Think of these volumes lying in his desk at home, and he, their author, going about his daily tasks and pleasures, as hearty and as unrepining as though no whisper of ambition had ever come to his soul,—as though he had no slightest desire for the pleasant fame which a successful book gives to a young man. Think of it, O race of scribblers, to whom a month in the printer's hands seems a monstrous delay, and who bore publishers with half-finished manuscripts, as impatient hens begin, untimely, to cackle before the egg is laid.
That a young man, not thirty-three when he died, should have written these volumes, so full of life, so full of strange adventure, of wide reading, telling of such large and thorough knowledge of books and men and Nature, is a remarkable fact in itself. That he should have let the manuscripts lie in his desk has probably surprised the world more. But, much as he wrote, Winthrop, perhaps, always felt that his true life was not that of the author, but of the actor. He has often told me that it was a pleasure to write,—probably such a pleasure as it is to an old tar to spin his yarns. His mind was active, stored with the accumulated facts of a varied experience. How keen an observer of Nature he was, those who have read "John Brent" or the "Canoe and Saddle" need not be told; how appreciative an observer of every-day life, was shown in that brilliant story which appeared in these pages some eighteen months ago, under the title of "Love and Skates." Our American life lost by his death one who, had he lived, would have represented it, reported it to the world, soul and body together; for he comprehended its spirit, as well as saw its outer husk; he was in sympathy with all its manifestations.
That quick, intelligent eye saw everything; that kindly, sympathetic spirit comprehended always the soul of things; and no life, however common, rugged, or coarse, was to him empty. If he added always something of his own nobility of heart, if he did not pry out with prurient eyes the meannesses of life around him, the picture he drew was none the less true,—was, indeed, it seems to me, all the more true. Therefore I say that his early death was a loss to American literature, or, to speak more accurately, to that too small part of our literature which concerns itself with American life. To him the hard-featured Yankee had something besides hard features and ungainly manners; he saw the better part as well as the grosser of the creature, and knew that
"Poor lone Hannah,
Sitting by the window, binding shoes,"
had somewhat besides coarse hands and red eyes. He was not tainted with the vicious habit of caricature, which is the excuse with which superficial and heartless writers impose their false art upon the public. Nor did he need that his heroes should wear kid gloves,—though he was himself the neatest-gloved man I knew. "Armstrong of Oregon" was a rough figure enough; but how well he knew how to bring out the kindly traits in that rude lumberman's character! how true to Nature is that sketch of a gentleman in homespun! And even Jake Shamberlain, the Mormon mail-carrier, a rollicking, untidy rover, fond of whiskey, and doubtless not too scrupulous in a "trade," has yet, in Winthrop's story, qualities which draw us to him.
To sit down to "John Brent" after rending one of the popular novels of these days, by one of the class of writers who imagine photography the noblest of arts, is like getting out of a fashionable "party" into the crisp air of a clear, starlight, December night. And yet Winthrop was a "society" man; one might almost say he knew that life better than the other, the freer, the nobler, which he loved to describe, as he loved to live it.
A neat, active figure of a man, carefully dressed, as one who pays all proper honor to the body in which he walks about; a gentleman, not only in the broader and more generous sense, but also according to the narrower, conventional meaning of the term; plainly a scholarly man, fond of books, and knowing the best books; with that modest, diffident air which bookish men have; with a curious shyness, indeed, as of one who was not accustomed and did not like to come into too close contact with the every-day world: such Theodore Winthrop appeared to me. I recollect the surprise with which I heard—not from him—that he had ridden across the Plains, had camped with Lieutenant Strain, had "roughed it" in the roughest parts of our continent. But if you looked a little closely into the face, you saw in the fine lines of the mouth the determination of a man who can bear to carry his body into any peril or difficulty; and in the eye—he had the eye of a born sailor, an eye accustomed to measure the distance for a dangerous leap, quick to comprehend all parts of a novel situation—you saw there presence of mind, unfaltering readiness, and a spirit equal to anything the day might bring forth.
In the Memoir prefixed to "Cecil Dreeme" Curtis has drawn a portrait, tender and true, of his friend and neighbor. The few words which have written themselves here tell of him only as he appeared to one who knew him less intimately, who saw him not often.
I come now to speak of the writings which Winthrop left. These have the singular merit, that they are all American. From first to last, they are plainly the work of a man who had no need to go to Europe for characters or scenery or plot,—who valued and understood the peculiar life and the peculiar Nature of this continent, and, like a true artist and poet, chose to represent that life and Nature of which he was a part. His stories smack of the soil; his characters—especially in "John Brent," where his own ride across the continent is dramatized—are as fresh and as true as only a true artist could make them. Take, for instance, the "Pike," the border-ruffian transplanted to a California "ranch,"—not a ruffian, as he says, but a barbarian.
"America is manufacturing several new types of men. The Pike is one of the newest. He is a bastard pioneer. With one hand he clutches the pioneer vices; with the other he beckons forward the vices of civilization. It is hard to understand how a man can have so little virtue in so long a body, unless the shakes are foes to virtue in the soul, as they are to beauty in the face.
"He is a terrible shock, this unlucky Pike, to the hope that the new race on the new continent is to be a handsome race. I lose that faith, which the people about me now have nourished, when I recall the Pike. He is hung together, not put together. He inserts his lank fathom of a man into a suit of molasses-colored homespun. Frowzy and husky is the hair Nature crowns him with; frowzy and stubby the beard. He shambles in his walk. He drawls in his talk. He drinks whiskey by the tank. His oaths are to his words as Falstaff's sack to his bread. I have seen Maltese beggars, Arab camel-drivers, Dominican friars, New-York aldermen, Digger Indians; the foulest, frowziest creatures I have ever seen are thorough-bred Pikes."
This is not complimentary, but any one who has seen the creature knows that it is a portrait done by a first-rate artist.
Take, again, that other vulgarer ruffian, "Jim Robinson," "a little man, stockish, oily, and red in the face, a jaunty fellow, too, with a certain shabby air of coxcombry even in his travel-stained attire,"—and how accurately does he describe the metamorphosis of this nauseous grub into a still more disgusting butterfly!
"I can imagine him when he arrives at St. Louis, blossomed into a purple coat with velvet lappels, a brocaded waistcoat, diamond shirt-studs, or a flamboyant scarf pinned with a pinchbeck dog, and red-legged, patent-leather boots, picking his teeth on the steps of the Planters' House."
Or, once more, that more saintly villain, the Mormon Elder Sizzum.
"Presently Sizzum appeared. He had taken time to tone down the pioneer and develop the deacon in his style, and a very sleek personage he had made of himself. He was clean shaved: clean shaving is a favorite coxcombry of the deacon class. His long black hair, growing rank from a muddy skin, was sleekly put behind his ears. A large white blossom of cravat expanded under his nude, beefy chin, and he wore a black dress-coat, creased with its recent packing. Except that his pantaloons were thrust into boots with the maker's name (Abel Gushing, Lynn, Mass.) stamped in gold on a scarlet morocco shield in front, he was in correct go-to-meetin' costume,—a Chadband of the Plains."
When you see one of these men, you will know him again. Winthrop has sketched these rascals with a few touches, as felicitous as any of Dickens's, and they will bear his mark forever: T.W. fecit.
As for Jake Shamberlain, with his odd mixture
