Born at Boston, Sept. 16, 1823; died at Jamaica Plain, near Boston, Nov. 8, 1893. An American historian. He graduated at Harvard in 1844, and began the study of law, but ultimately abandoned this study in order to devote himself to literature. He was professor of horticulture in the agricultural School of Harvard 1871–72. His historical works include “Conspiracy of Pontiac” (1851), “Pioneers of France in the New World” (1865), “Jesuits in North America” (1867), “Discovery of the Great West” (1869), “The Old Régime in Canada” (1874), “Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV.” (1877), “Montcalm and Wolfe” (1884), “A Half Century of Conflict” (1892). He wrote also “The California and Oregon Trail” (1849), “Vassall Morton,” a novel (1856), and “Historic Handbook of the Northern Tour” (1885).

Personal

  There is no mistaking the energy that lights up his eye or the determination which is impressed upon his mouth, while the underlying delicacy of his nature is reflected in the general expression of his countenance. Mr. Parkman’s experience has been such as to develop qualities which are rare among literary men, for he has united the untiring application of the closet student with a devotion to nature in her wildest aspects and amid her most savage votaries. A natural taste for adventure aided this phase of his development, but its inciting cause was a literary conscientiousness which made him resolve to brave dangers, hardships, and privations in the accomplishment of his purpose.

  At the very outset Parkman was beset with conditions which threatened to leave him a hopeless invalid. The physicians assured him that he would die, but he told them that he should not die; they told him that mental work would be fatal, but with all respect to their diagnosis, he refused to follow their advice. While his brain was in such a condition that he could not use it at all, his eyes gave out, and for three years he was obliged to suspend all intellectual work and live the quietest of lives. But nothing could quench his intellectual vitality, and with every physical trial his spirit rose above the enfeebled body and controlled it to his will.

  In personal appearance Mr. Parkman was distinctly noticeable. He was about five feet eleven in height, square-shouldered and firm-set. He had a strong, clear-cut face, always closely shaved, with a chin and jaw of marked vigor of outline. His forehead was rugged and broad; the whole carriage and expression was that of a modest but resolute man, capable, spite of whatever drawbacks and infirmities, of hard work and the persistent prosecution of difficult undertakings. His physical suffering and disability never seemed to abate his powers of research or mar the sweetness of his temper. He belonged, like Lowell, to a generation of Boston littérateurs who never forgot that they were gentlemen as well as literary men, and upheld under all circumstances the tradition of personal dignity which came down from an earlier generation. He was a rather shy-mannered man, yet in no sense a recluse; fond of boating, horseback riding, and not averse to genial society, as his six years’ presidency of St. Botolph’s Club in Boston bears witness. His increasing infirmities of late years more and more withdrew him from the social life of that city, but nobody who ever saw him in the serene simplicity of his own home will readily forget the charm of that gracious and patient presence.

  Many of other circles in life, who met him then and there [St. Botolph’s Club], for the first and only time, were surprised to find him in appearance, when approaching threescore, not an invalid bent with years and sufferings, delicate, with pallid face furrowed with wrinkles, but decidedly elastic in step, fresh and handsome in appearance, with an impressive aspect of well-preserved and even healthful maturity. His height could scarcely have been an inch under six feet; his whole frame was compacted and even sturdy looking; his hair, though tinged with gray, was abundant, and his head and full neck were firmly set upon broad and capable shoulders. He showed a high forehead, a face closely shaven, which exposed strong and resolute features, a chin and mouth bespeaking firmness and persistency, at the same time that his beaming eyes, of a soft brown color, were full of kindly and even tender expression. In his whole demeanor he showed dignity and an innate gentility happily combined.

  Parkman’s physical organism was strangely compounded of strength and weakness. It lacked that equilibrium of forces which secures health and makes consecutive labor possible. His eyes failed him in college, and ever afterwards refused their usual service; his brain was affected by some disorder that limited, and often entirely prevented intellectual activity; in short, he had to endure a great deal of pain and suffering nearly all his life. In the intimate question of the body’s relation to mental action, it must be noted that his senses were not highly developed; he was more or less insensible to delicate impressions from sound, color, odors, taste, and touch. His physical organism thus imposed on him many limitations, although it gave him the advantages of exceptional energy, a great love of activity, and a very tenacious vitality and power of endurance. The mental make-up of the man corresponded with his physical development, his character being marked by a few simple and elementary powers rather than by delicacy, subtlety, and variety of sensibilities and emotions. His entire personality was moulded by the master quality of manliness. Impetuosity, courage, honesty, energy, reserve, a practical turn of mind, and an iron will were his chief forces. A lack of certain elements of spirituality constituted his chief defect.

