A Century of Science, and Other Essays

One should read Mr. Parkman's detailed narrative of the strange life of these people, and the manner of his taking part in it: how he called the villagers together and regaled them sumptuously with boiled dog, and made them a skilful speech, in which he quite satisfied them as to his reasons for coming to dwell among them; how a warm friendship grew up between himself and the venerable Red Water, who was the custodian of an immense fund of folk lore, but was apt to be superstitiously afraid of imparting any of it to strangers; how war parties were projected and abandoned; how buffalo and antelope were hunted, and how life was carried on in the dull intervals between such occupations. If one were to keep on quoting what is of especial interest in the book, one would have to quote the whole of it. But one characteristic portrait contains so much insight into Indian life that I cannot forbear giving it. It is the sketch of a young fellow called the Hail-Storm, as Parkman found him one evening on his return from the chase: "his light graceful figure reclining on the ground in an easy attitude, while … near him lay the fresh skin of a female elk which he had just killed among the mountains, only a mile or two from camp. No doubt the boy's heart was elated with triumph, but he betrayed no sign of it. He even seemed totally unconscious of our approach, and his handsome face had all the tranquillity of Indian self-control, – a self-control which prevents the exhibition of emotion without restraining the emotion itself. It was about two months since I had known the Hail-Storm, and within that time his character had remarkably developed. When I first saw him, he was just emerging from the habits and feelings of the boy into the ambition of the hunter and warrior. He had lately killed his first deer, and this had excited his aspirations for distinction. Since that time he had been continually in search for game, and no young hunter in the village had been so active or so fortunate as he. All this success had produced a marked change in his character. As I first remembered him, he always shunned the society of the young squaws, and was extremely bashful and sheepish in their presence; but now, in the confidence of his new reputation, he began to assume the airs and arts of a man of gallantry. He wore his red blanket dashingly over his left shoulder, painted his cheeks every day with vermilion, and hung pendants of shells in his ears. If I observed aright, he met with very good success in his new pursuits; still the Hail-Storm had much to accomplish before he attained the full standing of a warrior. Gallantly as he began to bear himself before the women and girls, he was still timid and abashed in the presence of the chiefs and old men; for he had never yet killed a man, or stricken the dead body of an enemy in battle. I have no doubt that the handsome smooth-faced boy burned with desire to flesh his maiden scalping knife, and I would not have encamped alone with him without watching his movements with a suspicious eye." Mr. Parkman once told me that it was rare for a young brave to obtain full favour with the women without having at least one scalp to show; and this fact was one of the secret sources of danger which the ordinary white visitor would never think of. Peril is also liable to lurk in allowing one's self to be placed in a ludicrous light among these people; accordingly, whenever such occasions arose, Parkman knew enough to "maintain a rigid, inflexible countenance, and [thus] wholly escaped their sallies." He understood that his rifle and pistols were the only friends on whom he could invariably rely when alone among Indians. His own observation taught him "the extreme folly of confidence, and the utter impossibility of foreseeing to what sudden acts the strange, unbridled impulses of an Indian may urge him. When among this people, danger is never so near as when you are unprepared for it, never so remote as when you are armed and on the alert to meet it at any moment. Nothing offers so strong a temptation to their ferocious instincts as the appearance of timidity, weakness, or security."

The immense importance of this sojourn in the wilderness, in its relation to Parkman's life work, is obvious. Knowledge, intrepidity, and tact carried him through it unscathed, and good luck kept him clear of encounters with hostile Indians, in which these qualities might not have sufficed to avert destruction. It was rare good fortune that kept his party from meeting with an enemy during five months of travel through a dangerous region. Scarcely three weeks after he had reached the confines of civilization, the Pawnees and Comanches began a systematized series of hostilities, and "attacked … every party, large or small, that passed during the next six months."

