Volume 11 — HIS NAME?

(An incident of the Boston fire.)

I.

II.

III.

M. J. P.

UNPUBLISHED LETTER FROM LORD NELSON TO LADY HAMILTON.

[It has been a matter of congratulation that the destruction by the Boston fire was confined to buildings and other property representing simply the wealth of the city, and did not extend to its monuments or its artistic and literary treasures. The exceptions are, in fact, comparatively small in amount, yet they are such as must excite a general regret. The contents of the studios in Summer street, and the collection of armor, unique in this country, bequeathed by the late Colonel Bigelow Lawrence to the Boston Athenaeum, and temporarily deposited at 82 Milk street, could not perish without awaking other feelings besides that of sympathy with their past or prospective possessors. A similar loss was that of many of the books and manuscripts amassed by the historian Prescott, and comprising the collections pertaining to the Histories of the Conquest of Mexico and Peru and of Philip II. The manuscripts were comprised in some thirty or forty folio volumes, and consisted of copies or abstracts of documents in the public archives and libraries of Europe, in the family archives of several Spanish noblemen, and in private collections like that at Middle Hill. The printed books, of which there were perhaps a thousand, included many of great value and not a few of extreme rarity. A large mass of private correspondence was also consumed. We are not yet informed whether the same fate has befallen a small but very choice collection of autographs, embracing letters written or signed by Ferdinand and Isabella, Charles V., Pope Clement VII., Prospero Colonna, the Great Captain, and other sovereigns and eminent personages of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Very few modern autographs were included in this collection, the only examples, we believe, being notes written by Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and the duke of Wellington, and a longer letter addressed by Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton. This last, which we are permitted to print from a copy made some time ago, is not exactly a model of composition, but it is very characteristic, and shows the strength of that enthrallment which led him, despite his natural kindness of heart, to risk the lives of his men in order to communicate with the object of his passion.]

SUNDAY NIGHT, Feb. 15, 9 o'clock [1801].

MY DEAR AMIABLE FRIEND: Could you have seen the boat leave the ship, I am sure your heart would have sunk within you. I would not have given sixpence for the lives of the men: a tremendous wave broke and missed upsetting the boat by a miracle. O God, how my heart thumped to see them safe! Then they got safe on shore, and I had given a two-pound note to cheer up the poor fellows when they landed; but I was so anxious to send a letter for you. I knew it was impossible for any boat to come off to us since Friday noon, when the boat carried your letters enclosed for Napean, and she still remains on shore. Only rest assured I always write, and never doubt your old and dear friend, who never yet deserved it. The gale abates very little, if anything, and it is truly fortunate that our fleet is not in port, or some accident would most probably happen; but both St. George and this ship have new cables, which is all we have to trust to; but if my friend is true I have no fear. I can take all the care which human foresight can, and then we must trust to Providence, who keeps a lookout for poor Jack. I cannot, my dear friend, afford to buy the three pictures of the "Battle of the Nile," or I should like very much to have them, and Mr. Boyden cannot afford to trust me one year. If he could, perhaps I could manage it. I have desired my brother to examine the four numbers of the tickets I bought with Gibbs. I hope he has told you. I dare say in the office here is the numbers of the tickets my agents have bought for the ensuing lottery. I hope we shall be successful. I hope you always kiss my godchild for me: pray do, and I will repay you ten times when we meet, which I hope will be very soon. Monday morning. It is a little more moderate, and we are going to send a boat, but at present none can get to us, and, therefore, I send this letter No. (1) to say we are in being. I hope in the afternoon to be able to get letters, and, if possible, to answer them. Kiss my godchild for me, bless it, and Believe me ever yours,

NELSON AND BRONTE.

"WHITE-HAT" DAY.

On one of the last days in September we were the astonished recipients of a singular and mysterious invitation from a member of the New York Board of Brokers. The note contained words like these: "Come to the Exchange on Monday, September 30th: white hats are declared confiscated on that day."

