The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864

Spotless cleanliness is another indispensable characteristic,—not only urged, but enforced; for there is no such notable housewife as the Government. The vast "Mower" Hospital at Chestnut Hill, the largest in the world, is as well kept as a lady's boudoir should be. It is built around a square of seven acres, in which stand the surgeon's lecture-room, the chapel, the platform for the band, etc. A long corridor goes about this square, rounded at the corners, and lighted on one side by numerous large windows, which, if removed in summer, must leave it almost wholly open. From the opposite side radiate the sick-wards, fifty in number, one story in height, one hundred and seventy-five feet in length, and twenty feet farther apart at the extremity than at the corridor, thus completely isolating them from each other. A railway runs the length of the corridor, on which small cars convey meals to the mess-rooms attached to each of the wards for those who are unable to leave them, stores, and even the sick themselves; and the corridor, closed in winter and warmed by stoves, forms a huge and airy exercise-hall for the convalescent patients. As for the cooking-facilities, they are something prodigious, at least in the sight of ordinary kitchens, leaving nothing to be desired, unless it were that discriminating kettle of the Erse king, that could cook for any given number of men and apportion the share of each to his rank and needs. Such a kettle might make the "extra-diet" kitchen unnecessary; otherwise, I can hardly tell where improvement would be possible.

But though, with the exception of the West Philadelphia, none can compare in hugeness with this Skrymir of hospitals, the hospital-buildings, as a rule, have everywhere a strong family-likeness. The pavilion-system, which isolates each of the sick-wards, allowing it free circulation of air about three of its sides, is conceded to be the only one worthy of attention, and is introduced in all such buildings of modern date. Ridge-ventilation, obtained by means of openings on either side of the ridge, is also very generally used, and advocated even in permanent hospitals of stone and brick. Science and Common Sense at last have fraternized, and work together hand in hand. The good old-fashioned plan of slowly stewing the patient to death, or at least to a fever, in confined air and stale odors, equal parts, is almost abandoned; and to speak after the manner of Charles Reade, "Nature gets now a pat on the back, instead of a kick under the bed." Proper ventilation begins, ends, and forms the gist of almost every chapter in our hospital-manuals; and I think they should be excellent summer-reading, for a pleasant breeze seems to rustle every page, so earnestly is, first, pure air, second, pure air, and third, pure air, impressed upon the student, "line upon line and precept upon precept."

The Mower Hospital, which employs ten hundred and fifty gas-burners, uses daily one hundred and fifty thousand gallons of water, and can receive between five and six thousand patients, is free even from a suspicion of the "hospital-smell." The Campbell and Harewood, at Washington, are models in this respect, and can rank with many a handsome drawing-room. The last-named institution is also delightfully situated on grounds once belonging to the Rebel Corcoran, comprising some two hundred acres, laid out with shaded walks, and adorned with rustic bridges and summer-houses,—a fashion of deriving aid and comfort from the enemy which doesn't come under the head of treason.

On hygienic grounds, all possible traps are set to catch sunbeams. One hospital has a theatre in the mess-room, of which the scenery is painted by a convalescent, and the stage, foot-lights, etc., are the work of the soldiers. The performers are amateurs, taken from among the patients; and the poor fellows who can be moved, but are unable to walk, are carried down in the dumb-waiter to share in the entertainment. Another has a library, reading-room, and a printing-press, which strikes off a weekly newspaper, in which are a serial story, poetry, and many profound and moral reflections. The men play cards and backgammon, read, write, smoke, and tell marvellous stories, commencing, "It wasn't fairly day, and we were hardly wide enough awake to tell a tree-stump from a gray coat,"—or, "When we saw them coming, we first formed in square, corner towards them you know, and waited till they were close on us, and then, Sir, we opened and gave them our cannon, grape-shot, right slap into them,"—or good-humoredly rally each other, as in the case of that unlucky regiment perfectly cut up in its first battle, and known as "six-weeks' soldiers and six-months' hospital-men."