During this adventurous experience, says Parkman, "my business was observation, and I was willing to pay dearly for the opportunity of exercising it." A heavy price was exacted of him, not by red men, but by that "subtle personage" whom he had tried to take by the horns, and who seems to have resented such presumption. Toward the end of the journey Parkman found himself ill in much the same way as at the beginning, and craved medical advice. It was in mid-September, on a broad meadow in the wild valley of the Arkansas, where his party had fallen in with a huge Santa Fé caravan of white-topped wagons, with great droves of mules and horses; and we may let Parkman tell the story in his own words, in the last of our extracts from his fascinating book. One of the guides had told him that in this caravan was a physician from St. Louis, by the name of Dobbs, of the very highest standing in his profession. "Without at all believing him, I resolved to consult this eminent practitioner. Walking over to the camp, I found him lying sound asleep under one of the wagons. He offered in his own person but indifferent evidence of his skill; for it was five months since I had seen so cadaverous a face. His hat had fallen off, and his yellow hair was all in disorder; one of his arms supplied the place of a pillow; his trousers were wrinkled halfway up to his knees, and he was covered with little bits of grass and straw upon which he had rolled in his uneasy slumber. A Mexican stood near, and I made him a sign to touch the doctor. Up sprang the learned Dobbs, and sitting upright rubbed his eyes and looked about him in bewilderment. I regretted the necessity of disturbing him, and said I had come to ask professional advice.

"'Your system, sir, is in a disordered state,' said he solemnly, after a short examination. I inquired what might be the particular species of disorder. 'Evidently a morbid action of the liver,' replied the medical man. 'I will give you a prescription.'

"Repairing to the back of one of the covered wagons, he scrambled in; for a moment I could see nothing of him but his boots. At length he produced a box which he had extracted from some dark recess within, and opening it presented me with a folded paper. 'What is it?' said I. 'Calomel,' said the doctor.

"Under the circumstances I would have taken almost anything. There was not enough to do me much harm, and it might possibly do good; so at camp that night I took the poison instead of supper."

After the return from the wilderness Parkman found his physical condition rather worse than better. The trouble with the eyes continued, and we begin to find mention of a lameness which was sometimes serious enough to confine him to the house, and which evidently lasted a long time; but from this he seems to have recovered. My personal acquaintance with him began in 1872, and I never noticed any symptoms of lameness, though I remember taking several pleasant walks with him. Perhaps the source of lameness may be indicated in the following account of his condition in 1848, cited from the fragment of autobiography in which he uses the third person: "To the maladies of the prairie succeeded a suite of exhausting disorders, so reducing him that circulation of the extremities ceased, the light of the sun became insupportable, and a wild whirl possessed his brain, joined to a universal turmoil of the nervous system which put his philosophy to the sharpest test it had hitherto known. All collapsed, in short, but the tenacious strength of muscles hardened by long activity." In 1851, whether due or not to disordered circulation, there came an effusion of water on the left knee, which for the next two years prevented walking.

It was between 1848 and 1851 that Parkman was engaged in writing "The Conspiracy of Pontiac." He felt that no regimen could be worse for him than idleness, and that no tonic could be more bracing than work in pursuance of the lofty purpose which had now attained maturity in his mind. He had to contend with a "triple-headed monster: " first, the weakness of the eyes, which had come to be such that he could not keep them open to the light while writing his own name; secondly, the incapacity for sustained attention; and thirdly, the indisposition to putting forth mental effort. Evidently, the true name of this triple-headed monster was nervous exhaustion; there was too much soul for the body to which it was yoked.