It would have puzzled Oedipus or a Philadelphia lawyer to trace the connection between white hats and stocks, to tell what Hecuba was to them or they to Hecuba, and why they should be more interfered with by the New York Stock Exchange on the 30th of September than upon any other day. It is true that during the last summer some slight political bias was supposed to be hidden beneath that popular headpiece irreverently styled "a Greeley plug," but then stocks are not politics, nor would any but a punster trace an intimate connection between hats and polls. A story has gone through the papers, to be sure, about an unfortunate deacon who found it impossible to collect the coppers of the congregation in a Greeley hat, but then slight excuses have been made available on charitable occasions before the present election, and we decline to accept the sentiment of that congregation as unmixed devotion to the Republican candidates. They did not wish to Grant their money, that was all.

And then, again, unlike the miller of the old conundrum, men generally wear white hats to keep their heads cool; with which laudable endeavor why should the Stock Exchange wish to interfere? One never hears of a "corner" in hats. And then, too, was it the bulls or the bears who objected to them? Bulls, we all know, have an aversion to scarlet drapery, but Darwin, in his studies of the feeling for color among animals, has omitted any references to a horror of white hats even among the most accomplished of the anthropoid apes.

Pondering all these problems, and many more, our puzzled trio went to the Stock Exchange on the last day of September. We were conducted into the safe seclusion of the Visitors' Gallery, from which coign of vantage we could look down unharmed upon the frantic multitude below. The room is large and very lofty, its prevailing tint a warm brown, relieved by bright decorations of the Byzantine order. Across one end runs a small gallery for visitors, without seats, and some twenty feet above the floor, and opposite the gallery is a raised platform, with a long table and majestic arm-chairs for the president and other officers of the Board. High on the wall above these elevated dignitaries glitters in large gold letters the mystic legend, "New York Stock Exchange." On the left of the platform stands a large blackboard, whereon the fluctuations in stocks are recorded, and around the sides of the room are displayed various signs bearing the names of different stocks (like the banners of the knights in royal chapels), beneath which eager groups collect. At the lower end of the room, under the Visitors' Gallery, are seats whereon weary brokers may repose after the brunt of battle. In the centre of the upper end of the vast apartment is a long oval cock-pit—if it may be so called—of two or three degrees, with a table in the lowest circle. It is so arranged as to give the brokers, standing upon the graded steps, full opportunity to see and to be seen. On the table, in singular contrast with the spirit of the place, was a large and beautiful basket of flowers. Anything more painfully incongruous it would be difficult to imagine. The poor flowers seemed to wear an air of patient suffering as they wasted their sweetness on that (literally) howling wilderness.

It was just after ten, and the doors had been open but a few moments when we entered the gallery, already quite full of ladies and gentlemen—generally very young gentlemen, anxious to learn from the glorious example of their elders. The floor below us was fast being strewn with torn bits of paper, which have to be swept up several times a day. Eager groups were gathered under the various signs upon the walls and pillars, apparently playing the Italian game of morra, to judge by the quick gestures of their restless fingers. Some were scribbling cabalistic signs on little bits of paper, and almost all were howling like maniacs or wild beasts half starved. The only place I was ever in at all to be compared with it in volume and variety of noise is the parrot-room in the London Zoological Gardens. Bedlam and Pandemonium I have not visited—as yet—and consequently cannot speak from personal experience. But the parrots in that awful house in Regent's Park are capable of making more hideous noises in a given moment than any other wild beasts in the world, except brokers. Here the human animal comes out triumphantly supreme.

To add to the refreshing variety of the din, long, lanky youths in gray sauntered about like the keepers of the carnivora, and bawled incessantly till they were red in the face. These, we were told, were the pages, who reported the state of the market and delivered orders and commissions. To the uninitiated they were a fraud and a delusion, but so was the whole thing. A crowd of men, walking about or standing in groups, note-book in hand, talking eagerly or yelling unintelligible nonsense at the top of their voices, and gesticulating with the fury of madmen, while in and around the crowd strolled those extraordinary pages, calmly shouting full in the brokers' faces,—this, we were told, was "business!" This is the mysterious occupation to which our friends, countrymen and lovers devote so large a portion of their time and thoughts. At this strange diversion millions of dollars change hands in a few hours, and bulls and bears in this little nest agree to make things generally uncomfortable and uncertain for the outside world.