But these are mere surface-facts. Hospital-life is woven in a different pattern from our own, the shades deeper, the gold brighter, and we find in it very much of heroism in plain colors, and self-sacrifice of rough texture.

One poor fellow, yet dim-eyed and faint from long battling for his ebbing life, will motion away the offered delicacy, pointing to some other bed:—"Give it to him; he needs it more than I"; or sometimes, if money is offered, "I have just been paid off; let that man have it; he has nothing." Then some of the convalescents furnish our best and tenderest nurses. A soldier was brought from Richmond badly wounded in the leg. While in the prison his wounds had received no attention, and he was in such enfeebled condition, that, when amputation became inevitable, it was feared he would die of the operation. Hardly breathing, made over apparently unto death, one of these soldier-nurses took him in charge, for five days and nights kept close by his bed, scarcely leaving him an instant, watching his faltering, flickering breath, as his mother might have done, wresting him by force of vigilance and tenderest care from the very clutch of the Destroyer, rejoicing over his recovery as for that of a dear and only brother. Another, likewise brought from Richmond, won the pity of a lady, a chance visitor. She came to him every day, a distance of five miles, washed his wounds, dressed them, nursed him back into the confines of life, obtained for him a furlough, took him to her own house to complete the cure, and sent him back to his regiment—well.

Over a third, a ruddy-faced New-England boy hardly yet into manhood, hung the shadow of death, and quivering lips and swimming eyes—for they come, there, to love our poor boys most tenderly—had spoken his death-warrant. He was silent a moment. Even a brave soul stops and catches breath, at the unexpected nearness of the Great Revelation; then he asked to be baptized,—"because his mother was a Christian, and he had promised her, if he died, and not on battle-field, to have this rite performed, that she might know that he shared this Holy Faith with her, and was not forgetful of her wishes"; and so he was baptized, and died.

There are cheerier phases. Side by side lay a New-Yorker, a Pennsylvanian, and a Scotch boy, all terribly wounded. By the by, it is a curious fact that there are few sabre-wounds, and almost literally none from the bayonet; the work of destruction being, in almost all cases, that of the rending Minié ball. The fathers of the New-Yorker and Pennsylvanian had just visited them, and they were chatting cheerily of their homes. The Scotch boy, who had lost a leg, looked up, brightly smiling also.

"My mother will be here on Wednesday, from Scotland. When she knew that I had enlisted, she sent me word that I had done well to take up arms for a country that had been so good to me; and when she heard that I was wounded, she wrote that she should take the next steamer for the United States."

And, as might have been expected from such a woman, on Wednesday she was by his bedside, redeeming her word to the very day.

Sometimes the men grumble a little. One poor fellow, with a bullet through his lungs, took high and strong ground against the meat:—"Oh! God love ye! how could a body eat it, swimming in fat? but the eggs, they was beautiful; and the toast is good; ye'll send me some of that for me supper?" But as a rule they are cheery and contented, grow strongly attached to their nurses and the visitors, and, when back in camp, write letters of fond remembrance to their hospital-homes.

No one has ever suspected ledgers of a latent angelic principle,—and yet, if unpaid benevolence, consolation poured on wounded hearts, hope given to despair, and help to poverty and misery, have in them anything heavenly, then have our soldiers a guardian angel in the Hospital Directory. There has been a battle, and three or four days of maddening suspense, and then the cold, hopeless newspaper-list; and your son, mother, who played about your knee only a little time ago, and went out in his youthful pride to battle, is there, wounded,—or your lover, girl, who has taught you the deeper meaning of a woman's life,—or your husband, sad woman, whose children stand at your knee scared by your tears.