  There is perhaps no American author whose character and career so test the skill of the biographer as do Francis Parkman’s.

  I made Parkman’s acquaintance in 1863 at the house of Mr. Charles Eliot Norton, in Cambridge, and my later intercourse with him was, if not frequent, continuous. I never went to Boston without spending some hours in his company, either at Milton or at his house in Chestnut street. There were few subjects of the day on which I did not become intimately acquainted with his views, and I can safely say that he impressed me, of all the men I have ever known, as the most of an American. His tastes were singularly American, as a traveler and an explorer. He cared little for the works of man, either here or in Europe, but a great deal for those of nature, and had certain fixed views concerning American politics and society. Our last interview was about a year before his death, and he then had nothing to alter or retract of the things I had heard from him when we first met. To sum up, he had, in the rarest degree, that virtue which the Romans called “constantia,” and placed so high among the qualities of character…. Parkman often reminded me of Walter Scott. His mental make-up was very much the same; he had the same deep and abiding love of his native land, of “the brown heath and shaggy woods,” in which his boyhood had been passed, and the same reverence for the America of his ancestors that Scott felt for the Borderland.

  That Parkman lived to see his life work completed, and the story of France and England in the New World told in full in nine portly volumes, the last of which appeared only a year or so before his death, at the age of seventy, was an end that could have been foreseen only by the eye of faith, when the demon of nervous disorder marked him out as its victim. And not only did he accomplish this major task, but four other books stand to his credit, and a long tale of newspaper and magazine articles. And he was a successful horticulturist besides, and for years an efficient member of the governing body of Harvard University. Such a record for a man who spent three quarters of his time, for forty years, in sitting on his mind, so to speak, to keep it quiet, is a record that shames those who possess sound minds in sound bodies, yet accomplish nothing beyond their routine tasks. With his bad knee, bad eyes and execrable nerves, Parkman was dowered with a fine mind, a retentive memory, and a force of will seldom matched in history.

General

  There, sir, is not there a list of faults for you? Yes, more than all your critics in the reviews, I suppose, have found with you. But if I did not respect you and think you capable of better things than you have done yet [“Conspiracy of Pontiac”], I should not go to the trouble of pointing out all these faults. You seem to have chosen literature for your profession, and history for your special department thereof, and I do so love to see literary conscientiousness applied to explain the meaning of human history and convey its lesson to mankind, that I have taken the pains to point out particular things in which your book might have been made better. You have already received so much commendation that it is not necessary I should go into the pleasanter business of telling you how many things I like in the book.

  It is now nearly twenty-five years since “The Conspiracy of Pontiac” was first published; “The Pioneers of France in the New World” followed fifteen years later; in 1867 “The Jesuits in North America” appeared; in 1869 “The Discovery of the Great West;” and now in 1874 we have “Canada under the Old Régime,” in furtherance of the author’s design to present an unbroken series of historical narratives of France and England in North America. This design, though fully formed before the publication of “The Conspiracy of Pontiac,” began to be realized in “The Pioneers of France in the New World,” which should be read first in the series of narratives by such as still have before them the great pleasure of reading the entire work…. From first to last the author is more and more fortunate in fulfilling his purpose of giving a full view of the French dominion in North America. One moral is traced from beginning to end,—that spiritual and political despotism is so bad for men that no zeal, or self-devotion, or heroism can overcome its evil effects; one lesson enforces itself throughout,—that the state which persistently meddles with the religious, domestic, and commercial affairs of its people, dooms itself to extinction…. It is in Mr. Parkman’s last volume that these facts, tacitly or explicitly presented in all his books on Canada, are most vividly stated; and we do not know where else one should find any part of the past more thoroughly restored in history. In all this fullness of striking and significant detail, one is never conscious of the literary attitude, and of the literary intent to amuse and impress; Mr. Parkman soberly and simply portrays the conditions of that strange colony of priests, lawyers, and soldiers, without artificial grouping, and reserves his own sense of the artistic charm which the reader will be sure to feel in the work.

