The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862
V >>
Various >> The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 | 4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19
What means it when the people
Are prompt with blood and gold,
That this devil-born rebellion
Is growing two years old?
The Nigger feeds them as of old, and keeps away their fears,
While 'gayly into battle' go the 'Southern cavaliers.'
And the Richmond _Whig_, which lately
Lay groveling in mud,
Shows its mulatto insolence,
And prates of 'better blood:'
'We ruled them in the Union; we can thrash them out of bounds:
Ye are mad, ye drunken Helots--cap off, ye Yankee hounds!'
Yet the Northman has the power,
And the North would not be still!
Rise up! rise up, ye rulers!
Send the people where ye will!
Don't organize your victories--fly to battle with your bands--
If you can find the brains to lead, _we'll find the willing hands!_
JOHN NEAL.
John Neal was born at the close of the last century, in Portland, Maine,
where he now resides; and during sixty years it has not been decided
whether he or his twin sister was the elder.
He was born in 1793. When he was four weeks old, he was fatherless. His
school education began early, as his mother was a celebrated teacher.
From his mother's school he went to the town school, where he once
declared in our hearing that he 'got licked, frozen, and stupefied.'
That he had a rough time, may be inferred from the fact that his parents
were Quakers, and he, notwithstanding his peaceful birthright, _fought_
his way through the school as 'Quaker Neal.' He went barefoot in those
days through a great deal of trouble. Somewhere in his early life, he
went to a Quaker boarding-school at Windham, where he always averred
that they starved him through two winters, till it was a luxury to get a
mouthful of brown bread that was not a crumb or fragment that some one
had left. At this school the boys learned to sympathize in advance with
Oliver Twist--to eat trash, till they would quarrel for a bit of salt
fish-skin, and to generalize in their hate of Friends from very narrow
data. We have heard Neal speak of the two winters he spent in that
school as by far the most miserable six or eight months of his whole
life.
Very early, we think at the age of twelve years, he was imprisoned
behind a counter, and continued there till he was near twenty; and by
the time he was twenty one, he had worked his way to a retail shop of
his own in Court street, Boston. We next track him to Baltimore, where,
in 1815, if we are not out in our chronology, John Pierpont, John Neal,
and Joseph L. Lord were in partnership in a wholesale trade. Neal's
somersets in business--from partnership to wholesale jobbing, which he
went into on his own hook with a capital of _one hundred and fifty
dollars_, and as he once said, in speaking of this remarkable business
operation, 'with about as much credit as a lamp-lighter'--may not be any
more interesting to the public than they were to him then; so we shall
not be particular about them in this chapter of chronicles.
At Baltimore he was very successful, after he got at it, in making
money, but failed after the peace in 1816. This failure made him a
lawyer. With his characteristic impetuosity, he renounced and denounced
trade, determined to study law, and beat the profession with its own
weapons.
This impulse drove him at rather more than railroad speed. He studied as
if a demon chased him. By computation of then Justice Story, he
accomplished fourteen years' hard work in four. During this time he was
reading largely in half-a-dozen languages that he knew nothing of when
he began, _and maintaining himself_ by writing, either as editor of _The
Telegraph_, coeditor of _The Portico_, (for which he wrote near a volume
octavo in a year or two,) and also as joint-editor of Paul Allen's
_Revolution_, besides a tremendous avalanche of novels and poetry. We
have amused ourself casting up the amount of this four years' labor. It
seems entirely too large for the calibre of common belief, and we
suppose Neal will hardly believe us, especially if he have grown
luxurious and lazy in these latter days. Crowded into these four years,
we find: for the _Portico_ and _Telegraph_, and half-a-dozen other
papers, ten volumes; 'Keep Cool,' two volumes; 'Seventy-Six,' two
volumes; 'Errata,' two volumes; 'Niagara and Goldau,' two volumes; Index
to Niles' Register, three volumes; 'Otho,' one volume; 'Logan,' four
volumes; 'Randolph,' two volumes; Buckingham's Galaxy, Miscellanies, and
Poetry, two volumes; making the incredible quantity of thirty volumes.