"The regiment stood like a rock against the enemy's furious onset, and its blood-stained colors are forever glorious"; but it went out nine hundred strong, and it comes back with two hundred, and what do you care now for laurel-wreaths? He is not with them. There are railroads,—you can near the battle-field, but you cannot reach it; you can inquire, but the officers must care for the living,—"let the dead bury their dead"; and while you are frantically asking and searching, he is dying, suffering, calling for you; and then you find that the Hospital Directory has trace of him, and the kindly, patient members of the Sanitary Commission are ready with time, and money, if needed, to put you on it; and if ever you have had that horror of uncertainty strong upon you, you will not think that I have strained the language, when I call this most pitiful and Christian charity a guardian angel. Hear the inquiries:—"By the love you bear your own mother, tell me where my boy is! only give me some tidings!" "I pray you, tell me of these two nephews for whom I am seeking: I have had fourteen nephews in the service, and these two are the only ones left." Words like these put soul and meaning into the following statistics, given by Mr. Brown, Superintendent of the Hospital Directory at Washington.

"The Washington Bureau of the Hospital Directory of the United States Sanitary Commission was opened to the public on the twenty-seventh of November, 1862. In the month of December following I was ordered to Louisville, Ky., to organize a Directory Bureau for the Western Department of the Sanitary Commission, and in January ended my labor in that department. Returning to Washington, and thence proceeding to Philadelphia and New York upon the same duty performed at the West, I completed the entire organization of the four bureaus by the fifth of March, 1863. Since the first of June, at these several bureaus, the returns from every United States General Hospital of the army, 233 in number, have been regularly received.

"The total number of names on record is 513,437. The total number of inquiries for information has been 12,884, and the number of successful answers rendered 9,203, being seventy-two per cent. on the number received. The remaining twenty-eight per cent., of whom no information could be obtained, are of those who perished in the Peninsula campaign, before Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, etc."

In the Sanitary Commission, mentioned here, our soldiers have yet another friend, for whom even our copious Anglo-Saxon can find no word of description at once strong, wise, tender, and far-reaching; but perhaps a simple story, taken from the Sanitary Commission Bulletin, will speak more clearly, and better to the heart, than pages of dry records.

"Away up in the fourth story of Hospital No. 3, and in a far corner of the ward, was seen, one day, an old lady sitting by the side of a mere lad, who was reduced to the verge of death by chronic diarrhœa. She was a plain, honest-hearted farmer's wife, her face all aglow with motherly love, and who, to judge from appearances, had likely never before travelled beyond the limits of her neighborhood, but now had come many a long mile to do what might be done for her boy. In the course of a conversation she informed her questioner, that, 'if she could only get something that tasted like home,—some good tea, for instance, which she could make herself, and which would be better than that of the hospital,—she thought it might save her son's life.' Of course it was sent to her, and on a subsequent visit she expressed her thanks in a simple, hearty way, quite in keeping with her appearance. Still she seemed sad; something was on her mind that evidently troubled her, and, like Banquo's ghost, 'would not down.' At length it came out in a confiding, innocent way,—more, evidently, because it was uppermost in her thoughts than for the purpose of receiving sympathy,—that her means were about exhausted. 'I didn't think that it would take so much money; it is so much farther away from home than I had thought, and board here is so very high, that I have hardly enough left to take me back; and by another week I will have to leave him. I have been around to the stores to buy some little things that he would eat,—for he can't eat this strong food,—but the prices are so high that I can't buy them, and I am afraid, that, if I go away, and if he doesn't get something different to eat, that maybe,' and the tears trickled down her cheeks, 'he won't—be so well.'

"Her listener thought that difficulty might be overcome, and, if she would put on her bonnet, they would go to a store where articles were cheap. Accordingly they arrived in front of the large three-story building which Government has assigned to the Commission, and the old lady was soon running her eyes over the long rows of boxes, bales, and barrels that stretched for a hundred feet down the room, but was most fascinated by the bottles and cans on the shelves. He ordered a supply of sugar, tea, soft crackers, and canned fruit, then chicken and oysters, then jelly and wine, brandy, milk, and under-clothing, till the basket was full. As the earlier articles nestled under its lids, her face was glowing with satisfaction; but as the later lots arrived, she would draw him aside to whisper that 'it was too much,'—'really she hadn't enough money'; and when the more expensive items came from the shelves, the shadow of earnestness which gloomed her countenance grew into one of perplexity, her soul vibrating between motherly yearning for the lad on his bed and the scant purse in her pocket, till, slowly, and with great reluctance, she began to return the costliest.