"To be made with impunity, the attempt must be made with the most watchful caution. He caused a wooden frame to be constructed of the size and shape of a sheet of letter paper. Stout wires were fixed horizontally across it, half an inch apart, and a movable back of thick pasteboard fitted behind them. The paper for writing was placed between the pasteboard and the wires, guided by which, and using a black lead crayon, he could write not illegibly with closed eyes. He was at the time absent from home, on Staten Island, where, and in the neighbouring city of New York, he had friends who willingly offered their aid. It is needless to say to which half of humanity nearly all these kind assistants belonged. He chose for a beginning that part of the work which offered fewest difficulties and with the subject of which he was most familiar; namely, the Siege of Detroit. The books and documents, already partially arranged, were procured from Boston, and read to him at such times as he could listen to them; the length of each reading never without injury much exceeding half an hour, and periods of several days frequently occurring during which he could not listen at all. Notes were made by him with closed eyes, and afterwards deciphered and read to him till he had mastered them. For the first half-year the rate of composition averaged about six lines a day. The portion of the book thus composed was afterwards partially rewritten.

"His health improved under the process, and the remainder of the volume – in other words, nearly the whole of it – was composed in Boston, while pacing in the twilight of a large garret, the only exercise which the sensitive condition of his sight permitted him in an unclouded day while the sun was above the horizon. It was afterwards written down from dictation by relatives under the same roof, to whom he was also indebted for the preparatory readings. His progress was much less tedious than at the outset, and the history was complete in about two years and a half."

The book composed under such formidable difficulties was published in 1851. It did not at once meet with the reception which it deserved. The reading public did not expect to find entertainment in American history. In the New England of those days the general reader had heard a good deal about the Pilgrim Fathers and Salem Witchcraft, and remembered hazily the stories of Hannah Dustin and of Putnam and the wolf, but could not be counted on for much else before the Revolution. I remember once hearing it said that the story of the "Old French War" was something of no more interest or value for Americans of to-day than the cuneiform records of an insurrection in ancient Nineveh; and so slow are people in gaining a correct historical perspective that within the last ten years the mighty world struggle in which Pitt and Frederick were allied is treated in a book entitled "Minor Wars of the United States"! In 1851 the soil was not yet ready for the seed sown by Parkman, and he did not quickly or suddenly become popular. But after the publication of the "Pioneers of France" in 1865 his fame grew rapidly. In those days I took especial pleasure in praising his books, from the feeling that they were not so generally known as they ought to be, particularly in England, where he has since come to be recognized as foremost among American writers of history. In 1879 I had been giving a course of lectures at University College, London, on "America's Place in History," and shortly afterwards repeated this course at the little Hawthorne Hall, on Park Street, in Boston. One evening, having occasion to allude briefly to Pontiac and his conspiracy, I said, among other things, that it was memorable as "the theme of one of the most brilliant and fascinating books that have ever been written by any historian since the days of Herodotus." The words were scarcely out of my mouth when I happened to catch sight of Mr. Parkman in my audience. I had not observed him before, though he was seated quite near me. I shall never forget the sudden start which he gave, and the heightened colour of his noble face, with its curious look of surprise and pleasure, – an expression as honest and simple as one might witness in a rather shy schoolboy suddenly singled out for praise. I was so glad that I had said what I did without thinking of his hearing me.

In May, 1850, while at work upon this great book, Mr. Parkman married Catherine, daughter of Jacob Bigelow, an eminent physician of Boston. Of this marriage there were three children, – a son, who died while an infant, and two daughters, who still survive. Mrs. Parkman died in 1858, and her husband never married again.

During these years, when his complicated ailments for a time made historical work impossible even to this man of Titanic will, he assuaged his cravings for spiritual creation by writing a novel, "Vassall Morton." Of his books it is the only one that I have never seen, and I can speak of it only from hearsay. It is said to be not without signal merits, but it did not find a great many readers, and its author seems not to have cared much for it. The main current of his interest in life was too strong to allow of much diversion into side channels.

