François de Chateaubriand
Mémoires d’outre-tombe
Book VIII
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Translated by A. S. Kline © 2005 All Rights Reserved.
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Contents
Book VIII: Chapter 1: The Lakes of Canada – A fleet of Indian canoes – The history of the rivers
Book VIII: Chapter 2: The Course of the Ohio
Book VIII: Chapter 3: The Fountain of Youth – Muskogees and Seminoles
Book VIII: Chapter 4: Two Floridian Women
Book VIII: Chapter 6: Potential risks for the United States
Book VIII: Chapter 7: Return to Europe - Shipwreck
London, April to September 1822. (Revised December 1846)
The little beaded girl’s tribe departed; my guide, the Dutchman, refused to accompany me beyond the cataract; I paid him off, and joined some traders who were leaving to travel down the Ohio; before leaving I took a look at the Canadian lakes. Nothing is as sad as the aspect of those lakes. The expanses of the Ocean and the Mediterranean open up a path for nations, and their shores are or were inhabited by civilised peoples, numerous and powerful; the Canadian lakes reveal only the nakedness of their waters, which meet an unclothed land once more: solitudes which separate further solitudes. Uninhabited coastlines gaze at seas without vessels; you land on deserted shores from empty waves.
Lake Erie is more than thirty miles long. The nations of the lakeshore were exterminated by the Iroquois, two centuries ago. It is a terrifying thing to see the Indians venture out in bark canoes onto the lake, renowned for its storms, where myriads of serpents once swarmed. These Indians hang their manitous (objects possessing supernatural powers) from the stern of their canoes, and dash into the midst of the whirlpools among the towering waves. The water, level with the sides of the canoes, seems ready to swallow them. The hunting dogs bay, their paws resting on the gunnels, while their masters, keeping a profound silence, strike the waves in unison with their paddles. The canoes advance in line: at the lead prow stands a chief who repeats the diphthong oah; o on a long soft note, a in a short shrill tone. In the last canoe is another chief, who is also standing and handling an oar, shaped like a tiller. The other braves are crouched on their heels inside the boats. Through the breeze and mist, one can see only the feathers with which the Indians heads are adorned, the outstretched necks of the howling mastiffs, and the shoulders of the two sachems, the pilot and augur: they look like the gods of these lakes.
The Canadian rivers lack the history
of the old world; the fate of the
London, April to September 1822.
Leaving the Canadian lakes, we came
via Pittsburgh to the confluence of the
Will European generations be more
virtuous and free on those shores than the lost generations of Americans? Will slaves
not plough the earth beneath their masters’ whips, in those wildernesses of
man’s primitive independence? Will prisons and gibbets not replace the open hut
and the tall tulip tree where the bird makes it nest? Will the rich soil not give
rise to new wars? Will
Having passed the Wabash, the Great Cypress grove, the Winged or Cumberland River, the Cherokee or Tennessee River, and the Yellow Banks, one reaches a tongue of land often drowned by the vast waters; there the Ohio merges with the Mississippi at 36 degrees 51 minutes latitude. The two rivers meet, while an equal resistance slows their course; they slumber against each other in the same channel, without merging, for a few miles, like two great nations separated at their source, then joined to create a single race; like two illustrious rivals sharing the same resting place after a battle; like a married couple, of opposing blood, who at first had little inclination to unite their destinies in the nuptial bed.
And I too, like the powerful flow of the rivers, have extended the little course of my life, now on one side of the mountain, now on the other; capricious in my mistakes, never wicked; preferring the bare valleys to the rich plains, halting by flowers rather than palaces. Moreover, I was so delighted by my travels, that I scarcely thought any more of the Pole. A company of traders off to visit the Creek Indians, in the Floridas, allowed me to travel with them.
We were headed for the region known at
that time under the general name of the
We were urged on now by a fresh
breeze. The
I crossed a meadow dense with yellow-flowering ragwort, pink-headed hollyhocks, and abelias with purplish blooms.
