The life of Donald G. Mitchell

Front matter

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m

IK MARVEL

Preface

I finish this biography with a sense of deep satisfaction. Its completion marks the fulfilment of a hope long cherished. I was nearing the end of my second year in college when I conceived the notion of writing it, although my interest in the subject long antedates that period. A selection from Bream Life in McGufFey's Fifth Eclectic Reader introduced me to Mr. Mitchell's writings when I was a schoolboy not yet ten years of age. Even then I was charmed by the sweet flow of the delicate English, and the strong current of feeling beneath; and as I read the passage over and over, and then read the brief sketch of the author's life at the beginning of the selection; of how he was born in 1822 — even then an "old man" as I thought, but not yet dead; for there was a dash (" — ") after the birth-date — I wondered whether I should ever see the man who had written so delightfully, and whether I should ever own a copy of that book, Dream Life, or any of the others mentioned in the sketch. One after another, Mr. Mitchell's writings came into my possession, and I was not content until I had read and reread them all, from Fresh Gleanings, through the limpid pages of English Lands, Letters, and Kings, down to the last volume of American Lands and Letters. Still later I came to personal meeting with the author.

I owe a great debt of gratitude to Mr. Mitchell. His writings first interested me in English style. I have often said that he taught me more of English than I ever learned from my rhetorics. More than any other one influence his

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familiar talks on literature aroused my enthusiasm, at an early and impressionable age, for the work to which I am devoting my life. A desire to live in the vicinity of Edgewood led to my graduation from Yale. On the list of January 1903, Mr. Mitchell gave me a photograph of himself, upon which he placed a kindly autograph inscription. I said then that it should hang above my study-table as an inspiration throughout my undergraduate life. It still occupies its accustomed place. Month after month as I have wrought on this biography, the sweet and kindly face has looked down upon me. The closest study of the man's life has only increased my admiration of his character and my love of the ideals for which he contended.

I owe another debt of gratitude to his .family for intrusting to me the preparation of this biography. Their entire confidence in me; the freedom with which they have placed every document at my disposal; their desire that I tell the story fully and freely in my own way — all these things have made the work a delight. Beyond all else, however, I prize the friendship which has grown out of our work together. Very much of my task was performed in Mr. Mitchell's well-loved library during a delightful period of residence at Edgewood. I shall retain as among the pleasantest memories of life, long evenings of talk in the library with Mr. Mitchell's daughters, and rambles over the Woodbridge hills with his sons. Nor shall I forget an August journey into the quietudes of Salem with the sons Donald G. and Walter L. Mitchell, or memorable conversations and readings with Mrs. Susan Mitchell Hoppin, at her everbeautiful "Farm of Edgewood." To thank those who have been always helpful would be to name the entire Mitchell family. I feel constrained, however, to make special public

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acknowledgment of the assistance I have received from Miss Harriet Williams Mitchell. The care with which she has preserved and arranged the materials relating to her father's life has greatly lightened my task. The completeness of this narrative is due in no small measure to her filial devotion and her untiring industry.

I desire also to thank Mr. Mitchell's friends, and my own, for aid and encouragement. To name them all would be to extend this preface beyond its due limits. I cannot, however, forbear making special acknowledgment to several. I owe thanks to Prof. Henry A. Beers, of Yale University, who could have written this biography so much better than I, for reading a portion of it in manuscript, and supplying needed facts. As usual, my good friend and colleague, Mr. Walter E. Peck, of the department of English in The College of Wooster, has given unsparingly of his time to read my manuscript, and to him I am indebted for many valuable suggestions. Another friend and colleague, Mr. Frederick W. Moore, has kindly read all the proofs. To my cousin, Miss Letha M. Jones, I am deeply indebted for painstaking work in the New York Public Library upon the gathering and verification of bibliographical data. I am further indebted to Herbert F. Gunnison, Esq., and to Mr. Irving Bacheller, for permission to quote from Mr. Mitchell's "At Yale Sixty Years Ago"; to the publishers of The Youth 's Companion for permission to use the article "Looking Back at Boyhood"; to Mr. Jacob B. Perkins, of Cleveland, Ohio, a son of Mr. Mitchell's roommate at Yale, and to Mrs. Maud M. Merrill, of Stamford, Connecticut, for interesting letters of Mr. Mitchell; to Sir Robert Stout, chief justice of New Zealand, for valuable information; to Mr. Henry Charles Taylor, for an expression of opinion; to Alfred