"Meanwhile," to cite his own words, "the Faculty of Medicine were not idle, displaying that exuberance of resource for which that remarkable profession is justly famed. The wisest, indeed, did nothing, commending his patient to time and faith; but the activity of his brethren made full amends for this masterly inaction. One was for tonics, another for a diet of milk; one counselled galvanism, another hydropathy; one scarred him behind the neck with nitric acid, another drew red-hot irons along his spine with a view of enlivening that organ. Opinion was divergent as practice. One assured him of recovery in six years; another thought that he would never recover. Another, with grave circumlocution, lest the patient should take fright, informed him that he was the victim of an organic disease of the brain which must needs dispatch him to another world within a twelvemonth; and he stood amazed at the smile of an auditor who neither cared for the announcement nor believed it. Another, an eminent physiologist of Paris, after an acquaintance of three months, one day told him that from the nature of the disorder he had at first supposed that it must, in accordance with precedent, be attended with insanity, and had ever since been studying him to discover under what form the supposed aberration declared itself; adding, with a somewhat humorous look, that his researches had not been rewarded with the smallest success."

Soon after his marriage Mr. Parkman became possessor of a small estate of three acres or so in Jamaica Plain, on the steep shore of the beautiful pond. It was a charming place, thoroughly English in its homelike simplicity and refined comfort. The house stood near the entrance, and on not far from the same level as the roadway; but from the side and rear the ground fell off rapidly, so that it was quite a sharp descent to the pretty little wharf or dock, where one might sit and gaze on the placid, dreamy water. It is with that lovely home that Parkman is chiefly associated in my mind. Twenty years ago, while I was acting as librarian at Harvard University, he was a member of the corporation, and I had frequent occasion to consult with him on matters of business. At such times I would drive over from Cambridge or take a street car to Jamaica Plain, sure of a cordial greeting and a pleasant chat, in which business always received its full measure of justice, and was then thrust aside for more inspiring themes. The memory of one day in particular will go with me through life, – an enchanted day in the season of apple blossoms, when I went in the morning for a brief errand, taking with me one of my little sons. The brief errand ended in spending the whole day and staying until late in the evening, while the world of thought was ransacked and some of its weightiest questions provisionally settled! Nor was either greenhouse or garden or pond neglected. At such times there was nothing in Parkman's looks or manner to suggest the invalid. He and I were members of a small club of a dozen or more congenial spirits who now for nearly thirty years have met once a month to dine together. When he came to the dinner he was always one of the most charming companions at the table; but ill health often prevented his coming, and in the latter years of his life he never came. I knew nothing of the serious nature of his troubles; and when I heard the cause of his absence alleged, I used to suppose that it was merely some need for taking care of digestion or avoiding late hours that kept him at home. What most impressed one, in talking with him, was the combination of power and alertness with extreme gentleness. Nervous irritability was the last thing of which I should have suspected him. He never made the slightest allusion to his ill health; he would probably have deemed it inconsistent with good breeding to intrude upon his friends with such topics; and his appearance as always most cheerful. His friend (our common friend), the late Octavius Frothingham, says of him: "Again and again he had to restrain the impulse to say vehement things, or to do violent deeds without the least provocation; but he maintained so absolutely his moral self-control that none but the closest observer would notice any deviation from the most perfect calm and serenity." I can testify that until after Mr. Parkman's death I had never dreamed of the existence of any such deviation.

Garden and greenhouse formed a very important part of the home by Jamaica Pond. Mr. Parkman's love for Nature was in no way more conspicuously shown than in his diligence and skill in cultivating flowers. It is often observed that plants will grow for some persons, but not for others; one man's conservatory will be heavy with verdure, gorgeous in its colours, and redolent of sweet odours, while his neighbour's can show nothing but a forlorn assemblage of pots and sticks. The difference is due to the loving care which learns and humours the idiosyncrasies of each individual thing that grows, the keen observation of the naturalist supplemented by the watchful solicitude of the nurse. Among the indications of rare love and knowledge of Nature is marked success in inducing her to bring forth her most exquisite creations, the flowers. As an expert in horticulture Parkman achieved celebrity. His garden and greenhouse had extraordinary things to show. As he pointed out to me on my first visit to them, he followed Darwinian methods and originated new varieties of plants. The Lilium Parkmani has long been famous among florists. He was also eminent in the culture of roses, and author of a work entitled "The Book of Roses," which was published in 1866. He was President of the Horticultural Society, and at one time Professor of Horticulture in Harvard University. There can be no doubt as to the beneficial effects of these pursuits. It is wholesome to be out of doors with spade and trowel and sprinkler; there is something tonic in the aroma of fresh damp loam; and nothing is more restful to the soul than daily sympathetic intercourse with flowering plants. It was surely here that Parkman found his best medicine.