An Indian ruin caught my attention. The contrast between this ruin and virgin nature, this human monument in a wilderness, caused me great emotion. What people had lived on this island? What had been their name, and race, the length of their stay? Did they still exist, as the world in whose breast they were hidden existed unknown to three quarters of the earth? The silence of that people is contemporary perhaps with the noise of great nations fallen to silence in their turn. (The ruins of Mitla and Palenque in Mexico, show today that the New World can dispute its antiquity with the Old: Note, Paris 1834)
The sandy crevices, of their ruins or tumuli, sported poppies, with red petals hanging from the tip of a peduncle tending to pale green. The stem and the flower had a scent which stayed on the fingers when one had touched the plant. The perfume of this flower remains, as a symbol of the memory of a life passed in solitude.
I observed a water-lily: it was preparing to hide its white bud in the water, at the day’s end; the weeping shrub (nyctanthe: gardenia or Malabar jasmine) waits for night to reveal itself: the wife goes to her rest at the hour when the courtesan rises.
The pyramidal oenothera (evening primrose), seven or eight feet high, with oblong greenish-black jagged leaves has another manner of behaving and another fate: its yellow flowers begin to half-open in the evening, in the space of time it takes Venus to descend below the horizon; it continues to open in starlight; dawn finds it in all its splendour; half-way through the morning it fades; it dies at midday. It only lives a few hours; but it passes those hours under a serene sky, between the sighs of Venus and dawn; what matter then the brevity of that life?
A stream is embowered with Venus fly-traps; a multitude of dragonflies buzz around. There are also hummingbirds and butterflies which, in their most glittering jewellery, joust brilliantly with iridescent flowers. In the midst of my wandering and my studies, I was often struck by their futility. What! Could the Revolution, which always weighed on me and which had driven me into the woods, inspire me with nothing more serious? What! During those days of upheaval in my native country, could I occupy myself with nothing more than descriptions of plants, butterflies and flowers? Human individuality serves to measure the littleness of the greatest events. How many men are indifferent to those same events? How many other men are ignorant of them? The total population of the globe is estimated to be eleven or twelve hundred million; a human being dies every second: so in every minute of our existence, of our smiles, our joys, sixty expire, sixty families mourn and weep. Life is a continual plague. This chain of bereavement and funerals that winds us about, never breaks, it lengthens; we ourselves form a link. And then we magnify the importance of those catastrophes of which seven-eighths of the world heard not a word! Let us hanker after a fame that will not vanish a few miles from our grave! Let us plunge into an ocean of bliss where each minute flows among sixty coffins continually re-filled!
‘Nam nox nulla diem, neque noctem aurora secuta est,
Quae non audierit mixtos vagitibus aegris
Ploratus, mortis comites et funeris atri.’
‘No night has followed day, no dawn has followed night, in which tears and mournful sounds of grief have not been heard, the companions of death and dark funerals.’
London, April to September 1822.
The savages of
That land also boasted a Fountain of Youth: but who would wish to live again?
These fables almost took on a kind of
reality to my eyes. At the moment when we least expected it, we saw a fleet of
canoes emerge from a bay, some with oars others with sails. They carried two
families of Creeks, one of Seminoles, the other of Muskogees, among
which were Cherokees and Burnt-woods. I was struck by the grace of
these savages who in no way resembled those of
The Seminoles and Muskogees are quite
tall, and yet, in amazing contrast, their mothers, wives and daughters are, in
The Indian women who landed near us,
of mixed Cherokee and Castilian stock, were tall in stature. Two of them looked
like the Creoles of San Domingo and
The meeting with out hosts somewhat altered our movements; our trading agents started to enquire about horses: it was decided that we should go and install ourselves near the studs.
The plain where we camped was full of bulls, cows, horses, bison, buffalo, cranes, turkeys and pelicans: the birds mottled the green backcloth of the savannah with white, black and pink.
Our traders and trappers were agitated by many passions: not passions of race, education or prejudice, but natural passions, direct and full-blooded, and they made straight for their goal, their course witnessed only by a tree falling in the depths of an unknown forest; an uncharted valley, a nameless river. The relations between the Spaniards and the Creek women formed the basis of their adventures: The Burnt-woods played the principal part in these romances. One story was celebrated, that of a dealer in brandy, seduced and ruined by a painted woman (a courtesan). This story put into Seminole verse under the title of Tabamica, was sung on the trail through the woods. Carried off in turn by the settlers, the Indian women soon died of neglect at Pensecola: their misfortunes went to enhance the Romanceros and be classed with Ximena’s laments.