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K. Merritt, Esq., registrar of Yale College, and to Mr. Andrew Keogh, M.A., Librarian of Yale University, for their kindness in supplying information; to Mr. Charles Scribner, for the use of letters from the files of Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons; to Mr. Charles J. Dunn, Jr., of South Portland, Maine, for the loan of valuable books; and to Messrs. John Ashhurst, William F. Clarke, Alvin H. Sanders, John W. Plaisted, and Walter S. Green, for bibliographical data. I have my daughters Dorothy and Lorna to thank for assistance in reading proofs and making the index. To none do I owe more than to my wife, whose unselfish co-operation made this work possible.

In quoting from Mr. Mitchell's books I have throughout this biography referred to the Edgewood edition, published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1907. The Battle Summer^ The Lorgnette \ and Fudge Doings are not included in that edition. All references to these three are to the original editions in book form — those of 1850, 1850, and 1855, respectively.

I cannot close without brief reference to the publishers. In these days of swift changes in the business world it seems to me significant that the present officers of the company which issues this biography — Mr. Charles Scribner, president; Mr. Arthur Scribner, treasurer; and Mr. Charles Scribner, Jr., secretary — are respectively sons and grandson of the man who more than seventy years ago began publishing Mr. Mitchell's works. I am grateful for the care which they have bestowed upon the production of this

volume.

Waldo H. Dunn.

Wooster, Ohio, April 12th, 1922.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGB

I. The Man 1

THE FORMATIVE YEARS

II

The pride which induces a man to cherish the memory of an honored and respected ancestor is not an ignoble pride — nor is it an unusual one; and he must be a sot indeed who is insensible to the regard which by common acclaim should attach to the name of his sire. — The Lorgnette, 1.255.

And thus it is that home, boy-home, passes away forever — like the swaying of a pendulum — like the fading of a shadow on the floor. — Bream Life, 107.

Donald Grant Mitchell came into life dowered with a rich heritage of blood, culture, and family tradition. His ancestry through six generations was of British origin. In the paternal line it begins authentically with Sir James Ware, member of the Irish Parliament in 1613, and auditorgeneral of Ireland, whose son James is remembered for his De Scriptoribus Hibernice (1639), a biographical dictionary of Irish authors. In the maternal line occur many famous names — Gardiners, Woodbridges, Parkers, Saltonstalls, and Brewsters; and the early history of New England bears witness to the impress left by these families upon the material and spiritual development of the country. The pedigree of his maternal grandfather, Nathaniel Shaw Woodbridge ( 1 771-1797), goes back to the Rev. John Woodbridge (d. J ^37)y rector of High worth, Wiltshire, England, who married Sara, daughter of the Rev. Robert Parker, "one of the greatest scholars in the English nation." The line of his maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Mumford (1771-1795), has been traced to Sir Richard Saltonstall (b. 1586), who in 1644 was English ambassador to Holland, where Rembrandt painted his portrait; and includes William Brewster (b. 1560), of the Mayflower > "ruling elder and spiritual guide of the Pilgrim Fathers." Soldiers, sea-captains, statesmen, authors, and divines appear and reappear in the long history of both ancestral lines. They were mostly English and Scotch, with now and then an admixture of Irish and Welsh. They have been, on the whole, capable, industrious, fearless, upright, and, above all, honest. For well-nigh three hundred years they have upheld the best traditions of the British race, and have blended sturdy strength and unyielding spirit with bright fancy and quick wit.