When he entered, in 1851, upon his great work on "France and England in the New World," he had before him the task "of tracing out, collecting, indexing, arranging, and digesting a great mass of incongruous material scattered on both sides of the Atlantic." A considerable portion of this material was in manuscript, and involved much tedious exploration and the employment of trained copyists. It was necessary to study carefully the catalogues of many European libraries, and to open correspondence with such scholars and public officials in both hemispheres as might be able to point to the whereabouts of fresh sources of information. Work of this sort, as one bit of clue leads to another, is capable of arousing the emotion of pursuit to a very high degree; and I believe the effect of it upon Parkman's health must have been good, in spite of, or rather because of, its difficulties. The chase was carried on until his manuscript treasures had been brought to an extraordinary degree of completeness. These made his library quite remarkable. In printed books it was far less rich. He had not the tastes of a bibliophile, and did not feel it necessary, as Freeman did, to own all the books he used. His library of printed books, which at his death went to Harvard University, was a very small one for a scholar, – about twenty-five hundred volumes, including more or less of Greek and Latin literature and theology inherited from his father. His manuscripts, as I have already mentioned, went to the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

When the manuscripts had come into his hands, an arduous labour was begun. All had to be read to him and taken in slowly, bit by bit. The incapacity to keep steadily at work made it impossible to employ regular assistants profitably; and for readers he either depended upon members of his own family or called in pupils from the public schools. Once he speaks of having had a well-trained young man, who was an excellent linguist; on another occasion it was a schoolgirl "ignorant of any tongue but her own," and "the effect, though highly amusing to bystanders, was far from being so to the person endeavouring to follow the meaning of this singular jargon." The larger part of the documents used in preparing the earlier volumes were in seventeenth-century French, which, though far from being Old French, is enough unlike the nineteenth-century speech to have troubled Parkman's readers, and thus to have worried his ears.

As Frothingham describes his method, when the manuscripts were slowly read to him, "first the chief points were considered, then the details of the story were gone over carefully and minutely. As the reading went on he made notes, first of essential matters, then of non-essential. After this he welded everything together, made the narrative completely his own, infused into it his own fire, quickened it by his own imagination, and made it, as it were, a living experience, so that his books read like personal reminiscences. It was certainly a slow and painful process, but the result more than justified the labour."

In the fragment of autobiography already quoted, which Mr. Parkman left with Dr. Ellis in 1868, but which was apparently written in 1865, he says: "One year, four years, and numerous short intervals lasting from a day to a month represent the literary interruptions since the work in hand was begun. Under the most favourable conditions it was a slow and doubtful navigation, beset with reefs and breakers, demanding a constant lookout and a constant throwing of the lead. Of late years, however, the condition of the sight has so far improved as to permit reading, not exceeding on the average five minutes at one time. This modicum of power, though apparently trifling, proves of the greatest service, since by a cautious management its application may be extended. By reading for one minute, and then resting for an equal time, this alternate process may generally be continued for about half an hour. Then after a sufficient interval it may be repeated, often three or four times in the course of the day. By this means nearly the whole of the volume now offered ["Pioneers"] has been composed… How far, by a process combining the slowness of the tortoise with the uncertainty of the hare, an undertaking of close and extended research can be advanced, is a question to solve which there is no aid from precedent, since it does not appear that an attempt under similar circumstances has hitherto been made. The writer looks, however, for a fair degree of success."