William Hickling Prescott Part 4

But I had enough to keep me in countenance. I spent an hour yesterday with Lady M. getting instructions for demeaning myself.

The greatest danger was that I should be tripped up by my own sword.... The company were at length permitted one by one to pa.s.s into the presence chamber--a room with a throne and gorgeous canopy at the farther end, before which stood the little Queen of the mighty Isle and her Consort, surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting.

She was rather simply dressed, but he was in a Field Marshal's uniform, and covered, I should think, with all the orders of Europe. He is a good-looking person, but by no means so good-looking as the portraits of him. The Queen is better-looking than you might expect. I was presented by our Minister, according to the directions of the Chamberlain, as the historian of Ferdinand and Isabella, in due form--and made my profound obeisance to her Majesty, who made a very dignified curtesy, as she made to some two hundred others who were presented in like manner. I made the same low bow to his Princes.h.i.+p to whom I was also presented, and so bowed myself out of the royal circle, without my sword tripping up the heels of my n.o.bility.... Lord Carlisle ... said he had come to the drawing-room to see how I got through the affair, which he thought I did without any embarra.s.sment. Indeed, to say truth, I have been more embarra.s.sed a hundred times in my life than I was here. I don't know why; I suppose because I am getting old."

Somewhat later, while Prescott was a guest at Castle Howard, where the Queen was also entertained, he had something more to tell about her.

"At eight we went to dinner all in full dress, but mourning for the Duke of Cambridge; I, of course, for President Taylor! All wore breeches or tight pantaloons. It was a brilliant show, I a.s.sure you--that immense table with its fruits and flowers and lights glancing over beautiful plate and in that superb gallery. I was as near the Queen as at our own family table. She has a good appet.i.te and laughs merrily. She has fine eyes and teeth, but is short. She was dressed in black silk and lace with the blue scarf of the Order of the Garter across her bosom. Her only ornaments were of jet. The Prince, who is certainly a handsome and very well made man, wore the Garter with its brilliant buckle round his knee, a showy star on his breast, and the collar of a foreign order round his neck.

"In the evening we listened to some fine music and the Queen examined the pictures. Odd enough the etiquette. Lady Carlisle, who did the honours like a high-bred lady as she is, and the d.u.c.h.ess of Sutherland, were the only ladies who talked with her Majesty. Lord Carlisle, her host, was the only gentleman who did so unless she addressed a person herself. No one can sit a moment when she chooses to stand. She did me the honour to come and talk with me--asking me about my coming here, my stay in the Castle, what I was doing now in the historic way, how Everett was and where he was--for ten minutes or so; and Prince Albert afterwards a long while, talking about the houses and ruins in England, and the churches in Belgium, and the pictures in the room, and I don't know what. I found myself now and then trenching on the rules by interrupting, etc.; but I contrived to make it up by a respectful 'Your Royal Highness,' 'Your Majesty,' etc. I told the Queen of the pleasure I had in finding myself in a land of friends instead of foreigners--a sort of stereotype with me--and of my particular good fortune in being under the roof with her. She is certainly very much of a lady in her manner, with a sweet voice."

At Oxford, Prescott was the guest of the Bishop, the well-known Wilberforce, popularly known by his sobriquet of "Soapy Sam." The University conferred upon the American historian the degree of D.C.L. in spite of the fact that he was a Unitarian. This circ.u.mstance was known and caused some slight difficulty, but possibly the degree given to Everett, another Unitarian, some years before in spite of great opposition, was regarded as having established a precedent; and Oxford cherishes the cult of precedent. At the Bishop's house, however, Prescott shocked a lady by telling her of his creed. He wrote to Ticknor: "The term [Unitarian] is absolutely synonymous in a large party here with Infidel, Jew, Mohammedan; worse even, because regarded as a wolf in sheep's clothing." The lady, however, succeeded in giving Prescott a shock in return; for when he happened to mention Dr.