  The various histories of Francis Parkman—“The Conspiracy of Pontiac,” “The Pioneers of France in the New World,” “The Jesuits in North America,” “The Discovery of the Great West”—exhibit a singular combination of the talents of the historian with those of the novelist. The materials he has laboriously gathered are disposed in their just relations by a sound understanding, while they are vivified by a realizing mind. The result is a series of narratives in which accuracy in the slightest details is found compatible with the most glowing exercise of historical imagination, and the use of a style singularly rapid, energetic, and picturesque.

  Whatever works upon Canada may have been printed, there have been none worthy of the subject until the appearance of the series by Francis Parkman. His volumes are the result of nearly forty years’ labour, and have been written after careful examination of authorities and study of contemporary history. He has prepared himself by going over the immense field, and becoming familiar with the topography of all important cities, of towns and battle fields. Further, he has seen the native Indian at home, untouched by civilization, has learned his language, and studied his habits as a hunter and as a warrior. He has also spent much time in Canada, not only with men of letters versed in its history, but with the habitants and other rural people. It is seldom that a writer has come to his task with such thorough preparation, and it is still rarer to find a man so prepared with the taste and skill of a practiced writer, and able to make sober history as attractive as romance…. Comment upon the separate volumes would lead us too far. It is enough to indicate their quality, and the importance of the subject for all readers of English. It may be added that the thoroughness with which Parkman has done his work renders it quite unlikely that any later historian will supplant him. His works have a solid foundation, and will endure, something which cannot be said with certainty of some of the most brilliant histories written in the United States.

  Many pages of Mr. Parkman’s histories are taken up with the quarrels of Canadian governors, the intrigues of Jesuit priests and petty Indian wars; but when the history of the French in North America is viewed in the broad way … we see how important these small matters are to the understanding of the large problem. However petty the events described, no dull pages are to be found in Mr. Parkman’s books, nor pages that have no meaning with reference to the larger bearings of his subject. Each book prepares for those which succeed it, and helps to a full appreciation of the final struggle. The minuteness of detail is possible because the seventeenth century was an age of memoirs and much writing of every kind; but we cannot regret this when it enables us to penetrate so completely into a form of life that has passed away forever, but which has left many traces of itself behind…. Mr. Parkman’s literary style is well adapted to his subject, for no tame or merely fine style could have done justice to the people and the events he has had to describe. He is fond of adventure, by nature he is a lover of the woods and wild sport, an enthusiast by temperament, nervous and energetic in every fibre of his being, and thoroughly capable of appreciating such men as Champlain, La Salle, Frontenac, Pontiac, and the life which they represent. His style is that which is natural to such a man,—thrilling, dramatic, picturesque, and at times even fervid. It is a natural style, well fitting the man and his character, and it is admirably adapted to the kind of story he had to tell…. However graphic and picturesque is Mr. Parkman’s style, he is thoroughly accurate throughout his books…. It may be said of Mr. Parkman, that he is an artist in history, concealing his art by simplicity and fidelity, but using it with great skill to entertain, impress, and convince his reader.

  The volumes composed under the pressure of these calamities need no indulgence from the critic. It may also be said that they need no praise, so widely spread and so permanent has been their fame. The first of the series, though published only twenty-seven years ago, has already long passed its twentieth edition. Others are approaching it. The series has shown a continuous improvement, and especially in thoroughness and fulness of research…. It will be seen how wide is the range of interest covered by these volumes. They are not simply a history of a great attempt to create, under the forms of absolute monarchy, feudalism, and Catholicism, a centralized and military power. Nor are they simply a history of the effects of that power to overbalance and check the system of free, Protestant and English colonies, unorganized and discordant indeed, but strong with the strength of popular institutions, of love of freedom, and of habits of individual initiative. This alone would be sufficient to make the tale bright and commanding. But we have also the adventures of explorers and traders, the achievements of missionaries, the heroism of martyrs, the wild life of the Indian tribes, the scenery of the forest, the events of war, the brilliant picture of French aristocracy transferred, for purposes of war or government or devotion, to the wilds of America; and it cannot be said that the writer has proved unequal to the adequate treatment of a single one of these so varied elements of interest.