London, April to September 1822.
What a delightful mother Earth is; we issue from her womb: in childhood, she holds us to her breasts swollen with milk and honey; in youth and maturity, she lavishes on us her cool waters, harvests and fruits; she offers us everywhere shade, a bath, a table, a bed; at our death, she opens her womb to us again, throwing a covering of grass and flowers over our remains, while she secretly transmutes us into her own substance, to recreate us in some graceful form. That is what I said to myself on waking, as my first glance met the sky, the canopy above my resting place.
The hunters had left for their day’s work, and I was left behind with the women and children. I never strayed far from my two wood-nymphs: the one was proud, the other sad. I understood not a word of what they said to me, nor did they understand me; but I went to fetch water for them to drink, twigs for their fire, and moss for their bed. They wore the short skirts and wide slashed sleeves of Spanish women, with Indian bodices and cloaks. Their bare legs were criss-crossed in lozenge shapes with strips of birch. They plaited their hair with garlands of flowers or threaded rushes; they strung themselves with chain and glass necklaces. In their ears hung crimson berries; they had a pretty talking parrot: the bird of Armida; they fastened it on their shoulder like an emerald, or carried it hooded at their wrist as the great ladies of the tenth century carried their hawks. To firm up their breasts and arms, they rubbed themselves with apoya or American sedge. The dancing-girls of Bengal, the bayadères, chew betel-nut, while those of the Levant, the Egyptian almes, suck the gum mastic of Chios; the Floridian women crushed, between their bluish-white teeth, tears of liquidambar and roots of libanis (alkanet), which combined the fragrances of angelica, citron, and vanilla. They lived in a perfumed atmosphere that originated from them, as orange trees and flowers do in the pure emanations of their leaves and buds. I amused myself by placing little adornments in their hair: they submitted, though slightly alarmed; sorceresses themselves, they thought I was casting a spell on them. One of them, the proud one, prayed frequently; she seemed half-Christianised to me. The other sang in a velvet voice, ending each musical phrase with a moving cry. Sometimes, they spoke sharply to each other: I thought I detected the accents of jealousy, but the sad one wept, and silence was restored.
Affected, as I was, I sought examples
of affection to cheer myself. Had not Camoëns,
in the
‘A quella captiva,
Que me tem captivo,
Porque nella vivo,
Já naõ quer que viva.
Eu
nunqua vi
Em soaves mõlhos,
Que para meus olhos
Fosse
mais
Pretidaõ de amor,
Taõ doce a figura,
Que a neve lhe jura
Que trocára a cõr.
Léda mansidaõ,
Que o siso acompanha:
Bem parece estranha,
Mas Barbara naõ.
‘This slave, who enslaves me, since I live for her, spares not my life. Never a rose in the sweetest bouquet, struck my eyes as more charming. Her dark hair inspires love; her face is so lovely the snow desires to exchange its colour with her; her gaiety is accompanied by restraint: she is a foreigner: but a barbarian, no.’
BkVIII:Chap4:Sec2
A fishing party was organised. The sun had almost set. In the foreground were sassafras, tulip-trees, catalpas, and oaks from whose boughs hung skeins of white moss. In the near background rose the most delightful of trees, the papaw, that might have been taken for a stylus of chased silver, topped by a Corinthian urn. In the far background balsam-trees, magnolias and liquidambars proliferated.
The sun sank behind this scene: a ray fell across the domed crown of a group of tall trees, shedding its glow like a mounted ruby through the sombre foliage; the light spread among the trees and branches, throwing divergent columns and mobile arabesques on the grass. Below, were lilacs, azaleas, annulated creepers, in gigantic sprays; above, clouds, some stationary promontories or ancient turrets, others floating by, as pink smoke or silken flakes. In successive transformations, one saw furnaces gape open in these clouds, heaped piles of embers, flowing rivers of lava: all was brilliant, radiant, gilded, opulent, and saturated with light.
After the insurrection in the Morea in 1770, families of Greeks fled to Florida: they might have believed themselves still in that Ionian climate, which seems to be softened by human passions: at Smyrna, in the evening, nature sleeps like a courtesan wearied by love.