He could no more have gone leisurely and carefully through this amount
of work, than a skater could walk a mile a minute on his skates. The
marvel is, that he got through it on any terms, not that he won his own
disrespect forever. We do not wonder that he manufactured more bayonets
than bee-stings for his literary armory, but we wonder that he became a
literary champion at all. With all the irons Neal had in the fire, we
are not to expect Addisonian paragraphs; and yet he has in his lifetime
been mistaken for Washington Irving, as we can show by an extract from
an old letter of his, which we will give by and by.
A power that could produce what Neal produced between 1819 and 1823,
properly disciplined and economized, might have performed tasks
analogous to those of the lightning, since it has been put in harness
and employed to carry the mail. When genius has its day of humiliation
for the wasted water of life, Neal may put on sackcloth, for he never
economized his power; but for the soul's fire quenched in idleness, or
smothered in worldliness, certainly for these years, he need wear no
weeds.
His novels are always like a rushing torrent, never like a calm stream.
They all are dignified with a purpose, with a determination to correct
some error, to remedy some abuse, to do good in any number of instances.
They are not unlike a field of teasels in blossom--there are the thorny
points of this strange plant, and the delicate and exceedingly beautiful
blossom beside, resting on the very points of a hundred lances, with
their lovely lilac bloom. Those who have lived where teasels grow will
understand this illustration. We doubt not it will seem very pointed and
proper to Neal. It must be remembered that the teasel is a very useful
article in dressing cloth, immense cards of them being set in machinery
and made to pass over the cloth and raise and clean the nap. A criticism
taking in all the good and bad points of these novels, would be too
extensive to pass the door of any review or magazine, unless in an
extra. They are full of the faults and virtues of their author's
unformed character. Rich as a California mine, we only wish they could
be passed through a gold-washer, and the genuine yield be thrown again
into our literary currency.
The character of his poems is indicated by their titles, 'Niagara' and
'Goldau,' and by the _nom de plume_ he thought proper to publish them
under, namely, 'Jehu O. Cataract.' But portions of his poetry repudiate
this thunderous parentage, and are soft as the whispering zephyr or the
cooing of doves. The gentleness of strength has a double beauty: its
own, and that of contrast. Still, the predominating character of Neal's
poetry is the sweep of the wild eagle's wing and the roar of rushing
waters.
We read his 'Otho' years since, when we were younger than now, and our
pulse beat stronger; and we read it 'holding our breath to the end'--or
this was the exact sensation we felt, as nearly as we can remember,
twelve years ago.
The character of Neal's periodical writing was just suited to a working
country, that was in too great a hurry to dine decently. People wanted
to be arrested. If they could stop, they had brains enough to judge you
and your wares; but they needed to be lassoed first, and lashed into
quietness afterward, and then they would hear and revere the man who had
been 'smart' enough to conquer them. John Neal seemed to be conscious of
this without knowing it. A veritable woman in his intuitions, he spoke
from them, and the heart of the people responded. The term 'live Yankee'
was of his coinage, and it aptly christened himself.
Neal went to Europe in 1823, and remained three years. That an American
could manage to maintain himself in England by writing, which Neal did,
is a pregnant fact. But his power is better proved than in this way. He
left America with a vow of temperance during his travels; he returned
with it unbroken. Honor to the strong man! He had traveled through
England and France, merely wetting his lips with wine. He wrote volumes
for British periodicals, and also his 'Brother Jonathan' in three
volumes. After looking over the catalogue of his labors for an hour, we
always want to draw a long breath and rest. There is no doubt that since
his return from Europe in 1826, he has written and published, in books
and newspapers, what would make at least one hundred volumes duodecimo.
It would be a hard fate for such an author to be condemned to read his
own productions, for he would never get time to read any thing else.
Neal's peculiar style caused many oddities and extravagances to be laid
at his door that did not belong there. From this fact of style, people
thought he could not disguise himself on paper. This is a mistake, for
his papers in Miller's _European Magazine_ were attributed to Washington
Irving. We transcribe the paragraph of a letter from Neal, promised
above, and which we received years since:
'The papers I wrote for Miller's _European Magazine_ have been
generally attributed to no less a person than Washington Irving--a
man whom I resemble just about as much in my person as in my
writing. He, Addisonian and Goldsmithian to the back-bone, and
steeped to the very lips in what is called classical literature, of
which I have a horror and a loathing, as the deadest of all dead
languages; he, foil of subdued pleasantry, quiet humor, and genial
blandness, upon all subjects. I, altogether--but never mind. He is
a generous fellow, and led the way to all our triumphs in that
'field of the cloth of gold' which men call the _literary_'.
