Francis Parkman

FRANCIS PARKMAN HE hundredth anniversary ofParkman's birthfurnishes the occasionto consider his work, after time has applied a testing. Eighty oddyearsago,beforehe waseighteen,he began consciously to fit himself for his task, and when he died, more than fifty years later, he had spent his life on it and had roundedit out to completeness.In the youth we find already the outlook, the literary style, the methodsof the veteran of seventy. Here is a fragment from his journal written in 1842, when he was nineteen. Its theme of the forest pervadesall his books: The road was still hilly, narrow, and great part of the way flanked by woods. The valley of the river looked, as it always does,rich and fertile, but the hillsand mountainsaroundpresented oneunbrokenexpanse of forest,madethe moresombreby the deep shadows of the clouds. In the afternoonwe reached a hill-topand a vast panoramaofmountainsandforestslay beforeus. A glistening spot of water, somemilesto the north, girt with mountainswhich slopeddownto it from all sideswith a smoothand gradual descent, was Lake Connecticut. • Here we havealreadythe ca•dences, perhapshardly haunting, but possessing a real charm,of all the books. of Parkman. He had two dominantimpressions, almostpassions; onethe fascination of life in the wilderness, the other the vast importanceand the dramaticquality of the strugglefor a continent,which had beena wilderness, between twogreatnations,Franceand England. The cultivated traveller in Europe is wont to applaud the wealth of historicalmemorieslinked with its scenes, as against the poverty of such associationin the landscapes of America. Parkman, however, reversed the rule. To him the charm was in what was still wild and untouchedby man. When he looked in England on the green hills, the hedges,the smoothlawns, touchedby agesof humaneffort, his preference went to the less finished scenes of the wilderness: • H. D. Sedgwick, Francis Parkman,Boston,1904,p. 45. 9.89 290 ß THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW Give me the rocky hillside,the shaggycedar and scrub-oak, the wide reach of uncultivated landscape,the fiery glare of the sun . . . its wild and ruddy light. All is new, all is rough,no charm of the familiar. Fierce savageshave roamed like beastsamid its ruggedscenery;there was a day of struggle,and they have passed away, and a race of indomitable men have succeeded them.• It was his aim to fit human effort into this forest scene. From early youth hisimaginationwasfiredby a plan which,ashesays, haunted even his dreams. Perhaps a New Englander was in some subtle way best fitted to describe the efforts of France. They had, for him, the romance of vivid contrast; their very strangeness appealed to his imagination. He could not describe his own people,whom he knew so well, without bringing in the chasteningknowledge that they were no heroes of romance, but realists with eyes keen for the main chance. The French he saw in a different light. He assumedsomethingwhich a deeper knowledge of the present in Canada would have shown him to be not quite true, that the dominion of the French in America had vanishedand was only a memory: When we evoke its departed shades, they rise upon us from their graves in a strange, romantic guise. Again their ghostly camp-firesseem to burn, and the fitful light is cast around on lord and vassal and black-robed priest, mingled with wild forms of savagewarriors, knit in closefellowshipon the samestern errand. A boundlessvision grows upon us; an untamed continent; vast wastesof forest verdure; mountains silent in primeval sleep;river, lake, and glimmering pool; wildernessoceansmingling with the sky? In thesetwo thoughtsof the forestand of Francewerewrapped the details of Parkman's theme. His half century of labour represents simply a growth from this beginning, and it may be doubted whether any historian ever equippedhimself for his task with firmer resolve and concentration. In due course he inherited a fortune, and he spent a goodly part of his income in securingmanuscript materials. Onceon the scenthe hunted these with relentlesspersistence. During fifteen years he made enquiries in every likely quarter for certain letters of Montcalm. They were not in the possession of Montcalm's family. He examined cataloguesof printed and of manuscript collections. In Sedgwick,p. 117. Pioneersof Francein theNew World, p. xxi[. FRANCIS PARKMAN 291 the endan officialin...