But where were the white hats, and what of their daring wearers? As the crowd thickened, they began to shine out upon the general blackness in obvious distinction. At first, the howling multitude, eager for filthy lucre, took no particular notice of them beyond an occasional hurried poke or pat, but this delusive mildness did not long continue. After the first fifteen or twenty minutes, during which the favorite stocks had been danced up and down a few times, like so many crying babies, the appetite of the hundred-headed hydra abated a little, and the general attention to business relaxed. Suddenly—no one knew whence or wherefore—up rose a white hat in the air, high above the heads of the people, and a bareheaded individual was seen struggling wildly in the arms of the mob, who set up ironical cheers at his unavailing efforts to regain his flying headpiece. It rose and fell faster and farther than any fancy stock of them all, now soaring to the vaulted roof, now being kicked along the dusty floor.

seemed to be the sentiment of the occasion, as the unruly mob swayed and struggled about the dilapidated victim of their sport. In one corner stood a quiet, dignified gentleman, talking sedately to a little knot of friends. He wore a tall white "stove-pipe" of the most obnoxious kind. In a twinkling it was seized and sent flying toward the roof with its softer predecessor. Its owner gave one glance over his shoulder, and "smiled a sickly smile," while it was very evident that

The fun grew fast and furious, the air was literally darkened with flying hats of every shape and size, but all white. The stout tall beavers were converted into footballs till their crowns were kicked out and their brims torn off, when they were seized upon as instruments for further torture. Some innocent member of the large fraternity, now, to use a nautical phrase, scudding under bare polls, was pounced upon, and over his unfortunate head the crownless hat was drawn till the ragged remnant of its brim rested upon his shoulders. One poor creature was thus bonneted with at least three tiers of hats, and was last seen on the edge of the cockpit struggling with imminent suffocation.

At the height of the howling, scuffling, kicking and fighting a short diversion was effected. A tall and portly broker appeared upon the scene in an entire suit of new broadcloth. It was unmistakably new, its brilliancy quite undimmed. Instantly a rush was made for him by the fickle crowd. They swept him, as by some mighty wave, into the centre of the room: they turned him round and round like a pivoted statue, and examined him and patted him approvingly on every side. Then they made a large ring round him and gave him three cheers. Not content with this, with one sudden impulse they rushed at him again, and tried to lift him upon the table, that they might see him better. But this the portly broker resisted: he fought like a good fellow, and the crowd, tired of struggling with a man of so much weight, gave one final cheer and went back to the chase of the white hats.

We stayed about half an hour to watch these elegant and refined diversions: at the end of that time our patience and the white hats were giving out together. The din was deafening and the dust was rapidly rising. The floor was strewn with scraps of papers and the mangled remains of felt and beaver. Brimless hats and hatless brims, linings, bands, rent and tattered crowns, and ragged fragments of the fray, were all over the place. A writhing victim in gray, masked by a crownless hat, was struggling upon the table to the evident danger of those unhappy flowers; the president was calling across the tumult in stentorian tones; but the tumult refused to fall, and the imperturbable pages were bawling upon the skirts of the crowd with stolid pertinacity. The noise was terrific, the confusion indescribable.