Neal went to England a sort of Yankee knight-errant to fight for his
country. He had the wisdom to fight with his visor down, and quarter on
the enemy. He took heavy tribute from _Blackwood_ and others for his
articles vindicating America, which came to be extravagantly quoted and
read. His article for _Blackwood_ on the Five Presidents and the Five
Candidates, portraying General Jackson to the life as he afterward
proved to be, was translated into most of the European languages. I
transcribe another paragraph from an old letter. It is too
characteristic to remain unread by the public:
'For my paper on the Presidents, _Blackwood_ sent me five guineas,
and engaged me as a regular contributor, which I determined to be.
But I ventured to write for other journals without consulting him;
whereat he grew tetchy and impertinent, and I blew him up sky-high,
recalled an article in type for which he had paid me _fifteen_
guineas, (I wish he had kept it,) refunded the money, (I wish I
hadn't,) and left him forever. But this I will say: _Blackwood_
behaved handsomely to me from first to last, with one small
exception, and showed more courage and good feeling toward '_my
beloved_ country' while I was at the helm of that department, than
any and all the editors, publishers, and proprietors in Britain.
Give the devil his due, I say!'
This escapade with _Blackwood_ might have been a national loss; but
happily, Neal had accomplished his purpose--vindicated his country by
telling the truth, and by showing in himself the metal of one of her
sons. He had silenced the whole British battery of periodicals who had
been abusing America. He had forced literary England to a capitulation,
and he could well enough afford to leave his fifteen guineas at
_Blackwood's_, and go to France for recreation, as he did about this
time.
In 1826 he returned to America, and applied for admission to the
New-York bar. This started a hornet's nest. He had been 'sarving up' too
many newspaper and other scribblers, to be left in peace any longer.
With an excellent opinion of himself, his contempt was often quite as
large, to say the least of it, as his charity; and he had doubtless, at
times, in England, ridiculed his countrymen to the full of their
deserving; knowing that if he admitted the debtor side honestly, he
would be allowed to fix the amount of credit without controversy. His
Yankees are alarming specimens, which a growing civilization has so
nearly 'used up' that they are now regarded somewhat like fossil remains
of some extinct species of animal.
About the time Neal applied for admission to the New-York bar, a portion
of the people of Portland, stimulated by the aggrieved _literati_ above
mentioned, determined to elevate themselves into a mob _pro tem._, and
expel him from Portland. In the true spirit of his Quaker ancestry, who,
some one has said, always decided they were needed where they were not
wanted, Neal determined to stay in Portland, The mobocrats declared that
he was sold to the British. Neal retorted, in cool irony, that 'he only
wished he had got an offer.' They asserted that he was the mortal enemy
of our peculiar institutions, and that therefore he must be placarded
and mobbed. Hand-bills were issued, and widely circulated. But they did
not effect their object. They only drove this son of the Quakers to
_swear_ that he would stay in Portland. And he did stay, and established
a literary paper, though he once said to us that 'he would as soon have
thought of setting up a _Daily Advertiser_ in the Isle of Shoals three
months before.'
His marriage took place about this time, and was, as he used to say, his
pledge for good behavior. His wife was one of the loveliest of
New-England's daughters, and looked as if she might tame a tiger by the
simple magic of her presence. It is several years since we have met
Neal, and near a dozen since we saw him in his home. At that time he
must have been greatly in fault not to be a proud and happy man. If a
calm, restful exterior, and a fresh and youthful beauty, are signs of
happiness, then Mrs. Neal was one of the happiest women in the world.
The delicate softness, the perfection of youth in her beauty, lives
still in our memory. It is one of those real charms that never drop
through the mind's meshes.
Judging from Neal's impulsive nature, he was not the last man to do
something to be sorry for; but his wife and children looked as if they
were never sorry. We remember a little girl of some five or six years;
we believe they called her Maggie. Her dimpled cheek, her white round
neck and arms, and the perfect symmetry of her form, and the grace of
her motions, have haunted us these twelve years. We would not promise to
remember her as long or as well if we should see her again in these
days. But we made up our mind then, that we would rather be the father
of that child than the author of all Neal had written, or might have
written, even though he had been a wise and prudent man, and had done
his work as well as he doubtless wishes now that he had done it. Neal is
only half himself away from his beautiful home. There, he is in
place--an eagle in a nest lined with down, soft as eider. There his fine
taste is manifest in every thing. If we judge of his taste by his
rapidly-written works, we are sure to do him injustice. We find in him a
union of the most opposite qualities. We can not say a harmonious union.