Mr. Mitchell was always reasonably proud of his ancestry. For him, the achievements of his forefathers were incentives to high living and individual effort. His keen humor and clear common sense lifted him far above any dependence upon mere pride of birth; he was never stultified by ancestral greatness; he never allowed the weight of pedigree to become oppressive. Some of his sharpest satirical thrusts were directed toward those whose only claim to attention rested upon the deeds of illustrious forebears; and he never ceased to enjoy Sir Thomas Overbury's reference to the "potato-fields" of ancestry. "Individuality," he wrote, "seems to me the best stamp and seal that a man can carry: if he cannot carry that, it will take a great deal to carry him. If a man's own heart and energy are not equal to the making of his fortune, he will find, I think, a very poor resort in what Sir Tommy Overbury calls 'the potato fields of his ancestors;' meaning, by that cheerful figure, that all there is good about the matter is below ground." * Through Sir Richard Saltonstall, Mr. Mitchell could trace connection with Edward III of England; but he was very careful not to let the fact be known. In 1895 ne prepared a chart for his daughter Mary upon which this Edward connection was shown. Within a few days he was regretting his action. "I don't know," he began (January 6th, 1896), "if you have received a letter I wrote to you some ten days ago; but write again to say that I shall be very much mortified and 'put out' if you give any 'forward* place to the 'pedigree* which I sent. Put this out of sight, and some time I will make a nicer one going back only to colonial times, which can be boasted of without vulgar braggadocio ! It was only to amuse you for the Christmas season that I prepared it. I have laughed, ever since I could laugh sardonically at anything, at the vulgar pretention of those who make a boast, or a show of such ' tagging* at royalty, or its shadows, and should be dreadfully mortified at your calling any special attention to that 'gim-crack* of a pedigree." The noble pride which he cherished for those whose blood flowed in his veins became for him a source of strength manifesting itself quietly and without ostentation in a worthiness of life and work that added lustre to the long ancestral story. How well he knew that story may be learned from an examination of the Woodbridge Record^ his lasting memorial to family history and achievement.

In 1885 ne wr °te a brief account of his family in which he gave such information as he considered of immediate importance. From it I make a few extracts:

I am able to tell . . . very little of James Mitchell . . . save that he came from Scotland — neighborhood of Paisley — about the

1 Fudge Doings, 1.32. !5 year 1730, and settled in Wethersfield. He married, shortly after, a daughter of the well-known family of Buck, in that town. . . .

By a second marriage with Rebecca Mix, daughter of Rev. Stephen Mix, of Wethersfield, the emigrant James became the father of Stephen Mix Mitchell, my grandfather. What the avocations of James Mitchell may have been, or what means, if any, he brought with him from the old country, I never knew. I remember only that an ancient house of the colonial type stood upon the southwestern angle of my grandfather's home lots, on Wethersfield Street, and was called the homestead of "Grandfather James." I have further heard that he was sometime engaged in the West India trade; the fact that a grandson died at sea, and another in the West Indies, seems to favor the tradition about his over-sea trade; but I know nothing of it definitely.

. . . Stephen Mix, only child by his second marriage, married in due time Hannah Grant, daughter of a well established landholder and merchant of Newtown, Conn., Donald Grant, who had come from Scotland — neighborhood of Inverness — about 1735. The passport of this Donald Grant, with its commendation of the bearer by the authorities of the parish of Duthel, Invernesshire, is still in my possession; and so is the old-style, flint-lock fowling-piece which he brought with him on his migration. Shortly after the marriage of Stephen Mix (1769), his father, James Mitchell, then for a second time a widower, married for his third wife, Mrs. Arminal (Toucey) Grant, the mother of his son Stephen's bride. A speech thereanent, credited to the veteran bridegroom James, used to be current in the family: "My boy has ta'en the chick, so I'll e'en gather in the old hen."

My grandfather, Stephen Mix Mitchell, was educated at Yale, class of 1763, was tutor there in 1766, and received the degree of LL.D. in 1807. He was in the same year, I think, appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of Connecticut. He had previously been Judge, for many years, of the county court; he was also a delegate to the Old Congress, where he was much associated with his colleague, Hon. William Samuel Johnson, of Stratford, an association which led to much intimacy between the families of the two delegates. Subsequently (1793) ne was appointed United States Senator from Connecticut. He did good service for his state in establishing her title to the "Western Reserve" lands in Ohio; and from all accounts which have come to my knowledge, did other service to his generation by living uprightly, and dealing fairly with all men. My grandfather was a tutor at Yale long before the day of his ex officio fellowship; and I have heard the story told in our family circle, fifty years ago, that when Timothy Dwight, the first, presented himself for admission to college, Tutor Mitchell took the future president upon his knee — so small and young was he — in prosecuting the examination.

