Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" Part 4

19 BANK STREET, NEW YORK, Sept. 26, 1870.

My dear Mr. Wakeman:

Thank you very much for allowing us to share so largely in the luxuries of your pleasant home, and in the rewards of your labor. The grapes were a great treat to us, and we have enjoyed them exceedingly.

The variety is wonderful; and the difference in the flavors, each one being perfect in itself, constantly excited our admiration.

I hope by this time your term of bachelorhood is at an end, and that Mrs. Wakeman and the children are with you. If she has arrived, please convey to her my acknowledgments for the card she left for me, and say how much I regretted not seeing her. Please also to remind her that next Monday (first Monday in October) is the meeting of Sorosis, and that I shall expect to find her at Delmonico's, corner of 14th Street and Fifth Avenue, at 1 P.M., as my guest. She can walk straight upstairs, and a waiter will send in her name to me, so that she need not enter alone; or she can arrive a little earlier (I am always there early) and see the ladies as they come.

As I have not many occasions for writing notes to you, Mr. Wakeman, I desire to say to you, with the deliberation with which one puts pen to paper, that I am thankful for having known so true a man, and happy that my husband can count him friend. One thing done is worth many words spoken, yet I am doubly glad when words and acts walk harmoniously together.

Always your obliged friend, J.C. CROLY.

From Mrs. Croly to Mrs. Wakeman

7 BENTRICT TERRACE, REGENT'S PARK, N.W., LONDON, December 24, 1900.

MY DEAR OLD FRIEND:

I am sure that you have thought many times that I was forgetful and ungrateful, but indeed the first part of the indictment cannot be laid to my charge. I never forget you, and if I have not written, it is because I have suffered and enjoyed many things during the past two years, and have permanently lost the power of rapid movement, or of doing anything under great stress and pressure.

But now that this wonderful year is ending, this Sabbath of the centuries, I feel that I must at least send my love and unforgetness to you; also my hope that you are finding on the other side of the continent of North America, compensation for all that you left behind in the east, and greater promise for the future.

For all that I have gained for some years past I have to thank my losses. Chief among my gains is, I hope, a little realization of eternal goodness; of the perfection of the order which governs the universe, and the relation of every separate atom to the Divine Unity of the whole. I know Goethe proclaimed it a hundred years ago; but every separate part has to grow to its knowledge for itself.

I wonder how you are spending Christmas. This year seems to me so remarkable that it is a privilege to live in it. I am trying to use its last days as if they were mine, in doing the things I should be most sorry to leave undone.

I expect to return home soon--that is, in a few months. Or rather, as I have no home now, and a trustee has lost the money I had saved and entrusted to him in making provision for my old age, I shall only try to find a corner to rest in.

I hope you have been dealt with more kindly in body and estate. Please remember that I never forget the union of the spirit we once enjoyed--that the Positivist Episode was a positive factor in my life, and that I shall always recall Mr. Wakeman as my chief helper in it.

With love to you and yours, I am unforgettingly, J.C. CROLY.

(It has seemed pertinent and interesting as bearing upon the "Positivist Episode" to here insert extracts from testimonials to Mr. Croly published in the memorial issued at the time of his death in May, 1889.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: DAVID GOODMAN CROLY.]

From a Testimonial to Mr. Croly, by T.B. Wakeman

David G. Croly must not be forgotten. He rendered our country an invaluable service, not yet recognized. He was the man who _planted Positivism in America_. The many who have felt, the thousands who hereafter will feel its influence for good, should learn to bless, and to teach others to bless and continue his memory and influence.

In 1867-68 he began his great work. Henry Edgar had the seed from Comte direct, and then tried to sow it in a course of lectures given in a hall chiefly paid for by Mr. Croly. But the seed would not take.

After Edgar had gone, the st.u.r.dy brain and hand of D.G. Croly took the matter in charge and actually made the growth start. Then the _World_, with him at its head, evoked and published John Fiske's "Lectures on Positivism," far better in their first shape than when pared and cooked over into the "Cosmic Philosophy." Then came the "Modern Thinker" and "Positive Primer." Then Dr. McCosh came out, in reply, with his volume on "Positivism and Christianity." Then Positivist Societies and Liberal Clubs, one after another, were formed and some continue, whence John Elderkin, Henry Evans, James D. Bell, the writer of these lines, and not a few others commenced to ray out the new light, which never has been, and never will be extinguished. By the aid of that light let a distant posterity read with grat.i.tude the names of _David G. and Jane Cunningham Croly_, for without them I know it would not have been.