An inflexible industry is not often united with a bird-like celerity and
grace of movement. With Neal, the two first have always been
combined--the whole on occasions, which might have been multiplied into
unbroken continuity if he had possessed the calm greatness that never
hastens and never rests. He did not rest; but through the first half of
his life, he surely forgot the Scripture which saith: 'He that believeth
shall not make haste.' It has often been asserted, that power which has
rest is greater than a turbulent power. We shall not attempt to settle
whether Erie or Niagara is greater, but we should certainly choose the
Lake for purposes of navigation.
Many men are careless of their character in private, but sufficiently
careful in public. The reverse is true of Neal. He has never hesitated
to throw his gauntlet in the face of the public as he threw his letters
of introduction in the fire when he arrived in Europe. But when he comes
into the charmed circle of his home, he is neither reckless nor
pugilistic, but a downright gentleman. We don't mean to say that Neal
never gets in a passion in private, or that he never needed the
wholesome restraint of a strait-waistcoat in the disputes of a Portland
Lyceum or debating-club. We do not give illustrative anecdotes, because
a lively imagination can conceive them, and probably has manufactured
several that have been afloat; still, we dare guess that the subject has
sometimes given facts to base the fictions on.
We speak of the past. A man with a forty-wildcat power imprisoned in him
is not very likely to travel on from youth to age, keeping the peace on
all occasions. Years bring a calming wisdom. The same man who once swore
five consecutive minutes, because he was forbidden by his landlady to
swear on penalty of leaving her house, and then made all the inmates
vote to refrain from profane language, and rigidly enforced the rule
thus _democratically_ established, is now, after a lapse of more than
thirty years, (particularly provoking impulse aside,) a careful and
dignified gentleman, who might be a Judge, if the public so willed.
That a long line of intellectual and finely developed ancestry gives a
man a better patent of nobility than all the kings of all countries
could confer, is beginning to be understood and believed among us;
though the old battle against titles and privilege, and the hereditary
descent of both, for a time blinded Americans to the true philosophy of
noble birth.
Neal's ancestors came originally from Scotland, and exemplify the
proverb that 'bluid is thicker than water,' in more ways than one. They
have a strong feeling of clanship, or, in other words, they are
convinced that it is an honor to be a Neal, and many of the last
generation have given proof positive that their belief is a fact. The
present generation we have little knowledge of, and do not know whether
they fulfill the promise of the name.
Neal has done good service to the Democracy of our country in many ways,
besides being one of the first and bravest champions of woman's rights.
He has labored for our literature with an ability commensurate with his
zeal, and he has drawn many an unfledged genius from the nest,
encouraged him to try his wings, and magnetized him into
self-dependence. A bold heavenward flight has often been the
consequence. A prophecy of Neal's that an idea or a man would succeed,
has seldom failed of fulfillment. We can not say this of the many
aspiring magazines and periodicals that have solicited the charity of
his name. We recollect, when brass buttons were universally worn on
men's coats, a wag undertook to prove that they were very unhealthy,
from the fact that more than half the persons who wore them suffered
from chronic or acute disease, and died before they had reached a
canonical age. According to this mode of generalization, Neal could be
convicted of causing the premature death of nine tenths of the defunct
periodicals in this country--probably no great sin, if it really lay at
his door.
In a brief outline sketch, such as we have chosen to produce, our
readers will perceive that only slight justice can be done to a man in
the manifold relations to men and things which contribute to form the
character.
John Neal's personal appearance is a credit to the country. He is tall,
with a broad chest, and a most imposing presence. One of the finest
sights we ever saw, was Neal standing with his arms folded before a fine
picture. His devotion to physical exercise, and his personal example to
his family in the practice of it--training his wife and children to take
the sparring-gloves and cross the foils with him in those graceful
attitudes which he could perfectly teach, because they were fully
developed in himself--all this has inevitably contributed to the health
and beauty of his beautiful family.
