CHAPTER XV. RETROSPECT COMPARISON OF CHASE AND WIRT WIRT'S DEATH N° O mention has yet been made of a letter, written on the 11th of November, 1831, by William Wirt to Mr. Chase. The whole letter I have never seen. That only extracts from it are given in Kennedy's Life of Wirt1 is, at least so far as the present work is concerned, to be regretted. It appears to have been a long letter. Kennedy suppressed Wirt in more than one instance where suppression seems to have been at least of doubtful propriety. For example, referring to a fragment of autobiography, running over the first ten years of Wirt's childhood, the fastidious biographer remarks: "I shall select from these reminiscences what I find useful to my present purpose, without venturing to submit the whole to the eye of the public. They dwell upon incidents which, however grateful in the telling to that affectionate circle to whom the memoir was addressed, and who could find in it a thousand memories of family endearment, would, I am fearful, be considered as too trivial to excite the interest of those who are strangers to the genial spirit and household mirthfulness of the writer. Even for the extracts which I may submit, I must deprecate, on this score, the too rigid criticism or fastidious comment of my reader-asking him to remember that a father, discoursing to his children assembled around their own hearth, on topics which derive their agreeable savor from their love to him, may claim a dramatic privilege from the critic, to have his performance judged by its adaptation to the scene, the time, the place, and the persons.' 12 Taking into consideration the position of Mr. Chase, in 1849, when that work was published, every line of the letter written to him, as we have seen, would have had, in addition to its interest as relating to Mr. Wirt, a special interest in its relation to the person to whom it was addressed. Is there not reason to suspect that Mr. Kennedy's feelings as a partisan had something to do with his giving only extracts from that letter? Perhaps not. He seems to have had a most imperfect notion of the due minuteness of biography. The Wirt he has portrayed was not exactly the true one, though in spite of his suppressions, one can form at least a pretty fair conception of the character in question. Here a very different policy has been pursued, throughout. The letter referred to was in relation to the presidential candi dature of the man from whose pen it emanated. Of that candidature it is difficult to speak without offense either to Masons or to antiMasons. It was as an anti-Mason that William Wirt was a candidate for the Presidency. Writing to Rev. Mr. Blanchard, on the 18th of November, 1868, an already-quoted letter, Chief Justice Chase expressed himself as follows: "I am neither Mason nor anti-Mason. My father was a Mason, and I always supposed the order did a great deal of good in their way. I have never studied the subject. I can not say that I have never studied the subject; but I can I always supposed the Free Masons did a great deal of good in their way. say On the 11th of November, 1831, then, Mr. Wirt wrote to Mr. Chase, then a young Cincinnati lawyer, a letter which contained these words, with others: "I am perfectly aware, with you, that I have none of the captivating arts and manners of professional seekers of popularity. I do not desire them. I shall not change my manners; they are a part of my nature. If the people choose to take me as I am-well. If not, they will only leave me where I have always preferred to be, enjoying the independence of private life. They may make some rents in my garments in the meantime, but they will make none, I hope, in my peace of mind." How highly he who wrote those words appreciated the esteem of the young man to whom he wrote, appears in the following paragraph of the same letter: "You have now the whole case before you, and I thought it due to the friendship you have always professed for me, to state it at large. I will not embarrass you with the question, whether you approve my course or not. It is enough for me, that my own conscience approves it, and that I do not believe that it is condemned in heaven." That Chase was not induced to follow Wirt, in this respect, is not surprising. His own father, we have already seen, had been a Mason. And the country generally seems to have considered, that the party of the anti-Masons was not called for by the welfare of the people. We have seen that such men as Greeley and Seward may be named among the anti-Masons of that day; but we have also seen that the only vote carried for Wirt was Vermont. To Chase, in the letter already quoted, Wirt explained that, considering the strength of the anti-Masons and the rapidity with which their party was increasing, he saw that unless their nomination could be secured for Mr. Clay, he, Clay, could not be elected. Wirt ceeded to say: pro "Mr. Clay was the choice of my district, and I had been deputed by it as a delegate to the National Republican Convention, whose object I understood to be to confer on the selection of a suitable candidate, giving the preference to Mr. Clay, if found that he would be strong enough to displace General Jackson; and if not, to prefer any one else who could secure to us that result." When Mr. Wirt so wrote to Mr. Chase there is reason to believe that there was an understanding between the writer and the receiver of that letter that the life of Wirt should be written by the already practiced pen of Chase. I have already offered part of that evidence; I now present another part. A letter-book of our hero contains this memorandum : "CINCINNATI, February 27, 1835. "A letter of friendship-general remarks-Congratulation to William on his planter