Channing, she told him that she had never even heard the man's name--a sort of ignorance which to a Bostonian was quite incomprehensible.

Prescott's account of the university ceremonial is given in a letter to Mr. Ticknor.

"Lord Northampton and I were doctorised in due form. We were both dressed in flaming red robes (it was the hottest day I have felt here), and then marched out in solemn procession with the Faculty, etc., in their black and red gowns through the public streets....

We were marched up the aisle; Professor Phillimore made a long Latin exposition of our merits, in which each of the adjectives ended, as Southey said in reference to himself on a like occasion, in _issimus_; and amidst the cheers of the audience we were converted into Doctors."

Prescott was much pleased with this Oxford degree, which rightly seemed to him more significant than the like honours which had come to him from various American colleges. "Now," said he, "I am a _real_ Doctor."

In the same letter he gives a little picture of Lord Brougham during a debate in the House of Lords. Brougham was denouncing Baron Bunsen for his course in the Schleswig-Holstein affair,--Bunsen being in the House at the time.

"What will interest you is the a.s.sault made so brutally by Brougham on your friend Bunsen. I was present and never saw anything so coa.r.s.e as his personalities. He said the individual [Bunsen] took up the room of two ladies. Bunsen _is_ rather fat as also Madame and his daughter--all of whom at last marched out of the gallery, but not until eyes and gla.s.ses had been directed to the spot to make out the unfortunate individuals, while Lord Brougham was flying up and down, thumping the table with his fists and foaming at the mouth till all his brother peers, including the old Duke, were in convulsions of laughter. I dined with Bunsen and Madame the same day at Ford's."

Prescott met both Disraeli and Gladstone, and, among other more purely literary men, Macaulay, Lockhart, Hallam, Thirlwall, Milman, and Rogers.

Of Macaulay he tells some interesting things.

"I have met him several times, and breakfasted with him the other morning. His memory for quotations and ill.u.s.tration is a miracle--quite disconcerting. He comes to a talk like one specially crammed. Yet you may start the topic. He told me he should be delivered of twins on his next publication, which would not be till '53.... Macaulay's first draught--very unlike Scott's--is absolutely illegible from erasures and corrections.... He tells me he has his moods for writing. When not in the vein, he does not press it.... H---- told me that Lord Jeffrey once told him that, having tripped up Macaulay in a quotation from _Paradise Lost_, two days after, Macaulay came to him and said, 'You will not catch me again in the _Paradise_.' At which Jeffrey opened the volume and took him up in a great number of pa.s.sages at random, in all of which he went on correctly repeating the original. Was it not a miraculous _tour d'esprit_? Macaulay does not hesitate to say now that he thinks he could restore the first six or seven books of the _Paradise_ in case they were lost."

Still again, Prescott expresses his astonishment at Macaulay's memory.

"Macaulay is the most of a miracle. His _tours_ in the way of memory stagger belief.... His talk is like the laboured, but still unintermitting, jerks of a pump. But it is anything but wishy-washy. It keeps the mind, however, on too great a tension for table-talk."

Writing of Samuel Rogers, who was now a very old man, he records a characteristic little anecdote.

"I have seen Rogers several times, that is, all that is out of the bedclothes. His talk is still _sauce piquante_. The best thing on record of his late sayings is his reply to Lady----, who at a dinner table, observing him speaking to a lady, said, 'I hope, Mr.

Rogers, you are not attacking me.' 'Attacking you!' he said, 'why, my dear Lady----, I have been all my life defending you.' Wit could go no further."

Prescott was the guest of the Duke of Sutherland at Trentham and at Stafford House. He was invited to Lord Lansdowne's, the Duke of Northumberland's, the Duke of Argyle's, and to Lord Grey's, and he describes himself in one letter as up to his ears in dances, dinners, and breakfasts. This sort of life, with all its glitter and gayety, suited Prescott wonderfully well, and his health improved daily. He remarked, however: "It is a life which, were I an Englishman, I should not desire a great deal of; two months at most; although I think, on the whole, the knowledge of a very curious state of society and of so many interesting and remarkable characters, well compensate the bore of a voyage. Yet I am quite sure, having once had this experience, nothing would ever induce me to repeat it, as I have heard you say it would not pay." Some little personal notes and memoranda may also be quoted.