Few men have had so many right ideas of the art or science of living as
John Neal, and fewer still have acted upon them so faithfully. When we
last saw him, some ten years since--when he had lived more than half a
century--his eye had lost none of its original fire, not a nerve or
sinew was unbraced by care, labor, or struggle. He stood before us, a
noble specimen of the strong and stalwart growth of a new and
unexhausted land.
NOTE,--The foregoing must have been written years ago, if
one may judge by the color of the paper; and as the writer is now
abroad, so as not to be within reach, the manuscript has been put
into the hands of a gentleman who has been more or less acquainted
with Mr. Neal from his boyhood up, and he has consented to finish
the article by bringing down the record to our day, and putting on
what he calls a 'snapper.'
Most of what follows, if we do not wholly misunderstand the intimations
that accompany the manuscript, is in the very language of Mr. Neal
himself word for word; gathered up we care not how, whether from
correspondence or conversation, so that there is no breach of manly
trust and no indecorum to be charged.
'As to my family,' he writes, in reply to some body's questioning, 'I
know not where they originated, nor how. Sometimes I have thought,
although I have never said as much before, that we must have come up of
ourselves--the spontaneous growth of a rude, rocky soil, swept by the
boisterous north-wind, and washed by the heavy surges of some great
unvisited sea. Of course, the writer you mention, who says that my
ancestors--if I ever had any--'came from Scotland,' must know something
that I never heard of, to the best of my recollection and belief.
Somewhere in England I have supposed they originated, and probably along
the coast of Essex; for there, about Portsmouth and Dover, I have always
felt so much at home in the graveyards--among my own household, as it
were, the names being so familiar to me, and the grave-stones now to be
seen in Portsmouth and Dover, New-Hampshire, where the Neals were first
heard of three or four generations ago, being duplicates of some I saw
in Portsmouth and Dover, England.
'Others have maintained, with great earnestness and plausibility, as if
it were something to brag of, that we have the blood of Oliver Cromwell
in us; and one, at least, who has gone a-field into heraldry, and
strengthens every position with armorial bearings--which only goes to
show the unprofitableness of all such labor, so far as we are
concerned--that we are of the '_red_ O'Neals,' not the _learned_
O'Neals, if there ever were any, but the 'red O'Neals of Ireland,' and
that I am, in fact, a lineal descendant of that fine fellow who
'_bearded_' Queen Elizabeth in her presence-chamber, with his right hand
clutching the hilt of his dagger.
'But, for myself, I must acknowledge that if I ever had a
great-great-grandfather, I know not where to dig for him--on my father's
side, I mean; for on the side of my mother I have lots of grandfathers
and great-grandfathers--and furthermore this deponent sayeth not--up to
the days of George Fox; enough, I think, to show clearly that the Neals
did not originate among the aborigines of the New World, whatever may be
supposed to the contrary. And so, in a word, the whole sum and substance
of all I know about my progenitors, male and female, is, that they were
always a sober-minded, conscientious, hard-working race, with a way and
a will of their own, and a habit of seeing for themselves, and judging
for themselves, and taking the consequences.
'Nor is it true that I am a 'large' or 'tall' man, though, in some
unaccountable way, always passing for a great deal more than I would
ever measure or weigh; and my own dear mother having lived and died in
the belief that I was good six feet, and well-proportioned, like my
father. My inches never exceeded five feet eight-and-a-half, and my
weight never varied from one hundred and forty-seven to one hundred and
forty-nine pounds, for about five-and-forty years; after which, getting
fat and lazy, I have come to weigh from one hundred and sixty-five to
one hundred and seventy-five pounds, without being an inch taller, I am
quite sure.'
Mr. Neal owns up, it appears, to the following publications, omitted by
the writer of the article you mentioned: 'Rachel Dyer,' one volume;
'Authorship,' one volume; 'Brother Jonathan,' three volumes, (English
edition;) 'Ruth Elder,' one volume; 'One Word More;' 'True Womanhood,'
one volume; magazine articles, reviews, and stories in most of the
British and American monthlies, and in some of the quarterlies, to the
amount of twenty volumes, at least, duodecimo. In addition to which, he
has been a liberal contributor all his life to some of the ablest
newspapers of the age, and either sole or sub-editor, or associate, in
perhaps twenty other enterprises, most of which fell through.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 | 4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19