life-Henry and Dabney fitting for collegeMiss Cabell and Mr. Daniel-Difficulties in the way of my writing biography of Mr. Wirt-Suggest Mr. Kennedy-Affectionate remembrances -Suggest ideas as to publication of Mr. W's works-2 vols., oct., not quite-Opinions, arguments, and speeches to be included-Old works also and letters chronologically arranged, etc., etc. "To C. G. Wirt, Wirtland, Florida." Among the difficulties in the way of Mr. Chase were some which he may or may not have recognized, but which he would hardly have felt free to state fully in that letter. I congratulate my readers and myself that the author of this work was never so intimate with its hero as the latter was with William Wirt. I congratulate the readers of this work that it is not written Ante, Introduction. by a person who was ever intimate with the surviving relatives of its hero as was Salmon Portland Chase with the surviving relatives of William Wirt. I have, indeed, no doubt that the surviving relatives of Wirt would have been entirely well disposed toward the work of Chase had he gone forward, as he purposed. All they would have consciously desired, if I may so express myself, would have been a faithful narrative and a true portraiture. But whoever has read Sir Joshua Reynolds on the subject of likenesses must remember what that writer so well says about the perils of the painter that allows himself to take suggestions from the near relatives and friends of the sitter. I admire and love the Wirts, although I have spoken with but one survivor of the family. I seem to have known them, to have lived beneath their roof, to have heard the ringing laugh of the father, to have learned the language of the flowers from the mother; to have assisted at their family concerts; surely, then, what I am saying here is not intended to disparage them or any of them. Yet I have no doubt that Chase would have been, and that Mr. Kennedy actually was, greatly embarrassed by intimacy with the members of that household. Perhaps, there is no reason to suppose that Chase, in abandoning the design of writing Wirt's life, was influenced by the consideration, that he had been so intimate with Wirt and his household. Yet it seems to me at least that that consideration must have come to trouble him had he made progress in the work referred to. How could he have painted Wirt as the latter was in his days of free drinking? How could he have done justice to the first love and first marriage of his hero? There is, indeed, perfect proof that the second wife of William Wirt was tenderly, devotedly beloved by her genial husband; that she was to him an object of esteem as well as affection; that his admiration of her was, indeed, unbounded. How he loved the children that she bore him it would be impossible to intimate. And yet the love and admiration that he had for her, his love and admiration of her and his children, could not annihilate the fact that his first love was not she-that his first wife was not named Elizabeth but Mildred. How could Salmon Portland Chase have done justice to that fact? Examination of the manner in which Mildred's memory was disposed of by the pen of Mr. Kennedy, though the latter never had been intimate as Chase had been with the Wirt family, may at least aid discerning readers to work out the proper answer to the question just suggested. But the theme is painful. Let me proceed at once to the statement that a year and a few days had already passed since the death of him who made the name of Wirt illustrious. Mr. Chase, an actively employed young lawyer, lived at Cincinnati, far from the surviving relatives of his deceased friend and preceptor. That he had begun to gather materials for the contemplated biographic work, is probable. An entry, dated June 17, 1834, shows that, on that day he wrote to Fielding Lucas, of Baltimore, for "Wirt's Speeches, etc.;" but it is also probable that the assemblage of materials at Cincinnati proved to be almost impossible. The work which he gave up was finally done, as he suggested that it should be, by John P. Kennedy, who was, like himself and like the subject of the work, a so-called "literary lawyer." But I have found in Tuckerman's Life of Kennedy this extract from a diary of Mr. K.: "December 24, 1843. Some time ago Mrs. Wirt deposited a large number of papers containing the correspondence, etc., of her late husband, Wm. Wirt, with Mr. J. Q. Adams, who had undertaken to write a biography and edit these papers. After retaining the collection for some time, Mr. Adams was obliged, very reluctantly, as he told me, to decline the enterprise. The family have since committed it to me, and I have accepted. The papers are all in my possession, and I have just begun to review them. I hope to make some volumes of good stuff. Mr. Wirt was a very kind and intimate friend of mine, which alone would prompt me to this duty. But he was a man of a very rich character, of various interesting qualities, and passed a life of attractive incident, out of which a most engaging biography may be made. "My plan is not yet adjusted, but if the correspondence and other remains will enable me to present a narrative in which these may be interwoven, I shall prefer that form. Some few hours labor a day ought to enable me to get this work before the public in the course of the year. I shall try." No doubt, he did try. But his health was bad, and his appreciation of his task remarkably imperfect. In point of fact, the biography, already so inexcusably delayed, did not appear till 1849, about fifteen years after the death of Wirt. The truth is, Kennedy was a fine writer, and a good citizen; but certainly he was a bad biographer. Of this, however, I have thought fit to speak farther in the chap |