"'Hadn't you better ask the price?' said her guide.

"'How much is it?'

"'Nothing,' replied the store-keeper.

"'Sir!' queried she, in the utmost amazement, 'nothing for all this?'

"'My good woman,' asked the guide, 'have you a Soldiers' Aid Society in your neighborhood?'

"Yes, they had; she belonged to it herself.

"'Well, what do you suppose becomes of the garments you make, and the fruit have you put up?'

"She hadn't thought,—she supposed they went to the army,—but was evidently bothered to know what connection there could be between their Aid Society and that basket.

"'These garments that you see came from your society, or other societies just like yours; so did these boxes and barrels; that milk came from New York; those fruits from Boston; that wine was likely purchased with gold from California; and it is all for sick soldiers, your son as much as for any one else. This is the United States Sanitary Commission storehouse; you must come here whenever you wish, and call for everything you want; and you must stay with your son until he is able to go home: never mind the money's giving out; you shall have more, which, when you get back, you can refund for the use of other mothers and sons; when you are ready to go, I will put him in a berth where he can lie down, and you shall save his life yet.'

"She did,—God bless her innocent, motherly heart!—when nothing but motherly care could have achieved it; and when last seen, on a dismal, drizzly morning, was, with her face beaming out the radiance of hope, making a cup of tea on the stove of a caboose-car for the convalescent, who was snugly tucked away in the caboose-berth, waiting the final whistle of the locomotive that would speed them both homeward."

But for many of our soldiers there is yet another phase in store,—that sad time when the clangor and fierce joy and wild, exulting hurrah of the battle are over forever; and so, too, is over tender hospital-nursing, and they are sent out by hundreds, cured of their wounds, but maimed, the sources of life half drained, vigor gone, hope all spent, to limp through the blind alleys and by-ways of life, dropped out of the remembrance of a country that has used and forgotten them. They have given for her, not life, but all that makes life pleasant, hopeful, or even possible. It seems to me, that, in common decency, if she has no laurels to spare, she should at least give them in return—a daily dinner. Already, however, has the idea been set forth, after a better fashion than I can hope to do,—in wood and stone, and by the aid of a charter.

In Philadelphia stands the first chartered "Home" for disabled soldiers, a cheery old house, dating back to the occupation of the city by the British army in 1777-8, founded and supported by private citizens, open to all, of whatever State, and fully looking its title, a "Home"; and as the want is more widely felt, and presses closer upon us, I cannot but think that everywhere we shall find such "Homes," and as we grow graver, sadder, and wiser, under the hard teaching of our war, and more awake to the thought that we have done with our splendid unclouded youth, and must now take upon us the sterner responsibilities of our manhood, that a new spirit will spring up among us,—the spirit of that woman who, with a bedridden mother, an ailing sister, and a shop to tend, as their only means of support, yet finds time to visit our sick soldiers, and carry to them the little that she can spare, and that which she has begged of her wealthier neighbors,—the spirit of that poor seamstress who snatches an hour daily from her exhausting toil to sew for the soldiers,—the spirit of that mechanic, who, having nothing to give, makes boxes in his evening leisure, and sells them for the soldiers,—the spirit of the brooks, that never hesitate between up-hill and down, because "all the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is never full,"—the spirit of all who do with love and zeal whatever their hands find to do, and sigh, not because it is so little, but because it is not better.

God grant that this spirit may obtain among us,—that our soldiers, and their helpless families, may be to us a national trust, for which we are bound individually, even the very humblest and meanest of us, to care. The field is vast, and white for the harvest. Now, for the love of Christ, in the name of honor, for very shame's sake, where we counted our laborers by tens, let us number them by fifties,—where there were hundreds, let there be thousands.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

BY ONE WHO KNEW HIM

The great master of English prose has left us suddenly, but to himself not unexpectedly. In the maturity of his powers, with his enduring position in literature fairly won and recognized, with the provision which spurred him to constant work secured to those he loved, his death saddens us rather through the sense of our own loss than from the tragic regret which is associated with an unaccomplished destiny. More fortunate than Fielding, he was allowed to take the measure of his permanent fame. The niche wherein he shall henceforth stand was chiselled while he lived. One by one the doubters confessed their reluctant faith, unfriendly critics dropped their blunted steel, and no man dared to deny him the place which was his, and his only, by right of genius.