T.B. WAKEMAN.

From a Testimonial by Herbert D. Croly

... I should like to relate one incident in the history of my father's relations with myself--an incident which was eminently characteristic of certain aspects of his nature.

From my earliest years it was his endeavor to teach me to understand and believe in the religion of Auguste Comte. One of my first recollections is that of an excursion to Central Park on one bright Sunday afternoon in the spring; there, sitting under the trees, he talked to me on the theme which lay always nearest his heart--that of the solidarity of mankind. There never, indeed, was a time throughout my whole youth, when we were alone together, that he did not return to the same text and impress upon me that a selfish life was no life at all, that "no man liveth for himself, that no man dieth for himself."

His teachings were as largely negative as positive. While never, perhaps, understanding the Christian religion as a man with a weaker faith in the truth of his own convictions might have understood it, his att.i.tude was one, I judge, of sympathetic scepticism. He was always endeavoring to impress upon me that, while there must necessarily have been something great and good in a faith that had been the inspiration of so many souls, and comfort of mankind through so many centuries, yet at the same time it was incomplete; that very often the followers of Christ gave more to the doctrine than they received from it; and that the teaching of Auguste Comte supplied what was lacking in the teaching of Jesus Christ. His desire to impress upon me a belief which he held himself with all the force of religious conviction led him to attempt explanations which the mind of a child could neither grasp nor retain. He even discussed, for my benefit, theoretical questions as to the existence and nature of the Supreme Being; discussions, of course, that I could so little understand that it was like pouring water on a flat board. It was simply the fulness of his belief that led him to do this. His desire was that, surrounded as I was by people who burnt their candles at the altars of the Christian faith, I should have full opportunity to compare the Positivist _Grand etre_ with the Christian Cross. Under such instruction it was not strange that in time I dropped insensibly into his mode of thinking, or, more correctly, into his mode of believing.

While I was at college I was surrounded by other influences, and while retaining everything that was positive and constructive in his teaching, I dropped the negative cloth in which it was shrouded. My change in opinion was a bitter disappointment to him, as several letters which he wrote at the time testify. But intense as was his disappointment, it never took the form of a reproach. This is very remarkable when we consider what an essential part of his character his beliefs const.i.tuted. Here was an end, for which he had striven through many years, failing at the very time when it should have become most fruitful. And his disappointment must have been all the more severe because he exaggerated the differences that existed between us. It was his opinion that his negative opinions were necessarily connected with those which were positive; and that it was impossible truly to hold the one without the other. Yet, as I said, his disappointment never took the form of a reproach. "It is your right; nay, it is even your duty," he used continually to say, "to work your own salvation. It has turned out to be different from mine.

Well, then, mine is the loss."

From an abstract point of view it may not seem to be so much of a virtue that a father should consider his son's intellectual honesty to be of more importance than his own opinions. But I am not writing from an abstract point of view. We are all but children of the earth; not good, but simply better than the bad. So it was with David G. Croly.

His opinions, crystallized by the opposition which they met on every side, were so very much the truth to him that he wished his son to perceive them clearly and cherish them as devoutly as he did. That wish became impossible of fulfilment. Part of his life-work had failed. "Mine is the loss."

H.D. CROLY.

From Mr. Croly to His Son Herbert at College

LOTOS CLUB, Oct. 31, 1886.

My Dear Boy--You said something about the divergence between my ideas and those of the philosophers whose works you are reading at college.

Let me beg of you to form your own judgment on all the higher themes--religion included--without any reference to what I may have said. All I ask is that you keep your mind open and unpredisposed. In the language of the Scripture, "prove all things and hold fast to that which is good." Be careful and do not allow first impressions to influence your maturer judgment. You say you are reading the controversy between Spencer and Harrison on religion. In doing so keep in mind the fact that Spencer's matter was revised, while that of Harrison was not; and that upon the latter's protest the work was withdrawn in England.

I wish during your college year that you would read:

(1) Miss Martineau's translation of Comte's "Positive Philosophy."

(2) Mill's Estimate of Comte's Life and Works.

(3) Bridges's Reply to Mill.

(4) All of Frederic Harrison's writings that you can find.

(5) All of Herbert Spencer's works that are not technical.

(6) John Fiske's works.

(7) The works of the English Positivists, such as Congreve, Bridges and Beasley.

By noticing the dates I think you will find that Spencer appropriates a great deal from Comte and that he tries to s.h.i.+rk the obligation. It would be well to read the latter's "General View of Positivism"