I have quite a vivid recollection of the personality of the old gentleman (he died in 1835) — a % ure Dent with the weight of over ninety years, abounding white hair, a face clean-shaven, an aquiline nose, and an eye that seemed to see everything. The portrait by Professor S. F. B. Morse [painted in 1827] ... is wonderfully like the venerable man whom I remember, and at whose house in Wethersfield I used to make my semi-annual visits in journeying to and from the old school at Ellington. I remember distinctly his long woollen hose and his knee-buckles, and his oaken staff — on which he leaned heavily such times as he trudged away to his barns for a look at his cattle, or the fondling of some pet beast. His long coat — such as you see in pictures of Franklin — had huge lapels and pockets; these latter often bulging out with ears of corn, on the visitations I speak of, for the pampering of some favorite horse or pig.

He had never but one home, that upon the angle of two of the Wethersfield streets (it is the first angle one encounters in going northerly from the brick "meeting house"); he clung to that home with Scotch tenacity, and brought up there a family of eleven children, who all reached mature years. Now, there is not a vestige left of the house in which he lived; nor any trace of the gardens with their "ox-heart" cherry trees, which flanked it north and south. I don't think there's a tree left thereabout which was standing in his time; but, on a late visit, I was fortunate enough to encounter an oldish native who remembered distinctly my grandfather, as I have described him, and his gambrel-roofed house, which was a capital type of a New England homestead. He recalled, too, much to my delectation, the low " chariot " which the rheumatic old gentleman had specially constructed (it was before the day of Park phaetons), and in which, with his venerable horse "Whitey" tackled thereto, he trundled through the village streets and along the "Har'ford meadows." He died at the goodly age of ninety-two, and lies buried near the summit of the hillock in the Wethersfield churchyard.

The eldest son of Judge Mitchell was Donald Grant (b. 1773), whose commission as Captain in the U. S. Army, signed by George Washington, is now hanging upon my library wall; a miniature portrait of him in his regimentals, which is also in my possession, shows a handsome blue-eyed young man of twenty- three; indeed, my aunts always spoke of him (with sisterly unction) as having been conspicuously handsome. He was much a favorite, too; and the story ran, in the Wethersfield house, that on a time a certain distinguished British visitor whose acquaintance the Judge had made in Philadelphia, was so impressed by the young Donald that he proposed taking him with him to London, engaging in that case to purchase for him a captaincy in the British army. To this, however, the patriot Judge would not accede, preferring for his boy the humble pay and perquisites belonging to the same grade in his country's service. Donald, however, did not long enjoy his captaincy; he died of yellow fever in Baltimore, in August of 1799. He was a graduate of Yale, 1792; as indeed were all the six sons of Chief Justice Mitchell.

Alfred (b. 1790) my father was the youngest son of Justice Mitchell, and the only clergyman in his family. He graduated at

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STEPHEN MIX MITCHELL.

First Chief Justice of Connecticut. Grandfather of Donald G. Mitchell.

From a portrait by S. F. B. Morse, painted in 1827.

Yale, 1809; studied thereafter at Andover, and at Washington, Conn., and in 18 14 was ordained a minister to the parish of Chelsea in the town of Norwich. At about the same date he married Lucretia Woodbridge of Elmgrove, Lyme (now Salem), whom he had first encountered on his ministrations in the surrounding towns. Miss Woodbridge was one of two orphan daughters of Nathaniel Shaw Woodbridge, whose father was Rev. Ephraim Woodbridge of New London, and thus came in direct line of descent from Rev. John Woodbridge of Wethersfield, who married a daughter of Gov. Leete, and the earlier Rev. John Woodbridge of Andover, whose wife was daughter of Gov. Dudley. On the maternal side Miss Woodbridge was descended from the Christophers, the Gardiners of Gardiner's Island, and the Saltonstalls of New London.

