exclaimed that if Spain should transfer Cuba to England, or any other European power America should take Cuba by force. "It is folly," he said, "to debate the acquisition of the island. It naturally belongs to the American continent. It guards the mouth of the Mississippi River, which is the heart of the American continent and the body of the American nation." This led Douglas to speak, and with bitterness, of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, which had given England joint control of any canal across the Isthmus of Panama. "I was disgusted with this treaty as I was disgusted with the settlement of the Oregon boundary. Just look at it! Here the Monroe Doctrine has been an avowed policy for thirty years, declaring that no European colonization will be permitted in America. And what happens? Whenever there has been no opportunity to enforce the doctrine, because there has been nothing at issue, we have cock-a-doodle-dooed; and whenever a chance has arisen to enforce it we have beaten a retreat, frightened to death by the awful consequences if we do enforce it. Frightened by our own spokesmen, Senators and others. Frightened by England in the main; for truly we have no other power to fear. So when the Clayton-Bulwer treaty came up I fought it as I fought Polk on the Oregon boundary of '49. I said then, and I say now, that the time may come when we shall want to possess some portion of Central America. It has come to the pass that I can't stand for America as to new territory without having the Abolitionists charge me with favoritism to the South. But it's a lie and history will vindicate me. But if I want Cuba or Central America for slavery I want them also for America. And what does England want them for? For freedom, I suppose, for the good of America! The agreement not to fortify the canal was not reciprocal, because England holds Jamaica, which guards the entrance to the canal. What rights did England have to the Mosquito Coast? Well, her title is at least doubtful. "But what I hate about the canal treaty is the recognition of the right of European powers to intervene in American affairs. We contracted with England to protect any canal or railroad across the Isthmus; and not only that, we invited other European powers to join with us in that protection. And that lets in all the kings of Europe, and where's your Monroe Doctrine? It vanishes into air. Study it out; you will see all these Whigs and all these motley groups joining the Whigs, pulling together by a sort of momentum started by the old crowd which sided with England against America in the Revolution. They are the same crowd that tried to break down the American system when they were banded together as Federalists. They tried secession at Hartford, when they didn't like the War of 1812; then they held up their hands in horror when South Carolina threatened to secede over the tariff. They called on God to avenge the Mexican War; then they grabbed this slavery matter to give them a moral push into power. They elected a President, but were afraid to formulate a platform. All the while they had played with England, skulking and running and fawning upon England, when our vital interests were at stake, and siding with England on the canal and on Oregon. They are better than other men! They are more holy! They are pure, just, broad! They love God! They are the only Christians! There is only one evil and that is slavery! But there are many gods, of which banks and tariffs are not the least; yet I notice that they do not give away Texas and California, those unholy fruits of a wicked war for which you fought, my friend. They like the gold and the wheat. And in order to ride into power they put forward old Taylor, and blow hot and cold with him and Millard Fillmore." The great organ-like voice of Douglas poured forth a steady stream of talk as we sat together under the wonderful stars of a clear sky, with the soft breeze from the Gulf blowing around us. Dorothy had fallen asleep. I got up and looked at her, and finding her resting peacefully I returned to my chair. It was now near midnight. We could hear the rattle of cabs on the cobblestones, the cries of strange voices in Spanish; and we saw the lights in the harbor, the lights in the Prado, over the city which was still feasting and playing. Then Douglas confided to me that he was going to be a candidate for President in this next campaign of 1852. The prospects were very good, he thought. If he could get two or three western states to speak out in his favor he would win. He wondered if I could not go to Iowa for him. He hoped to have the leading politicians of Illinois as delegates at Baltimore. He wished me to be a delegate, not that I was a leading politician, but I counted for as much since I was an old friend and a sympathetic adherent. I told him to use me in any way that would serve him. Having all these enterprises on his hands he was leaving for Mobile in the morning. No time to see a bull fight. "I'll not say good night to Mrs. Miles," he said. "Let her sleep." He got up to tiptoe away. "Good night, Senator," called Dorothy. She had aroused at the cessation of our talk. Douglas returned and in his most gallant manner bade Dorothy good night. Then he strode away, stepped through the trapdoor, began to descend, disappeared. I looked up at the great stars. Then lifting Dorothy into my arms, I carried her to the stairs and on my back to our room. _ |
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