To our right were ruins belonging to
the great fortified mounds found on the
Abandoned by my companions, I rested beside a mass of trees: its shadows, glazed with light, formed a penumbra in which I sat. Fireflies shone among the dark shrubs, and were eclipsed when they passed through the moonbeams. The sound of the lake ebbing and flowing could be heard, the golden fish leaping, and the occasional cry of a diving-bird. My gaze was fixed on the water; I gradually slid into that drowsiness familiar to those who travel the world’s highways: I lost all clarity of recollection; I felt myself to be living and vegetating with nature in a kind of pantheism. I leant against the trunk of a magnolia tree and fell asleep; my repose floated on some vague depth of hope.
When I emerged from this Lethe, I found myself between two women; the odalisques had returned; they had not wished to wake me, and had seated themselves silently by my side; then either feigning sleep, or really falling into a doze, their heads had drooped onto my shoulders.
A breeze blew through the grove and deluged us with a shower of magnolia petals. Then the younger of the Seminoles began to sing: if a man is unsure of himself he should never allow himself to be exposed to such temptation! One cannot say what passion may penetrate his heart with the melody. A harsh jealous voice responded to this voice: a Burnt-wood called to the two cousins; they started, and rose: dawn was beginning to break.
Though lacking Aspasia, I have often repeated this scene on the shores of Greece: climbing at dawn to the colonnade of the Parthenon, I have seen Mount Cithaeron, Mount Hymettus, the Acropolis of Corinth, the tombs and ruins bathed in a golden dewy light, transparent and shimmering, reflected by the waters, and wafted on the breezes from Salamis and Delos like perfume.
We finished our wordless voyage on the
bank. At
That is how everything in my life proves abortive, and why nothing is left to me but images of what has flashed by: I will descend to the Elysian Fields with more shades than any man has ever taken with him. The fault lies in my character: I do not know how to profit from good fortune; I am not interested in anything which interests others. Except in religion, I have no beliefs. Shepherd or king, what would I have done with a sceptre or a crook? I would have grown equally tired of glory or genius, work or leisure, prosperity or misfortune. Everything wearies me: I can scarcely drag my ennui through the days, and everywhere I go I yawn away my life.
Ronsard
pictured Mary Stuart for us, ready to
depart for
‘You were dressed in such finery
Leaving, alas, that sweet country
(Whose sceptre you had held so fast)
Thoughtful now, bathing your breast,
In your fine crystal flow of tears,
Sad, as you walked the alleys there
Of the great garden of that royal chateau,
Whose name derives from a fountain’s flow.’
Did I resemble Mary Stuart wandering the paths of Fontainebleau, as I wandered in the savannah after this separation? What is certain is that my spirit, if not my body, was enveloped by ‘a veil, long, subtle and fine’ as Ronsard said, that old poet adopted by the new school.
The devil having carried off the two young Muskogee ladies, I learnt from the guide that a Burnt-Wood, in love with one of the two girls, had proved jealous of me, and had decided, with the help of a Seminole, the brother of the other cousin, to snatch Atala and Céluta from me. The guides, quite bluntly, called them painted women, which shook my pride. I felt myself to be all the more humiliated in that the Burnt-Wood, my favoured rival, was a mosquito, lean, dark and ugly, having all the characteristics of those insects which, according to the definition of the Grand Lama’s entomologists, are creatures whose flesh is internal, and bones external. The wilderness seemed empty after my misadventure. I gave a sour welcome to my sylph, nobly rushing to console a faithless lover, as Julie forgave Saint-Preux his Parisian Floridians. I hastened to leave the wilds, where I have since recreated my drowsy companions of that night. I do not know if I have repaid them for the moments of life they granted me; at least, I made a virgin of one, and a chaste wife of the other, in expiation.
We re-crossed the Blue Mountains, and approached the European clearings near Chillicoth. I had not shed any light on the principal object of my travels; but I was accompanied by a world of poetry:
‘From the roses’ depths, like a new-hatched bee,
My Muse returned, with new spoils, to me.’
On the banks of a stream I noticed an American house, a farm at one end, a water-mill at the other. I entered, asked for food and shelter, and was well-received.
