Philip Winwood - Robert Neilson Stephens

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      Having shown how Philip Winwood came among us, I ought to tell at once, though of course I learned it from him afterwards, all that need be known of his previous life. His father, after leaving Oxford and studying medicine in Edinburgh, had married a lady of the latter city, and emigrated to Philadelphia to practise as a physician. But whether 'twas that the Quaker metropolis was overstocked with doctors even then, or for other reasons, there was little call for Doctor Winwood's ministrations. Moreover, he was of so book-loving a disposition that if he happened to have sat down to a favourite volume, and a request came for his services, it irked him exceedingly to respond. This being noticed and getting abroad, did not help him in his profession.

      The birth of Philip adding to the doctor's expenses, it soon came about that, in the land where he had hoped to make a new fortune, he parted with the last of what fortune he had originally possessed. Then occurred to him the ingenious thought of turning bookseller, a business which, far from requiring that he should ever absent himself from his precious volumes, demanded rather that he should always be among them. But the stock that he laid in, turned out to comprise rather such works as a gentleman of learning would choose for company, than such as the people of Philadelphia preferred to read. Furthermore, when some would-be purchaser appeared, it often happened that the book he offered to buy was one for which the erudite dealer had acquired so strong an affection that he would not let it change owners. Nor did his wife much endeavour to turn him from this untradesmanlike course. Besides being a gentle and affectionate woman, she had that admiration for learning which, like excessive warmth of heart and certain other traits, I have observed to be common between the Scotch (she was of Edinburgh, as I have said) and the best of the Americans.

      Such was Philip's father, and when he died of some trouble of the heart, there was nothing for his widow to do but continue the business. She did this with more success than the doctor had had, though many a time it smote her heart to sell some book of those that her husband had loved, and to the backs of which she had become attached for his sake and through years of acquaintance. But the necessities of her little boy and herself cried out, and so did the debt her husband had accumulated as tangible result of his business career. By providing books of a less scholarly, more popular character, such as novels, sermons, plays, comic ballads, religious poems, and the like; as well as by working with her needle, and sometimes copying legal and other documents, Mrs. Winwood managed to keep the kettle boiling. And in the bookselling and the copying, she soon came to have the aid of Philip.

      The boy, too, loved books passionately, finding in them consolation for the deprivations incidental to his poverty. But, being keenly sympathetic, he had a better sense of his mother's necessities than his father had shown, and to the amelioration of her condition and his own, he sacrificed his love of books so far as to be, when occasion offered, an uncomplaining seller of those he liked, and a dealer in those he did not like. His tastes were, however, broader than his father's, and he joyfully lost himself in the novels and plays his father would have disdained.

      He read, indeed, everything he could put his hands on, that had, to his mind, reason, or wit, or sense, or beauty. Many years later, when we were in London, his scholarly yet modest exposition of a certain subject eliciting the praise of a group in a Pall Mall tavern, and he being asked "What university he was of," he answered, with a playful smile, "My father's bookshop." It was, indeed, his main school of book-learning. But, as I afterward told him, he had studied in the university of life also. However, I am now writing of his boyhood in Philadelphia; and of that there is only this left to be said.

      In catering to his mind, he did not neglect bodily skill either. His early reading of Plutarch and other warlike works had filled him with desire to emulate the heroes of battle. An old copy of Saviolo's book on honour and fence, written in the reign of Elizabeth, or James, I forget which, had in some manner found its way to his father's shelves; and from this Philip secretly obtained some correct ideas of swordsmanship.[2] Putting them in practice one day in the shop, with a stick, when he thought no one was looking, he suddenly heard a cry of "bravo" from the street door, and saw he was observed by a Frenchman, who had recently set up in Philadelphia as a teacher of fencing, dancing, and riding. This expert, far from allowing Philip to be abashed, complimented and encouraged him; entered the shop, and made friends with him. The lad, being himself as likable as he found the lively foreigner interesting, became in time something of a comrade to the fencing master. The end of this was that, in real or pretended return for the loan of Saviolo's book, the Frenchman gave Philip a course of instruction and practice in each of his three arts.

      To these the boy added, without need of a teacher, the ability to shoot, both with gun and with pistol. I suppose it was from being so much with his mother, between whom and himself there must have existed the most complete devotion, that notwithstanding his manly and scholarly accomplishments, his heart, becoming neither tough like the sportsman's nor dry like the bookworm's, remained as tender as a girl's—or rather as a girl's is commonly supposed to be. His mother's death, due to some inward ailment of which the nature was a problem to the doctors, left him saddened but too young to be embittered. And this was the Philip Winwood—grave and shy from having been deprived too much of the company of other boys, but with certain mental and bodily advantages of which too much of that company would have deprived him—who was taken into the house of the Faringfields in the Summer of 1763.

      The footing on which he should remain there was settled the very morning after his arrival. Mr. Faringfield, a rigid and prudent man, but never a stingy one, made employment for him as a kind of messenger or under clerk in his warehouse. The boy fell gratefully into the new life, passing his days in and about the little counting-room that looked out on Mr. Faringfield's wharf on the East River. He found it dull work, the copying of invoices, the writing of letters to merchants in other parts of the world, the counting of articles of cargo, and often the bearing a hand in loading or unloading some schooner or dray; but as beggars should not be choosers, so beneficiaries should not be complainers, and Philip kept his feelings to himself.

      Mr. Faringfield was an exacting master, whose rule was that his men should never be idle, even at times when there seemed nothing to do. If no task was at hand, they should seek one; and if none could be found, he was like to manufacture one. Thus was Phil denied the pleasure of brightening or diversifying his day with reading, for which he could have found time enough. He tried to be interested in his work, and he in part succeeded, somewhat by good-fellowship with the jesting, singing, swearing wharfmen and sailors, somewhat by dwelling often on the thought that he was filling his small place in a great commerce which touched so distant shores, and so many countries, of the world. He used to watch the vessels sail, on the few and far-between days when there were departures, and wish, with inward sighs, that he might sail with them. A longing to see the great world, the Europe of history, the Britain of his ancestors, had been implanted in him by his reading, before he had come to New York, and the desire was but intensified by his daily contact with the one end of a trade whose other end lay beyond the ocean.

      Outside of the hours of business, Philip's place was that of a member of the Faringfield household, where, save in the one respect that after his first night it was indeed the garret room that fell to him, he was on terms of equality with the children. Ned alone, of them all, affected toward him the manner of a superior to a dependent. Whatever were Philip's feelings regarding this attitude of the elder son, he kept them locked within, and had no more to say to Master Ned than absolute civility required. With the two girls and little Tom, and with me, he was, evenings and Sundays, the pleasantest playfellow in the world.

      Ungrudgingly he gave up to us, once we had made the overtures, the time he would perhaps rather have spent over his books; for he had brought a few of these from Philadelphia, a fact which accounted for the exceeding heaviness of his travelling bag, and he had access, of course, to those on Mr. Faringfield's shelves. His compliance with our demands was the more kind, as I afterward began to see, for that his day's work often left him quite tired out. Of this we never thought; we were full of the spirits pent up all day at school, Madge and Fanny being then learners at the feet of a Boston maiden lady in our street, while I yawned and idled my hours away on the hard benches of a Dutch schoolmaster near the Broadway, under whom Ned Faringfield also was a student. But fresh as we were, and tired as Philip was, he was always ready for a romp in our back yard,

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