  These seven works in nine volumes, to which must be added in their proper place, the two volumes of “Pontiac’s Conspiracy,” constitute Mr. Parkman’s contribution to American history; and a magnificent contribution it has been. For originality of investigation, fidelity of statement, fairness of treatment of conflicting interests, and for chaste excellence of literary style, these volumes are unsurpassed, nay, unequalled, by those of any other writer of American annals. Some of the most vivid and beautiful passages of nature description anywhere to be found illuminate Mr. Parkman’s pages. Mr. Parkman had a magnificent opportunity, but no advantage of subject or material could have availed but for the rich personal endowment he brought to his work: his poet’s eye, his tireless industry, his scrupulous honesty, his absolute sincerity and sanity of mind and heart.

  It is the crowning merit of his work that it will stand. Born and bred a Unitarian, and not in any sense accepting the religious faith which dominated French civilization, he treated the Jesuits and the old régime in Canada with such fairness that his statements, at times severe and revealing things that it was not pleasant to mention, compel the acceptance of what he wrote as the truth. A higher compliment to his fairness as a historian could not be paid. He was just and fair to all parties, and he had the courage to state the truth so that it must be accepted. This veracity and fidelity have been so distinct a feature of his historical writing that his volumes have been accepted without dispute as an authority for the period which they cover. Their statements have borne the brunt of attack, and though the narratives have been in some cases subjected to the fierce light of criticism for nearly half a century, when the series was completed in 1892, there was but little for the historian to revise in the text of the earlier work.

  As the wand of Scott revealed unsuspected depths of human interest in Border castle and Highland glen, so it seems that North America was but awaiting the magician’s touch that should invest its rivers and hillsides with memories of great days gone by. Parkman’s sweep has been a wide one, and many are the spots that his wand has touched, from the cliffs of the Saguenay to the Texas coast, and from Acadia to the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains.

  Mr. Parkman’s peculiar merits as a historian we have already indicated,—thoroughness of preparation, a painstaking accuracy, justness in balancing authorities, scholarly tastes and comprehension, and the constant disposition to be truthful and impartial, to which were added skill and an artistic grace and dignity in composition. His style was crystal-clear and melodious as a mountain-brook, which flows obedient to easy impulse, setting off the charms of natural scenery by its own exquisite naturalness. The aroma of the woods and of woodland life is in all his books, among which, perhaps, “The Conspiracy of Pontiac” will remain the favorite. Here and constantly in dealing with the Indian, with the primeval American landscape and its primeval inhabitants, his touch is masterly and unapproachable; and so, too, in describing the sympathetic contact of France with a race which British interference doomed to destruction. French explorers, French missionaries and warriors, stand out lifelike from these interesting narratives, since he wrote to interest and not merely to instruct. Generalization and the broader historical lessons are to be found rather in the pages of his preface, as Mr. Parkman wrote, than in the narratives themselves, most of his later subjects being, in fact, extended ones for the compass of the book…. But in these preliminary, or rather final, deductions may be found pregnant passages of force and eloquence.

  Francis Parkman is the first historian who has seriously undertaken the story of the great fight for America between the Saxon and the Gaul, and to him every Saxon, and indeed every Gaul, owes a great debt. Indeed the Frenchman owes perhaps the greater one, for it is amid the French camps and forts and villages that Mr. Parkman chiefly leads us. And if he has to close his long work with the downfall of New France, he leaves us with a respect for the gallantry of our vanquished foe that should satisfy the most exacting even of Frenchmen. Apart from the literary and historical merit of these volumes there is another reason that will help to secure them undisputed position as the classics of this period. Two of the types which figure conspicuously in these wars, the Indian and the backwoodsman, are upon the verge of extinction. To the next generation they will be but legends. Mr. Parkman came in time to study them, to live among them, and to know them as they were in his younger days, shifted westward it is true, but not materially altered from their ancestors who butchered one another on the banks of the Ohio a hundred years before.

  Parkman had already published his “Pontiac,” and had lapsed into a condition of body that made it seem as if his genius were to be permanently eclipsed by his infirmities, when a still more brilliant opening of a career was signalized by the appearance of “The Rise of the Dutch Republic.” Ten years were to pass before Parkman could produce the first of that series of books with which his name is indissolubly connected, and by which he has made the story of the rise and decline of the French rule in North America entirely his own. By this time, Motley, in his “United Netherlands,” had rounded the measure of his fame, and Prescott and Sparks had left us…. The rising historian was now in his forty-third year, but his mind had been drilled under such exactions and had been forced to such restraints as few men had ever encountered. Remembering this, we can better understand the remarkable repression of superfluities in the treatment of his themes. He was too genuine to be an imitator, but the eclectic instinct had become strongly developed by his being obliged to hold in his memory what had been read to him…. Parkman has been said to represent in the highest degree the picturesque element in the schools of history. It is an element which is better calculated than any other to engage attention and secure fame. It is also an element that naturally flourishes with the graceful aids of a brilliant style. But it is a characteristic that is apt to make us forget the consummate research which, in the case of Parkman, accompanied it. He is certainly less demonstrative of his material than is now the fashion; but while, in this suppression, he sometimes disappoints the students who would track his movements, there is no question that he has gained in popular regard.

