A Reminiscence of the Kearsarge

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB.

A LITTLE more than five years ago I was sailing the Spanish main on the historic old Kearsarge. We were nearing San Salvador; would have sight of it off westward the next day (just as Columbus had seen it), unless the hurricane our navigators were dreading not a little — “ We can almost count its teeth,” said one of them — whisked us out of our southerly course. The sea was smooth as glass. We had spent the afternoon gleaning from the ship’s library the accounts of the sinking of the Alabama. The officers, not one of whom had been in the fight, had added many incidents handed down to them by their predecessors in command of the Kearsarge. I was wonderfully impressed by what one of the officers related of that memorable engagement, the most glorious in our naval history. “ When the Alabama went down, there was never a shout from the Kearsarge. ‘Silence, boys, silence! was the stern command ; and in dead, awful silence the buccaneer sunk to the bottom of the sea.” There was chivalry for you, — one of the grand silences of history, *— a silence thrilling with brotherhood, prophetic of brotherhood restored. How naturally, unless we know the facts, we assume that there was a fine hurrah of rejoicing on the Kearsarge when the Alabama went down ! Could outburst of victory have surpassed that silence ?

How we cheered at the North when the news came over the wires ! “ Hurrah for the Kearsarge ! Hurrah for Captain Winslow ! ” What cheers when the saucy little ship came home ! What cheers greeted her in every port for years after ! “ She licked the Alabama ! ” our boys were proud to affirm, at every mention of her name. Those boys are men now. How many of their boys know much about the Kearsarge ?

Just before we sailed from New York a newspaper reporter came aboard. “ Those are the very guns that were fired upon the Alabama,” he was told. Now, this reporter was a bright young fellow, but it soon came out that he did not know anything about the old Kearsarge; had heard of the Alabama, of course, but could not have told the name of the ship that “ whipped her,” or anything about it. “One can’t remember everything, in these overcrowded times.” Then he made a suggestion that no one approved: “ Why don’t they put the old ship into some naval museum ? It’s a shame to let her go beating around the world any longer.” “No, let her keep in the line. Did n’t she give chase to the buccaneer Alabama, that pirate with English guns, English crew, and Britain’s flag? Did n’t she steam after her into Cherbourg Harbor, with American guns, an American crew, and the stars and stripes, and didn’t she sink the Alabama in one hour and twenty minutes ? ” And now she lies a wreck, her back broken amidships, her historic guns at the bottom of the sea !

That tropical moonlight night, as we were nearing San Salvador, I stood on the famous deck of the Kearsarge and heard what I shall never forget,— the singing of the story of the fight by the sailors and marines. They were gathered around the guns, the flag flying over their bare heads; their voices were strong and vibrant: that was singing with the spirit, and the understanding also. The wide, still sea was all around us ; the old ship seemed sentient as she ploughed bravely on, as if listening in every timber, her heart-throb quickening with the stirring chorus. This is what they sang, — the story of her victory as told by her own sailors and marines, and written down for me by one of the singers. Let our boys read it, — sing it, if they can, slurring the word “ Kearsarge ” into something like “ Keer-sedge.”

The anniversary of the fight was always commemorated on the Kearsarge, Northerners and Southerners — for both were among her officers — joining in singing this rousing song. Toasting Captain Winslow was a marked feature of every celebration of the sinking of the Alabama, but the memorable silence was ever sacredly maintained, — chivalry to the conquered. Sailors and marines would have hanged Semmes in effigy on se veral occasions, but nothing of the kind could he permitted on the deck of the old Kearsarge. “ Silence, boys, silence ! ”