We are often told that women are unfitted for business pursuits. If this was business, I should say decidedly they were. My acquaintance with women has been large and varied, but I have yet to see the woman whom I consider qualified to be a member of the New York Board of Brokers. I have been present at many gatherings composed entirely of women, from the "Woman's Parliament" to country sewing-societies, but never, even in that much-abused body, the New York Sorosis, have I seen a crowd of women, however excited, however frolicsome, however full of fun, capable of playing football with each other's bonnets even upon April Fools' Day. I am convinced that not even Miss Anthony or Mrs. Stanton would have hesitated to admit, had she been present on the auspicious occasion above recorded, that there are limits even to woman's sphere. Let her preach and practice, and sail ships, and make horse-shoes, and command armies, if she will, let her vote for all sorts of disreputable characters to be set over her, if she choose, but let her recognize the fact that between her and the gentle amenities of the New York Stock Exchange there is a great gulf fixed, which only the superior being man, with his lordly intellect, his keen morality and his exquisite and unvarying courtesy, can bridge over.

K. H.

MR. SOTHERN AS GARRICK.

One hundred and thirty-five years ago two young men came up to London to try their fortune: half riding, half walking, the young fellows made their journey. One was thick-set, heavy and uncouth, and years afterward became known to men and fame as Samuel Johnson: the other was bright, slender, active, and was called David Garrick. Some ten years later, just before the battle of Culloden, a Dutch vessel, having crossed the Channel, landed at Harwich. There was on board an apparent page, in reality a young Viennese girl disguised in male attire, who journeyed up to London too, where she soon made her appearance as a dancer at the Hay-market Theatre: there she achieved great success, and became talked about as "La Violette." She was under the patronage of the earl and countess of Burlington, and finally became Mrs. Garrick. It is said that she was the daughter of a respectable citizen of Vienna—that she had been engaged to dance at the palace with the children of the empress Maria Teresa, but that, her charms proving too attractive to the emperor, the empress had packed her off to London with letters of recommendation to persons of quality there. It seems more probable, however, that she was am actress at Vienna, and simply crossed the sea to try her fortune in England. Becoming fascinated with Garrick's acting, she married him after refusing several more brilliant offers, and in spite of the opposition of her kind patroness, Lady Burlington, who wished her to marry so as to secure higher social position. This match gave rise to much romantic gossip. It was said that a wealthy young lady had fallen in love with the great actor one night in Romeo—that he had been induced by her father to come to the house and break the charm by feigning intoxication: some versions had it that he came disguised as a physician. A popular German comedy was written upon it, and still later Mr. Robertson dramatized it for the English stage, and produced a play in which we have lately had an opportunity of witnessing the fine acting of Mr. Sothern. Garrick was certainly fortunate among actors: he not only achieved high professional fame, but he accumulated a large private fortune and lived a happy domestic life in a splendid home filled with choice works of art. The traveler abroad who is favored with an invitation to the Garrick Club, may there see the picture of the great actor "in his habit as he lived," looking down nightly on a collection of the most renowned wits and authors of the metropolis; and to crown all, when Mr. Sothern acts—were it not for his moustache—we might suppose we saw the man himself alive before us.

Concerning Mr. Sothern's acting, it affords a fine example of that quality—so very difficult of attainment, it would seem—perfect repose; and by repose we do not mean torpidity or sluggishness or inattention, as opposed to clamorous ranting, but we mean the complete subordination of subordinate parts; so that, if we may use the illustration, the gaudiness of the frame is not allowed to over-power and destroy the effect of the picture. Everything is clear, distinct and well marked: the forcible passages come with double effect in contrast with preceding serenity. The actor's manner is not confined behind the footlights: it diffuses itself, as it were, among his audience until it seems as if they too were acting with him. This arises from the perfection of the picture he presents, and that perfection is the result of careful avoidance of everything that is unnatural. There is no unnecessary exertion put forth, no palpable straining after effect: he strives to hold the mirror up to Nature, not Art, and in Nature there is much repose between the tempests. Old players say that the most difficult thing to teach a tyro is to stand still, and some actors never learn it.