My hostess led me up a ladder to a
room above the shaft of the mill’s hydraulic mechanism. My little window,
festooned with ivy and cobaea (a Mexican
climbing vine) with purple bell-flowers, overlooked the stream which flowed
narrow and solitary, between two thick borders of willows, elms, sassafras,
tamarinds and
The mossy wheel turned beneath their shade, letting fall long ribbons of water. Perch and trout leaped in the swirling foam; wagtails flew from bank to bank, and a species of kingfisher flickered on blue wings above the flow.
How happy I might have been there with the sad girl, supposing she were faithful, sitting dreaming at her feet, my head resting against her knees, listening to the noise of the weir, the revolutions of the wheel, the rolling of the millstone, the sifting of the bolter, the even beat of the clack, breathing the water’s freshness and the fragrance from the husks of pearl-barley?
Night fell. I went down to the farm parlour. It was only lit by a blaze of maize straw and bean husks in the hearth. The miller’s firearms, resting horizontally in the gun-rack, shone in the fire-light. I sat down on a stool in the chimney-corner, near a squirrel which kept leaping between the back of a large dog and the shelf of a spinning-wheel. A small cat took possession of my knee to watch this game. The miller’s wife masked the fire with a large cooking pot, whose flames licked its black base like a radiant crown of gold. While the potatoes for my supper boiled under my watchful eye, I passed the time reading in the light of the fire, bowing my head to an English newspaper which lay on the ground between my legs: I saw, printed in large letters, these words: Flight of the King. It was the story of the attempted escape of Louis XVI, and the unfortunate monarch’s arrest at Varennes. The newspaper also told of the on-going emigration and the gathering of army officers to the banner of the French princes.
A sudden conversion took place in my
mind: Rinaldo saw his frailty in the
mirror of honour in Armida’s gardens;
whilst not being Tasso’s hero, the
same looking-glass showed me my image in an American orchard. The clash of
arms, the tumult of the world, echoed in my ears beneath the thatch of a mill
hidden in nameless woods. I interrupted the course of my travels, abruptly,
saying to myself: ‘Return to
So, what I saw as my duty overthrew my original plans, causing the first of those upheavals that have marked my career. The Bourbons had no need for a younger son from Brittany to return from abroad and offer them his obscure devotion, any more than they have needed his services since he emerged from his obscurity. If I had lit my pipe with the newspaper that changed my life, and gone on with my journey, no one would have noticed my absence; my existence at that time was still invisible, and weighed as little as the smoke from my calumet. A simple dispute between myself and my conscience flung me onto the world stage. I could have done as I pleased, since I was the sole witness to the debate; but of all witnesses, that is the one before whom I most fear to blush.
Why do the solitudes of Erie and Ontario
now present themselves to my mind with a charm that my memory of the brilliant
spectacle of the Bosphorus lacks? It is because at the time of my voyage to the
Fifteen years later, after my voyage to the Levant, the Republic, swollen with debris and tears, had flowed like a torrent from deluge into despotism. I no longer deceived myself with chimaeras; my memories, finding their future source in society and the passions, were no longer ingenuous. Disappointed in my pilgrimages to West and East, I had not discovered the passage to the Pole, I had not won glory on the banks of Niagara where I had sought it, and had left rooted among the ruins of Athens.
Leaving to be an explorer in
If I were to see the United States again, today, I would no longer recognise them: where I left forests, I would find cultivated fields; where I cleared a path through the wilds, I would travel on highroads; among the Natchez, in place of Céluta’s hut, stands a town with around five thousand inhabitants; Chactas today might be a deputy to Congress. I recently received a pamphlet printed among the Cherokees, which is addressed, in the interest of those savages, to me, as a defender of the liberty of the press.
Among the Muskogees, the Seminoles, the Chickasaws there is a new city of Athens, another Marathon, another Carthage, another Memphis, another Sparta, another Florence; you find a District of Columbia, and a county of Marengo: the glory of every country has given
its name to those same wilds where I met Father Aubry
and the obscure Atala.
All the exiles, all the oppressed who
fled to
…falsi Simoentis ad undam
Libabat cineri Andromache.
(…by the waters of a second Simois,
Andromache made offering to those ashes.)