"Everything is drawn into the vortex, and there they swim round and round, so that you may revolve for weeks and not meet a familiar face half a dozen times. Yet there is monotony in some things--that everlasting turbot and shrimp sauce. I shall never abide a turbot again."

"Do you know, by the way, that I have become a courtier and affect the royal presence? I wish you could see my gallant costume, gold-laced coat, white inexpressibles, silk hose, gold-buckled patent slippers, sword and chapeau. Am I not playing the fool as well as my betters?"

"A silly woman ... said when I told her it was thirty years since I was here, 'Pooh! you are not more than thirty years old.' And on my repeating it, she still insisted on the same flattering e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n. The Bishop of London the other day with his amiable family told me they had settled my age at forty.... So I am convinced there has been some error in the calculation. Ask mother how it is. They say here that gray hair, particularly whiskers, may happen to anybody even under thirty. On the whole, I am satisfied that I am the youngest of the family."

Writing to his daughter from Alnwick Castle, the seat of the Duke of Northumberland, Prescott gave a little instance of his own extreme sensibility. A great number of children were being entertained by the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess.

"As they all joined in the beautiful anthem, 'G.o.d save the Queen,'

the melody of the little voices rose up so clear and simple in the open courtyard that everybody was touched. Though I had nothing to do with the anthem, some of my _opera tears_,[19] dear Lizzie, came into my eyes, and did me great credit with some of the John and Jennie Bulls by whom I was surrounded."

When he left Alnwick:--

"My friendly hosts remonstrated on my departure, as they had requested me to make them a long visit; and 'I never say what I do not mean,' said the Duke, in an honest way. And when I thanked him for his hospitable welcome, 'It is no more,' he said, 'than you should meet in every house in England.' That was hearty."

The letters written by Prescott while in Europe are marked also by evidences of the beautiful affection which he cherished for his wife, of whom he once said, many years after their marriage: "Contrary to the a.s.sertion of La Bruyere--who somewhere says that the most fortunate husband finds reason to regret his condition at least once in twenty-four hours--I may truly say that I have found no such day in the quarter of a century that Providence has spared us to each other." In the letters written by him during this English visit, there remain, even after the ruthless editing done by Ticknor, pa.s.sages that are touching in their unaffected tenderness.

Thus, from London, June 14, 1850:--

"Why have I no letter on my table from home? I trust I shall find one there this evening, or I shall, after all, have a heavy heart, which is far from gay in this gayety."

And the following from Antwerp, July 23, 1850:--

"Dear Susan, I never see anything beautiful in nature or art, or hear heart-stirring music in the churches--the only place where music does stir my heart--without thinking of you and wis.h.i.+ng you could be by my side, if only for a moment."

When Prescott returned from this, his last visit to Europe, he found himself at the very zenith of his fame. In every respect, his position was most enviable. The union of critical approval with popular applause--a thing which is so rare in the experience of authors--had been fairly won by him. His books were accepted as authoritative, while they were read by thousands who never looked into the pages of other historians. Even a volume of miscellaneous essays[20] which he had collected from his stray contributions to the _North American_, and which had been published in England by Bentley in 1845, had succeeded with the public on both sides of the Atlantic. He had the prestige of a very flattering foreign recognition, and his friends.h.i.+ps embraced some of the best-known men and women in Great Britain and the United States.