Careful attention to costume is another trait exhibited by Mr. Sothern. He might easily make his first appearance as David Garrick in the wealthy merchant's house in ordinary walking-dress, which could be readily retained when he returns to the dinner-party to which he causes himself to be invited. Instead of that, he appears in the full riding-dress of the period—boots, spurs, whip, overcoat and all. This is rapidly changed in time for the dinner-scene for a full-dress suit, complete in every point—powdered hair, white silk stockings, and a little brette, or walking rapier, peeping out from under the coat skirt, not slung in a belt as heavier swords, but supported by light steel chains fastened to a chatelaine, which slips behind the waistband and can be taken off in a moment. In the last scene, where he goes out to fight the duel, his dress is changed again, and dark silk stockings are donned as more appropriate.

The last point we shall mention here about Mr. Sothern is his scrupulous attention to the minor business of the stage: when he is not speaking himself, his looks act. It is said of Macready that he began to be Cardinal Richelieu at three o'clock in the afternoon, and that it was dangerous to speak to him after that time. When Mr. Sothern plays Lord Dundreary, if he is addressed on any subject during the progress of the play, he answers in his Dundreary drawl, so as not to lose his personality for a minute. The letter from his brother "Tham" he has written out and reads; not that he does not know every word by heart, for he must have read it a hundred times, but because he wants to turn over at the proper place. We all know what he has made of that part. A play in which there is absolutely nothing of a plot, which would fall dead from the hands of an inferior actor, becomes with Mr. Sothern as popular as Rip van Winkle is with Jefferson to play the sleepy hero. It is to be observed that the three essentials for good acting just mentioned—repose of manner, strict attention to dress, and strict attention to minor details of stage-business—may be acquired by any actor of average intellect who will devote proper time and study to the task: they are not, like a fine figure, a handsome face or a sonorous voice, adventitious gifts of Fortune which may be bestowed on one mortal and denied to another. Mr. Sothern owes his success, evidently, to long and careful preparation of his parts. In David Garrick he leaves but two points at which criticism can carp: his pathos somehow lacks sufficient tenderness, his love-making seems too devoid of passion. When young Garrick won the heart of La Violette, he put more fire into his speech and manner than Mr. Sothern exhibits at the close of the last act. He is represented as always loving Ida Ingot, but at first conceals and suppresses his love: when the avowal comes at last, it should be like the bursting forth of a volcano, hot, fiery and irresistible.

M. M.

NOTES.

Sir Richard Wallace evidently aims to make himself, in a small way, the Peabody of Paris. A cynic might maintain that his gifts were a trifle sensational, and shaped with a view to procure the greatest amount of notoriety at the price; but that they are frequent, and that they show a hearty love for Paris on the Englishman's part, none can deny. It was Sir Richard who not long ago gave about five thousand dollars to the use of the Paris poor; it was he who, in the late hunting-season, is said to have proposed to supply the city hospitals with fresh game—whether of his own shooting or of that of his compatriots does not appear; it is he, in fine, who has furnished to Paris eighty street-fountains, costing in the factory six hundred and seventy-five francs each, or a total of fifty-four thousand francs (say ten thousand eight hundred dollars), the expense of setting them up being undertaken by the city. These drinking-jets are in the main like those so familiar in American cities, and are provided, of course, with tin cups attached by iron chains—"à la mode Anglaise" add the French papers in an explanatory way. Now, the extraordinary fact concerning these fountains is, that no sooner had the first installment of nine been put up than all the tin cups, or "goblets," as the Parisians call them, were stolen. They were renewed, and again disappeared in a trice. In short, within fifteen days no less than forty-seven of these goblets were made way with, despite their strong fastenings—that is, an average of over five cups to each fountain. What the sum-total of plunder has been since the first fortnight, or whether the fountains are still as useless as spiked cannon or tongueless bells, we have yet to learn.