The
Thirty-three highways leave Washington, as in the past the Roman
roads radiated from the Capitol; in
their ramifications they reach the circumference of the
The population of the
That human sap makes every region of the wilderness flower. The Canadian lakes, formerly free of sails, today resemble dockyards, where frigates, corvettes, cutters, and barks, encounter Indian dugouts and canoes, as the great ships and galleys mingle with pinks, rowboats and caiques in the waterways of Constantinople.
The Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Ohio are not left to flow in solitude: three-masters sail them; more than two hundred steam-boats enliven their shores.
This immense interior navigation
system, which was alone enough to ensure the prosperity of the
To complete this amazing picture, their cities must be represented, such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans, brilliant at night, full of horses and coaches, adorned with cafes, museums, libraries, dance-halls and theatres, offering all the delights of luxury.
However, it is no use seeking in the
In the new continent there is no classic literature, no romantic literature, and no Indian literature: as to the classics, Americans have had no Middle Ages; as to the Indians, Americans scorn the savages and have a horror of the woods as if they were a prison to which they were destined.
So, there is then no separate
literature, literature as properly identified, to be found in
Poetry and imagination, shared by a very small number of idlers, are regarded in the United States as are the childishness of the first and last ages of life: Americans have never experienced childhood: they have not yet known old age.
From this it follows that those men
engaged in serious study have necessarily had to be involved in the affairs of
their country in order to acquire knowledge of it, and that they have likewise
been forced to be agents of revolution. But a sad thing is to be noted: the
swift decline of talent, between the first men to be involved in
The farewell speech General Washington addressed to the people of the
‘How far in the discharge of my official duties,’ said the General, ‘I have been guided by the principles which have been delineated, the public records and other evidences of my conduct must witness to you and to the world. To myself, the assurance of my own conscience is, that I have at least believed myself to be guided by them….Though, in reviewing the incidents of my administration, I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope that my country will never cease to view them with indulgence; and that, after forty five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.’
Jefferson, in
his house at
‘The loss I have sustained is truly great. From others may be taken what they possess in abundance; but I, of my simple store, I have to regret the half. The decline of my days is supported only by the feeble thread of a human life. Perhaps I am destined to see this last tie of a father’s affection broken!’
Philosophy, rarely touching, is here in sovereign
degree. And it is not the inessential grief of a man who was uninvolved with
things:
Pericles and Demosthenes had pronounced the funeral oration of young Greeks fallen for the sake of a people that vanished soon after them: Brackenridge, in 1817, celebrated the death of young Americans whose blood had given birth to a people.
There is a four-volume octavo ‘national gallery’ of
portraits of distinguished Americans, and what is most remarkable is that it
contains biographical material on over a hundred of the principal Indian
chiefs. Logan, chief of the Mingos, uttered
these words, to Lord Dunmore: ‘Colonel Cresap, last spring without provocation
murdered all the relatives of
Without loving Nature, Americans have
applied themselves to the study of natural history. Townsend, starting from
Speaking now of true literature, however slight it may be, there are a few writers to mention perhaps, among the novelists and poets. The son of a Quaker, Brown, is the author of Wieland, which is the source and model for novels of the new school. As opposed to his compatriots: ‘I would rather,’ says Brown, ‘wander through the forests than thresh corn.’ Wieland, the hero of the novel, is a Puritan whom the Deity has commanded to kill his wife: ‘“I brought thee hither,”’ he says ‘“to fulfil a divine command. I am appointed thy destroyer, and destroy thee I must.” Saying this I seized her wrists. She shrieked aloud, and endeavoured to free herself from my grasp… “Wieland…Am I not thy wife? And wouldst thou kill me? Thou wilt not…Spare me – spare…” Till her breath was stopped she shrieked for help – for mercy.’ Wieland strangles his wife and experiences ineffable delight by the dead body. The horror of our modern inventions is here surpassed. Brown was influenced by reading Caleb Williams, and in Wieland he imitates a scene from Othello.