It may seem odd that the letters and other writings of his contemporaries seldom contain more than a mere casual mention of him; but the explanation of this is to be found in the disposition of Prescott himself. As a man, and in his social intercourse outside of his own family, he was so thoroughly well-bred, so far from anything resembling eccentricity, and so averse from literary pose, as to afford no material for gossip or indeed for special comment. In this respect, his life resembled his writings. There was in each a noticeable absence of the piquant, or the sensational. He pleased by his manners as by his pen; but he possessed no mannerisms such as are sometimes supposed to be the hall-marks of originality. Hence, one finds no ma.s.s of striking anecdotes collected and sent about by those who knew him; any more than in his writing one chances upon startling strokes of style.

Prescott, however, had his own very definite opinions concerning his contemporaries, though they were always expressed in kindly words. To Irving he was especially attracted because of a certain likeness of temperament between them. His sensitive nature felt all the _nuances_ of Irving's delicate style, especially when it was used for pathetic effects. "You have read Irving's _Memoirs of Miss Davidson_," he once wrote to Miss Ticknor. "Did you ever meet with any novel half so touching? It is the most painful book I ever listened to. I hear it from the children and we all cry over it together. What a little flower of Paradise!" Yet he could accurately criticise his friend's productions.[21] Longfellow was another of Prescott's a.s.sociates, and his ballads of the sea were favourites. Mr. T. W. Higginson quotes Prescott as saying that _The Skeleton in Armor_ and _The Wreck of the Hesperus_ were the best imaginative poetry since Coleridge. Of Byron he wrote, in 1840, some sentences to a friend which condense very happily the opinion that has finally come to be accepted. Indeed, Prescott shows in his private letters a critical gift which one seldom finds in his published essays--a judgment at once shrewd, clear-sighted, and sensible.

"I think one is apt to talk very extravagantly of his [Byron's]

poetry; for it is the poetry of pa.s.sion and carries away the sober judgment. It defies criticism from its very nature, being lawless, independent of all rules, sometimes of grammar, and even of common sense. When he means to be strong he is often affected, violent, morbid.... But then there is, with all this smoke and fustian, a deep sensibility to the sublime and beautiful in nature, a wonderful melody, or rather harmony, of language, consisting ... in a variety--the variety of nature--in which startling ruggedness is relieved by soft and cultivated graces."

Probably the most pungent bit of literary comment that Prescott ever wrote is found in a letter of his addressed to Bancroft,[22] who had sent him a copy of Carlyle's _French Revolution_. The clangour and fury of this book could hardly fail to jar upon the nerves of so decorously cla.s.sical a writer as Prescott.

"I return you Carlyle with my thanks. I have read as much of him as I could stand. After a very candid desire to relish him, I must say I do not at all. The French Revolution is a most lamentable comedy and requires nothing but the simplest statement of facts to freeze one's blood. To attempt to colour so highly what nature has already over-coloured is, it appears to me, in very bad taste and produces a grotesque and ludicrous effect.... Then such ridiculous affectations of new-fangled words! Carlyle is ever a bungler in his own business; for his creations or rather combinations are the most discordant and awkward possible. As he runs altogether for dramatic or rather picturesque effect, he is not to be challenged, I suppose, for want of refined views. This forms no part of his plan.

His views, certainly, so far as I can estimate them, are trite enough. And, in short, the whole thing ... both as to _forme_ and to _fond_, is perfectly contemptible."

Of Thackeray, Prescott saw quite a little during the novelist's visit to America in 1852-1853, and several times entertained him. He did not greatly care for the lectures on the English humorists, which, as Thackeray confided to Prescott, caused America to "rain dollars." "I do not think he made much of an impression as a critic, but the Thackeray vein is rich in what is better than cold criticism." Thackeray on his side expresses his admiration for Prescott in the opening sentences of _The Virginians_, though without naming him:--

"On the library wall of one of the most famous writers of America, there hang two crossed swords, which his relatives wore in the great war of Independence. The one sword was gallantly drawn in the service of the King; the other was the weapon of a brave and humane republican soldier. The possessor of the harmless trophy has earned for himself a name alike honoured in his ancestor's country and his own, where genius like his has always a peaceful welcome."