Now comes a contrast. The countrymen of Sir Richard claim that in London from time immemorial not a single cup was ever stolen from the public fountains. So tempting a theme for generalization could not be resisted by the Paris newspaper philosophers, who have deduced from this theft of the cups a broad distinction between the British loafer and the French loafer, declaring that the former "respects any collective property which he partly shares," while the latter does not even draw this distinction, but grabs whatever he can lay his hands on. "The luck of the Wallace fountains," cries one moralizer, "shows how hard it is to reform the Paris gamin so long as the law contents itself with its present measures. If the state does not speedily educate children found straying in the street, it is all up with the present generation." Thereupon follows a disquisition on the part which Paris children played in the Commune. "Now, the child," adds our newspaper Wordsworth, "is the man viewed through the big end of the opera-glass;" and he points his moral, therefore, with the need of compulsory education. "One of the first duties incumbent on the Chamber at the next session will be the solution of this question. Let it take as a perpetual goad the fate of the Wallace goblets. You begin by stealing a cup of tin—you end by firing the Tuileries or plundering the Hôtel Thiers." There is a droll mingling of Isaac Watts and Victor Hugo in this dénoûment, and despite its practical good sense one is amused at the evolution of a grave discourse from so trivial a text as the Wallace drinking-cups.

To people of a statistical rather than a sentimental turn, the mathematics of marriage in different countries may prove an attractive theme of meditation. It is found that young men from fifteen to twenty years of age marry young women averaging two or three years older than themselves, but if they delay marriage until they are twenty to twenty-five years old, their spouses average a year younger than themselves; and thenceforward this difference steadily increases, till in extreme old age on the bridegroom's part it is apt to be enormous. The inclination of octogenarians to wed misses in their teens is an every-day occurrence, but it is amusing to find in the love-matches of boys that the statistics bear out the satires of Thackeray and Balzac. Again, the husbands of young women aged twenty and under average a little above twenty-five years, and the inequality of age diminishes thenceforward, till for women who have reached thirty the respective ages are equal: after thirty-five years, women, like men, marry those younger than themselves, the disproportion increasing with age, till at fifty-five it averages nine years.

The greatest number of marriages for men take place between the ages of twenty and twenty-five in England, between twenty five and thirty in France, and between twenty-five and thirty-five in Italy and Belgium. Finally, in Hungary the number of individuals who marry is seventy-two in a thousand each year; in England it is 64; in Denmark, 59; in France, 57, the city of Paris showing 53; in the Netherlands, 52; in Belgium, 43; in Norway, 36. Widowers indulge in second marriages three or four times as often as widows. For example, in England (land of Mrs. Bardell) there are 66 marriages of widowers against 21 of widows; in Belgium there are 48 to 16; in France, 40 to 12. Old Mr. Weller's paternal advice, to "beware of the widows," ought surely to be supplemented by a maxim to beware of widowers.

SHAKESPEARE, in one of his most famous madrigals, draws a vivid contrast between youth and age, which, he declares, "cannot live together:"

Science, which ruthlessly destroys so much poetry by its mattock and spade, its scales, foot-rules and gauges, must now, we should judge, take grave exception to the preceding bit of poesy and to the thousand repetitions of its sentiment by the bards of all ages. By means of a thermometer lately constructed to register with exactitude the degree of heat in the human body, it is found, after numerous experiments under varying circumstances, that the instrument marks 37.08° of heat on an average for persons between twenty-one and thirty years of age, while it marks 37.46° for people aged eighty. In face of this fact what becomes of the "fervors of youth" and the "chills of age"? The highest average temperatures in the human body, as indicated by this gauge, are those which exist from birth to puberty—that is to say, 37.55° and 37.63°. From the latter epoch the heat gradually lowers, to rise again with the first approach of old age. Thus childhood shows the highest temperature, old age the next, and middle life the lowest. We may add that the greatest variations in the temperature of the body between health and sickness are only a few tenths of a degree, according to this measurement; for, the normal condition being 37.2° or 37.3°, an increase to 38° would mark a burning fever, and a decrease to 36° would note the icy approach of death. Hereafter, though we may graciously excuse to poetic license the assertion that

we must yet sternly protest that the reason assigned—namely, that "youth is hot and age is cold"—is contradicted by the facts of science.