Today, the American novelists, Cooper and Washington Irving, are forced to take refuge in
As for American poets, their language is agreeable; but
they amount to little more than the common run. However, Ode to the Evening Breeze, Sunrise
on the Mountain, The Torrent, and a few other poems merit
attention. Halleck has sung of the dying Bozzaris, and George Hill has wandered among the ruins of
It pleases me, a traveller myself to the shores of
But will
Are not the northern and southern
States opposed in spirit and interest? Would not the western States, so far
from the
The isolation of the
Separated from the ancient world, the
population of the
The presence of democracies in
I have said the northern, southern and
western States have divided interests; each knows it: shattering the union,
will they dissolve it by force of arms? Then, what can quell the enmities that spread
through the body politic! Will the dissident States assert their independence?
Then, what discord will not erupt among those emancipated States! Those
republics beyond the seas, decoupled, will form mere debilitated atoms of no
weight in the social balance, or will be successively subjugated by one amongst
them. (I set aside the difficult question of alliances and foreign
intervention).
I have spoken of the danger of war: I
must mention the dangers of a lengthy peace. The United States, since their
emancipation, have enjoyed, except for only a few months, the most profound
tranquillity: while a hundred battles embroiled
If hostilities occur in a peaceable
nation, how will they be countered? Will riches and custom be ready to make
sacrifices? How to forego life’s tender usages, comforts, and indolent
well-being?
The mercantile spirit is beginning to possess them; self-interest with them is becoming a national vice. Already, the interplay among the banks of various States is hindering them, and bankruptcies threaten the communal wealth. As long as freedom makes money, an industrialised republic performs prodigies; but when the money is spent or exhausted, it loses its love of that liberty not founded on moral feeling, but rising from the thirst for profit and a passion for industry.
Moreover, it is difficult to create a country from States which have no
community of religion or interests, which, arising from diverse sources at
diverse times, exist on different soils and under different suns. What
connection is there between a Frenchman from
An aristocratic capitalist is ready to
emerge, in love with distinctions and with a passion for titles. One might
imagine that there is only one common class in the
The enormous inequalities of wealth
are an even more serious threat to the spirit of equality. Some Americans
possess one or two millions in income; also, the Yankees of high society no
longer live as Franklin did: the
true gentleman, disgusted with the
newness of his country, travels to Europe to seek the old; you meet him in the
inns, engaged like the English, with extravagance or spleen, on his Italian tour.
These prowlers from the
And what is extraordinary, is that at
the same time that inequality of wealth increases and an aristocracy is
forming, the great egalitarian impulse beyond them obliges the owners of
industry or land to hide their luxury, conceal their wealth, for fear of being
set upon by their neighbours. They do not recognise the executive power; they
drive out, at will, the local authorities they have chosen, and substitute new
authorities for them. It does not disturb the social order; democracy is
observed in practice, while they laugh at the laws decreed, in theory, by that
same democracy. Family spirit barely exists; as soon as the child is fit for
work, he must, like a bird with its feathers, fly with his own two wings. From
the emancipated generations swiftly orphaned, and the immigrants arriving from
A cold hard egoism rules the towns; dollars and piastres, banknotes and cash, the rise and fall of stocks, is the whole of their conversation; you would imagine yourself in the Bourse, or the counting-house of some great store. The newspapers, of huge dimensions, are full of business discussions or coarse prattle. Do Americans suffer, without knowing it, the laws of a climate where vegetable nature seems to have profited at the expense of animal nature, a law opposed by distinguished men, but whose refutation has not been put absolutely beyond question? One might enquire if the American has not become used too early to philosophic freedom, as the Russian to civilised despotism.
In summary the
London, April to September 1822.