In his first and only parish of Chelsea, now Second Church of Norwich, Rev. Alfred Mitchell served some seventeen years, when he died aged forty-one. Those who knew him say that he greatly loved and exalted his office of preacher; and that while retiring and shy in his ordinary intercourse with men, boldness came to him when he entered his pulpit; and that he taught as one who believed thoroughly all that he taught. His home, unchanged throughout his life, was upon "the Plain," just northward of the present Slater Memorial Hall; and its territory embraced a small tract of wood, of garden, and of orchards. It is said that he loved these overmuch, and of all society enjoyed most that which he found at his own fireside. I remember very little of the personal appearance of my father ... all the less, since during the last year of his lifetime I was mostly away from home, at school. Only dimly do I recall his tall figure leaning over the pulpit-cushion, and the wonderful earnestness of his manner.

Alfred Mitchell was ordained to the ministry of the Second Congregational Church of Norwich, Connecticut, October 27th, 1814. On the 16th of January 1815, he married Miss Lucretia Woodbridge, and established a home in the

"parsonage house" at Norwich. This large square dwelling, built about 1785, faced the old Parade, or Great Plain, where now is Williams Park. It was a beautiful home, set in the midst of ample grounds, flanked by orchards, and girt about by woodland heights in the rear.

The surroundings of the parsonage home made a powerful appeal to Alfred Mitchell, and deepened his already strong love of nature. We are told that the woodland heights became his "walk, study, and oratory." A part of his staid and exacting congregation was inclined to think him a bit eccentric, when he built in a remote corner of those wooded hills a little summer-house whither he withdrew to study and meditate. For recreation and quiet joy he turned to garden and orchard; and his fondness for flowers and fruits was transmitted to his children, especially to Donald. United with this deep sense of the beautiful, and love of its manifestation in nature, was a stern, unyielding Puritanism. His notion of religion and of its responsibilities exercised a somewhat tyrannous and repressive influence upon him; the Puritan within him came to predominate, and made him appear more serious and reserved than he was by nature. There is no doubt that many of the characteristics which Donald ascribes to Dr. Johns were the outcome of youthful memories of his father.

The contemporaries of Alfred Mitchell were impressed by his personal appearance and his "most amiable and interesting manners." His portrait reveals an attractive face, and the large, thoughtful eyes of a dreamer. "His countenance," wrote Albert T. Chester, "was benignant, though exceedingly grave and solemn; his gait and attitudes were all dignified. In speech he was deliberate; every thought was well examined before it was permitted to pass his lips. This gave him an appearance of reserve and coldness which, however, his uniform kindness and amiable temper ever contradicted. His sermons . . . delivered . . . with increased animation, fairly startled the congregation. " In his Annals of the American Pulpit > Dr. William Buell Sprague records that Mr. Mitchell was "a good scholar, and was particularly distinguished for a judicious, fearless independence, united with great conscientiousness, though he was diffident in his manners to a fault." He was unusually sensitive to the responsibilities of his calling, and labored with increasing zeal, growing all the while perhaps more reserved in manner and more exacting in his own religious life. There is a probability that his death at the early age of forty-one was the result of overexertion in conducting revival services — an overtaxing of physical and spiritual energies.

Lucretia Woodbridge brought sterling qualities of head and heart to the Norwich manse. She had never known the love of either parent. Her father, during the seven years of his married life, occupied a country estate near Elmgrove, Salem, which he had inherited from his mother's people, the Shaws. Here he lived as "a country squire, devoted to horses, dogs, hunting, and out-of-door sports, and probably had little to do with the practical side of a farmer's life. He was of an affectionate nature, and devotedly attached to his friends. . . . He was convivial in his tastes, generous to a fault, a careless liver; and finally, the delicacy of his constitution, which he had inherited from his father and mother, developed into consumption, which ended his life at the early age of twenty-six." x Upon the death of her father, two years after that of her mother, Lucretia, not yet two years old, was taken by her grandparents, John and Lucretia

1 Chronicles of a Connecticut Farm, 1769-1905. Compiled by Mary E. Perkins.

Christophers Mumford, who lived near by at Elmgrove, her paternal grandparents being already dead.