The Revue de Paris,

The Revue — The appearance of the new de Paris, Revue de Paris — fortnightly, after the fashion of the French — is an event in the literary life even of far-off lands that receive but fitful electric glimmers from this City of Light. The inspiring cause of the new phenomenon has been sought curiously. Some have thought to discover it in a not unnatural desire on the part of many to lessen tlie brilliancy of M. Brunetière’s shining. His blinding and scorching criticism of modernité has not only triumphed in the Academy, but it now reigns supreme in the historic Revue des Deux Mondes, which is supposed to reflect all that shines permanently in contemporaneous French literature. Now it appears that the sole charge of the new review was originally offered to M. Brunetiere. Then it has been said that, Semitic influence is behind the new review. It is known that the publisher, M. Calmaini - Lévy, is the chief stockholder, and Professor James Darmesteter, of the Collége de France, the solid man of the editorial staff, is also a true Israelite without guile. A more natural explanation would be the simplest, and probably nearest to the truth. The original shares of the Revue de.s Deux Mondes were five thousand francs each. Their number (eighty-three) has not been changed, and the annual dividend has of late been as high as six thousand francs, —one hundred and twenty per cent of the par value. This financial success is alone enough to breed rivals, in spite of the many failures of similar attempts in the past.

Another reason is that the literary men of a certain school — it may be named, broadly, the school of Renan, although the old review has had the publication of Renan’s posthumous work—desire an outlet for their literature where it shall not be constrained by the methods of Taine ; for it is the divergent spirit of Taine and Renan which for years to come must mark the course of French thought: in the former, dogmatic in its demand for positive and verifiable science, with a practical reverence for all existing facts, including morals, with a painful working out of its literature ; in the latter, skeptical in its fluid criticism of all existence, in which morals and life and death matter but little in comparison with serene philosophy and cultivated form and the play of a free-and-easy fancy. In practice, the older review is considered a cénacle académique, while the new goes so far as to admit the novels of the Parisienne “ Gyp ” and of the young Italian light, Gabriele d’Annunzio.

All this is not to say that Professor Darmesteter lacks an earnestness unknown to his master. He is an Oriental in his looking before and after, as his book on the prophets of Israel might show. For him, the universal consciousness has been manifested in his race by an utterable intuition of things which, without being supernatural (for it is a part of the eternal onward march of natural existence), still merits the name of prophecy. And as the Hebrew prophets were men of living earnestness, so their disciple looks on the most modern things with intuitions that strain to be earnest sight. The paper on the wars and religious strife of France for the last twentyfive years, with which he has announced his presence in the new review, could not have been written by Renan with all his ingrained habits of Catholic thought. In it the writer has risked frightening away subscribers by telling the French Royalists roundly that they are nothing but fossils doomed to forgetfulness. The modernité of Professor Darmesteter’s literary taste may perhaps best be gathered from the fact of his marriage with Mary Robinson, who is a delightful English poet, singing notes, all too few, of a strain unknown to other times. By a strange contrariety, as in some literary tour de force, the Academy has crowned this lady’s French work, which is carefully done in the style of the old-time Reine Marguerite, It is understood, however, that the literary editing of the new review — as distinct from solid history, or science, or politics — is to be the task of the second editor, M. Louis Ganderax, who has long been a light of the Boulevard press.