BkVIII:Chap7:Sec1
Returning from the wilderness to Philadelphia, as I have already said,
and having written on the road, in haste, what
I have just related, like La Fontaine’s
old man, I failed to find the bills of exchange waiting for me that I had
expected; that was the start of the financial difficulties in which I have been
submerged throughout my life. Fortune and I took a dislike to each other at
first sight. According to Herodotus,
certain Indian ants gathered heaps of gold: while Athenaeus claims the sun gave Hercules a golden vessel to carry him to the
island of Erytheia, home of the Hesperides: ant though I am, I have not
the honour to belong to the great Indian family, and sailor though I am, I have
never crossed the sea in other than a wooden barque. It was a boat of this kind
that carried me from
A westerly gale caught us at the mouth
of the Delaware, and drove us across the
Far from dropping, the gale increased
in strength the nearer we came to
I spent two nights walking the deck, the waves slapping in the darkness, the wind moaning in the rigging, and the sea leaping as it swept to and fro over the deck; all around us was a riot of waters. Wearied by the buffeting, on the third night I went below early. The weather was foul; my hammock rocked and creaked at the impact of the waves, that breaking over the vessel, shook its very fabric. I soon heard crewmen running from one end of the deck to the other, and coils of rope being hurled down: I experienced the motion one feels when a ship begins to tack. The hatch over the betweens-deck ladder was opened, and a terrified voice called for the captain: that voice, in the midst of night and tempest sounded dreadful. I strained my hearing; I thought the sailors were discussing the cast of the coast. I leapt from my hammock; a wave broke into the stern castle, flooding the captain’s cabin, overturning tables, beds, chests and firearms, and rolling them about pell-mell; I gained the deck, half-drowned.
As my head emerged from the hatchway, I was struck by a sublime sight. The ship had tried to put about; but unable to accomplish it, had been embayed by the wind. By the light of the half-moon, which sailed out of the clouds only to plunge into them again, we could see, through the yellow fog, a coast bristling with rocks, on either side of the ship. The sea was swollen with mountainous waves, throughout the channel which had swallowed us; now they would blossom in spume and spray; now they would present an oily, vitreous surface, mottled with black, coppery, or greenish stains, according to the colour of the depths over which they roared. For two or three minutes, the moans of the abyss and those of the wind would be confused; a moment after, we could distinguish the swirling currents, the hissing of the reefs, the noise of the distant surge. From the ship’s hold came sounds that made the hearts of the bravest sailors beat faster. The prow of the vessel cut the dense mass of water with a dreadful roar, and torrents of seething water flowed past the rudder, as at the opening of a sluice. In the midst of this uproar, nothing was as alarming as a dull murmur, like that from a vase filling with water.
Lit by a lantern, and held down by weights, sailing-books, charts and log-books were spread out on a chicken-coop. A squall had extinguished the binnacle lamp. Everyone disagreed about the land. We had entered the Channel, without being aware of it; the ship, staggering under every wave, was drifting between Guernsey and Alderney. Shipwreck seemed inevitable, and the passengers grasped hold of whatever valuables they had in order to save them.
There were French sailors among the crew; one of them, in the absence of a chaplain, intoned that hymn to Our Lady of Saving Goodness, the first thing I learnt as a child; I sang it again in sight of the Brittany coast, almost under my mother’s eyes. The American Protestant sailors joined enthusiastically in the hymn sung by their French Catholic messmates: danger teaches men their weakness and unites them in prayer. Passengers and sailors were all on deck, clinging to the rigging, the planking, the capstan, or the anchor flukes, to avoid being swept away by the sea, or hurled overboard by the rolling of the ship. The captain shouted for; ‘An axe! An axe!’ to cut away the masts; and the rudder, its tiller abandoned, swung from side to side, with a harsh creaking sound.
There was one thing left to try: the lead now registered only four fathoms above a sand bank that crossed the channel; it was possible the flood might carry us over the bank and into deep water: but who had the courage to take the helm and take charge of our common safety? One false turn of the tiller, and we were done for.
One of those men thrown up by the course of events, one of those spontaneous children of peril, appeared: a sailor from New York took the place abandoned by the steersman. I seem to see him still, in shirt and canvas trousers, bare-footed, hair drenched and tangled, grasping the tiller in his strong hands, while he looked back over the stern for the wave which would save or sink us. Here came that wave, the width of the channel, tall and rolling along without breaking, as if one sea were invading another’s domain: great, white birds flew steadily before it like birds of death. The ship touched and held fast, there was complete silence; every face blanched. The swell arrived: at the moment it reached us, the sailor put down the helm; the vessel, about to fall on her side, lifted us over. The lead was heaved: it registered twenty-seven fathoms. A cheer rose to the heavens and we joined in the shout of: ‘Long live, the King!’ God did not hear that prayer for Louis XVI; it benefited us alone.
Clear of the two islands, we were
still not out of danger; we could get no higher than the coast at Granville. At last the ebbing tide carried
us out and we doubled the
End of Book VIII