A portrait of Lucretia Woodbridge painted by Samuel Waldo about 1815 passed to the son Donald, and for more than fifty years has hung above the mantelpiece in the Edgewood library. It is the portrait of a beautiful young woman. The delicately moulded chin, the sensitive mouth, the eyebrows distinctly outlined, the soft, luminous, trustful eyes, all speak of unusual refinement of character. She had been reared in the Episcopalian faith. Of course, when she became the wife of Alfred Mitchell, she entered a chillier, sterner religious atmosphere. Religious by nature, she bent herself very conscientiously to conformity with the new conditions, and doubtless held herself to many an undeserved reckoning. All the sternness and discipline of a Puritan ministers home could not, however, sour or overlay the sweet naturalness of her religion, and Donald testifies to the influence of his mother as worth more in the life of her children than all the sermons and catechisings.

Husband and wife were congenial, and their short wedded life was, in spite of burdens of ill health and death, more than ordinarily happy. A portion of a letter written in 18 16 or 1 817 (postmarked May 1st) to her husband from her old home, where she was visiting, is illuminating, and helps us to realize somewhat of the conditions out of which it came. It is eloquent of the conflict between her love and her acquired Puritan tenets. It is, indeed, just such a letter as sweet little Rachel Johns might have written to her goodman, the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Johns:

How true it is [she writes] that in the midst of happiness the sighing heart will remind us of imperfection. I find even at Elmgrove, surrounded by near and dear friends, I have many thoughts hovering around our snug little parlour and its poor, solitary inmate, and wish often that he could make one of our happy circle. But it is best that we should be sometimes separated. I find by it that I am making too much an arm of flesh my confidence, and forgetting that gracious Being, the author of every mercy, on whom alone all my trust should be stayed. I hope you do not fail to commend us to his protecting care, and implore his grace to strengthen and assist me in every duty. Thus far I have experienced his loving kindness and tender mercy. . . .

Of such parents and amid such surroundings, Donald Grant, fourth child and second son, was born on the 12th of April 1822. The pages of his books reveal how open and sensitive was his youthful mind to impressions of home surroundings. Reveries of a Bachelor •, Dream Life, About Old Story Tellers, Br. Johns, and Bound Together have woven into their very texture the story of his young days; fact, and memory, and fiction blend into a web that only the author himself could ever satisfactorily unravel. Few men have written so wholly out of their own experience. And yet, according to his own testimony, his recollections did not extend to an unusually early age:

I wonder [he wrote in an autobiographical fragment of 1894] at those autobiographies which carry back recollections to the age of three, four, and five. The farthest-back memory which I can fix by years is when my father, or one of the children, alluded to my birthday of five years (1827). I know I was seated on the nurse's knee, and she was putting on my shoes when I looked up to the interlocutor. I remember, too, a severe punishment from my father at the same age — perhaps six months, earlier — when for some sharp assault upon the same good old nurse (either biting or kicking), my father snatched me from her lap — as I was, half-dressed — took me out of doors, and dipped me into the tub by the well where the horses drank, to cool me off. This is distinct to me now at ce. 72. From this, and other recollections, I am sure my father must have been a very severe disciplinarian; too severe to kindle a child's best love. I know my feeling toward him was very different from that toward my mother. We — all of us, I think — went to her first.

Notwithstanding Mr. Mitchell's statement about the period of his first recolkctions, there is no doubt whatever of the sharpness and tenacity of his memory. Nor is there any doubt that the spell of the past fell upon him very early. The Tennysonian "passion of the past" was his seemingly by right of birth. One has only to look at the drawing of Norwich, entitled "A Boyhood Memory," which he made m 1895, to gain some little conception of the quality of his memory, and of the kind of thing which imprinted itself upon his boy mind. It is interesting to observe that the course of his life fostered this peculiar quality of mind and memory. The brevity of his early home life, the shadows that came with each death, the final break-up of his home in boyhood, the long period of exile in Europe, all had their powerful influence in moulding a nature already sensitive by inheritance to an unusual degree of sensitiveness and sadness. Throughout his life he loved to turn to "the days that are no more," and in the very temple of Delight he found with Keats the sovran shrine of Melancholy, and dared to burst Joy's grape with strenuous tongue against his palate fine. Inherited tendencies and the circumstances of his early life steadily moulded him for the kind of writing in which he was to excel.