So much has been said, inaccurately, about the name of the new review that it is well to set down its actual history. It was adopted in 1829 for the first serious French review modeled after the English quarterlies then existing, the Edinburgh (1802), the Quarterly (1809), and the Westminster (1824). Its directors were Dr. Véron and Balzac. François Buloz was then simply a proof-reader, who kept his eyes open. A geographical review, founded in the same year as the Revue de Paris, came to grief in 1831, and Buloz succeeded in getting capital to buy it, along with its name, which has ever since been a puzzle, — Revue des Deux Mondes. In 1834 he bought up the Revue de Paris, which he kept running separately for several years. Among its writers were Mérimée, Sainte - Beuve, De Vigny, Jules Janin, Eugène Sue, Alphonse Karr, Alexandre Dumas père, Alfred de Musset, Scribe, and even Lamartine, It was revived in 1858 by Théophile Gautier and his friends, and again as late as 1887 by Arsène Houssaye, — always unsuccessfully. The latter exhorts the new review to beware of realism. A Rustic in —I am not of those who talk New York. flippantly about “ running over to New 4 ork this afternoon,” as if they were going to step across the street for a chat with a neighbor. I know one man who makes the journey" there and back so often that he has become the confidant of more than half the porters on the drawingroom cars which intervene between the two cities. But when we countrymen visit the metropolis, the event marks an epoch in our lives. We dream of it for weeks beforehand, and while we are there we accumulate impressions enough to keep us going, intellectually, for at least a twelvemonth. The truth is that our minds are open, — empty, if you will ; onr perceptive faculties are on the qui vive; we are like sensitive plates, ready for new impressions : whereas one who is much in New York, or in any other great city, becomes blunted as to its salient features. He is, in fact, a part of the thing itself, and so he cannot get an outside view of it. Nobody in Paris anticipated the Revolution of 1789 ; but when Lord Chesterfield “ran over’’from London, he saw the storm coming, and he made the famous observation with which the reader is doubtless familiar.

In New York, to-day, there is as great a gap between rich and poor as there was in Paris before the Revolution, and it is a gap in sympathy as well as in material conditions. I happened to be in the city during horse-show week, and I saw Madison Square Garden filled with extravagantly dressed women and vacuous men, talking in English slang, gazing with languid interest at English horses which were handled by English grooms, and judged by an English expert brought over from London for the purpose. Just outside of the garden I met a woman in a ragged calico gown, with the rag of another calico gown thrown across her shoulders in place of a coat. She wore no hat, and instead of shoes she had a pair of old slippers full of holes, — and this was on a cold, wet dayr in November. After such an encounter, one goes into Delmonico’s, sits down at the next table to a rich Jew, and sees “ Mene, Mene ” written on the walls of that place of feasting as plainly as the French names of the dishes are printed on the bill of fare.

The spectacle of one citizen enjoying a dinner of ten courses in a palace, while another citizen, together with his family, is going without dinner in a tenement house, will not last so long in a republic as it has lasted in many monarchies. Both citizens, it must be remembered, have a vote. The rich people are putting out anchors ; but will the anchors hold in ease of a storm ? A very prosperous-looking Irishman was pointed out to me in Broadway as being in receipt of a large income from a certain wealthy connection in New York. “What service does he render for it ? ” I asked. “Oh,” was the reply, “he does n’t do anything for it ; but he is a man who has great influence in the down-town wards, and the X.’s keep him in their pay, so that in case of any trouble here in New York such as a riot, he might prevent their houses from being looted.” If it has come to this, that Dives in New York is paying toll to Tammany with one hand, in order to protect himself from the city government, and toll to O’Flanagan with the other hand, to protect himself from a possible mob, — if it has come to this, I should say that our metropolis is built upon the sand.

A little experience of my own will illustrate the fearful chasm which yawns between the fortunate and the unfortunate in New York. I was dining with some friends at a newly opened hotel in Fifth Avenue. The table was beautifully furnished with spotless linen and gleaming silver ; waiters came and went noiselessly on the thick carpet ; a soft, luxurious light was diffused by candles and lamps, and we had an elaborate repast of many courses and well-selected wines. The room was a little too warm, and a window near us had been opened an inch or two, though the night was cold and wet. Suddenly this window was thrown wride open, and there appeared at it a gaunt man, with matted beard and wild, hungry eyes. He looked at us and at the rich, abundant food, and then he said, in a loud but apparently not excited voice, “ Three days ago I pawned my coat to buy a loaf of bread for my wife and children.” That was all. The head waiter rushed to the window and slammed it down ; there was talk of the police ; a lady near by turned pale with fright, and had to be revived by means of a smelling-bottle ; then the sumptuous eating and drinking were resumed as before. But I confess that my uneducated country appetite did not survive this incident. The victuals that the man outside in the cold and dark was going without stuck in my throat ; champagne itself failed to wash them down.