This little tribute pleased Prescott very much, and he wrote to Lady Lyell asking her to get _The Virginians_ and read the pa.s.sage, which, as he says, "was very prettily done." On the whole, however, he seems to have preferred d.i.c.kens to Thackeray, being deceived by the very superficial cynicism affected by the latter. But in fiction, his prime favourites were always Scott and Dumas, whose books he never tired of hearing read. Thus, in mature age, the tastes of his boyhood continued to declare themselves; and few days ever pa.s.sed without an hour or two devoted to the magic of romance.

During the winter following his return from Europe, which he spent in Boston, he found it difficult to settle down to work again, and not until the autumn did he wholly resume his life of literary activity.

After doing so, however, he worked rapidly, so that the first volume of _Philip II._ was completed in April, 1852. It was very well received, in fact, as warmly as any of his earlier work, and the same was true of the second volume, which appeared in 1854. Prescott himself said that he was "a little nervous" about the success of the book, inasmuch as a long interval had elapsed since the publication of his _Peru_, and he feared lest the public might have lost its interest in him. The result, however, showed that he need not have felt any apprehension. Within six months after the second volume had been published, more than eight thousand copies were sold in the United States, and probably an equal number in England. Moreover, interest was revived in Prescott's preceding histories, so that nearly thirty thousand volumes of them were taken by the public within a year or two. There was the same favourable consensus of critical opinion regarding _Philip II._, and it received the honour of a notice from the pen of M. Guizot in the _Edinburgh Review_.

In bringing out this last work Prescott had changed his publishers,--not, however, because of any disagreement with the Messrs.

Harper, with whom his relations had always been most satisfactory, and of whom he always spoke in terms of high regard. But a Boston firm, Messrs. Sampson, Phillips and Company, had made him an offer more advantageous than the Harpers felt themselves justified in doing. In another sense the change might have been fortunate for Prescott, inasmuch as the warehouse of the Harpers was destroyed by fire in 1853.

In this fire were consumed several thousand copies of Prescott's earlier books, for which payment had been already made. Prescott, however, with his usual generosity, permitted the Harpers to print for their own account as many copies as had been lost. In England his publis.h.i.+ng arrangements were somewhat less favourable than hitherto. When he had made his earlier contracts with Bentley, it was supposed that the English publisher could claim copyright in works written by a foreigner.

A decision of the House of Lords adverse to such a view had now been rendered, and therefore Mr. Bentley could receive no advantage through an arrangement with Prescott other than such as might come to him from securing the advance sheets and from thus being first in the field. As a matter of fact, _Philip II._ was brought out in four separate editions in Great Britain. In Germany it was twice reprinted in the original and once in a German translation. A French version was brought out in Paris by Didot, and a Spanish one in Madrid. Prescott himself wrote:--

"I have received $17,000 for the _Philip_ and the other works the last six months.... From the tone of the foreign journals and those of my own country, it would seem that the work has found quite as much favour as any of its predecessors, and the sales have been much greater than any other of them in the same s.p.a.ce of time."

Later, writing to Bancroft, he said:--

"The book has gone off very well so far. Indeed, double the quant.i.ty, I think, has been sold of any of my preceding works in the same time. I have been lucky, too, in getting well on before Macaulay has come thundering along the track with his hundred horse-power."

While engaged in the composition of _Philip II._, Prescott had undertaken to write a continuation of Robertson's _History of Charles V._ He had been asked to prepare an entirely new work upon the reign of that monarch, but this seemed too arduous a task. He therefore rewrote the conclusion of Robertson's book--a matter of some hundred and eighty pages. This he began in the spring of 1855, and finished it during the following year. It was published on December 8, 1856, on which day he wrote to Ticknor: "My _Charles the Fifth_, or rather Robertson's with my Continuation, made his bow to-day, like a strapping giant with a little urchin holding on to the tail of his coat."[23] At about the same time Prescott prepared a brief memoir of Mr. Abbott Lawrence, the father of his daughter's husband. This was printed for private distribution.