In one sense, however, he was misunderstood by the world, and he has died before that profounder recognition which he craved had time to mature. All the breadth and certainty of his fame failed to compensate him for the lack of this: the man's heart coveted that justice which was accorded only to the author's brain. Other pens may sum up the literary record he has left behind: I claim the right of a friend who knew and loved him to speak of him as a man. The testimony, which, while living, he was too proud to have desired, may now be laid reverently upon his grave.

There is a delicacy to be observed in describing one's intercourse with a departed great man, since death does not wholly remove that privacy which it is our duty to respect in life. Yet the veil which we charitably drop upon weakness or dishonor may surely be lifted to disclose the opposite qualities. I shall repeat no word of Thackeray's which he would have wished unsaid or suppressed: I shall say no more than he would himself have said of a contemporary to whom the world had not done full justice. During a friendship of nearly seven years, he permitted me to see that one true side of an author's nature which is never so far revealed to the public that the malignant may avail themselves of his candor to assail or the fools to annoy him. He is now beyond the reach of malice, obtrusive sentiment, or vain curiosity; and the "late remorse of love," which a better knowledge of the man may here and there provoke, can atone for past wrong only by that considerate, tender judgment of the living of which he was an example.

I made Thackeray's acquaintance in New York towards the close of the year 1855. With the first grasp of his broad hand, and the first look of his large, serious gray eyes, I received an impression of the essential manliness of his nature,—of his honesty, his proud, almost defiant candor, his ever-present, yet shrinking tenderness, and that sadness of the moral sentiment which the world persisted in regarding as cynicism. This impression deepened with my further acquaintance, and was never modified. Although he belonged to the sensitive, irritable genus, his only manifestations of impatience which I remember were when that which he had written with a sigh was interpreted as a sneer. When so misunderstood, he scorned to set himself right. "I have no brain above the eyes," he was accustomed to say; "I describe what I see." He was quick and unerring in detecting the weaknesses of his friends, and spoke of them with a tone of disappointment sometimes bordering on exasperation; but he was equally severe upon his own shortcomings. He allowed no friend to think him better than his own deliberate estimate made him. I have never known a man whose nature was so immovably based on truth.

In a conversation upon the United States, shortly after we first met, he said,—

"There is one thing in this country which astonishes me. You have a capacity for culture which contradicts all my experience. There are –" (mentioning two or three names well known in New York) "who I know have arisen from nothing, yet they are fit for any society in the world. They would be just as self-possessed and entertaining in the presence of stars and garters as they are here to-night. Now, in England, a man who has made his way up, as they have, doesn't seem able to feel his social dignity. A little bit of the flunky sticks in him somewhere. I am, perhaps, as independent in this respect as any one I know, yet I'm not entirely sure of myself."

"Do you remember," I asked him, "what Goethe says of the boys in Venice? He explains their cleverness, grace, and self-possession as children by the possibility of any one of them becoming Doge."

"That may be the secret, after all," said Thackeray. "There is no country like yours for a young man who is obliged to work for his own place and fortune. If I had sons, I should send them here."

Afterwards, in London, I visited with him the studio of Baron Marochetti, the sculptor, who was then his next-door neighbor in Onslow Square, Brompton. The Baron, it appeared, had promised him an original wood-cut of Albert Dürer's, for whom Thackeray had a special admiration. Soon after our entrance, the sculptor took down a small engraving from the wall, saying,—

"Now you have it, at last."

The subject was St. George and the Dragon.

Thackeray inspected it with great delight for a few minutes: then, suddenly becoming grave, he turned to me and said,—

"I shall hang it near the head of my bed, where I can see it every morning. We all have our dragons to fight. Do you know yours? I know mine: I have not one, but two."