  There, in Parkman’s volumes, is told vividly, strongly, and truthfully, the history of the great struggle between France and England for the mastery of the North American continent, one of the most important events of modern times. This is not the place to give any critical estimate of Mr. Parkman’s work. It is enough to say that it stands in the front rank. It is a great contribution to history, and a still greater gift to the literature of this country. All Americans certainly should read the volumes in which Parkman has told that wonderful story of hardship and adventure, of fighting and of statesmanship, which gave this great continent to the English race and the English speech.

  Much as has been said, and deservedly said, of Mr. Parkman’s industry in research, even more may be said, and with no less justice, of his brilliancy of style. Perhaps “brilliant” is not the happiest epithet one could choose, for it may convey to some an implication that the style is unfavorable to strict veracity…. If Mr. Parkman had been a novelist he would be classed as a realist, for he has carried the realistic method into history as no other man of our time has done it. Picturesqueness is a striking feature of his style; his descriptions do not impress one as beautiful, though they are that, but as vivid, and, above all, as truthful. This is precisely what they are. The historian has made his sketch on the spot and from nature, precisely as a painter would do it, and with the same fidelity to detail that a painter would study. A similar method and effect are discernible in all his descriptions of character. Not only are the great personages in his pages—Pontiac and La Salle, Montcalm and Wolfe—drawn with wonderful clearness and actually made to live and move before us, but most of the men who receive more than a passing mention are sketched with equal fidelity and effectiveness.

  While Parkman can never take rank with the great narrative and critical historians like Froude and Motley, he has one advantage over all other historians of the century,—his work can never be done again.

  Though the “Conspiracy of Pontiac” is Parkman’s first contribution to the history of the Indians and half-breeds of the West, the series proper, which deals with the wars of the English and French and red men, and treats of France and England in North America, begins with “The Pioneers of France in the New World.” “Pontiac,” which came first, may be read as a sequel to the collection. To the preparation of his histories, which are marked by an eloquent and graceful style and strict faithfulness to facts, Parkman devoted an industry, care and thoroughness which leave unquestioned the statements put forward. We know of the vastness of his task, and the difficulties under which he worked for many years. He neglected nothing. He visited all the scenes which his luminous pen so admirably describes, not once or twice, but many times. The archives of France, England, Russia, and Canada yielded their treasures to him. Every known letter, journal, report and despatch which bore, even in the remotest way, upon his subject were copied and sent to him, until at the end of his work he found himself possessed of no fewer than 3,400 manuscript pages, which he had bound in several large volumes.

  Parkman’s works prove to possess great philosophic interest. With full sympathy for both sides, with untiring industry in the accumulation of material, with good sense so judicial as to forbid him the vagaries of preconception, and with a literary sensitiveness which made his style—at first marked by the floridity fashionable in 1850—finally a model of sound prose, he set forth the struggles which decided the political futures of America. Moved to this task by an impulse rather romantic than scientific, to be sure, gifted with a singularly vivid imagination, too careful a scholar to risk undue generalisation, and throughout life so hampered by illness that he could very rarely permit himself prolonged mental effort, Parkman sometimes appears chiefly a writer of romantic narrative. As you grow familiar with his work, however, you feel it so true that you can infuse it with philosophy for yourself. It is hardly too much to say that his writings afford as sound a basis for historic philosophising as does great fiction for philosophising about human nature.

  Of “Vassal Morton” it is sufficient to say that its chief importance to-day lies in its reflection of Parkman’s character. In parts it is a thinly disguised self-portrait. Parkman mentions in several of his prefaces his disabilities in a purely objective way, just as he recorded the other conditions of his work. In the narratives there is, however, no odor of the sick-room, no feebleness; the artist’s all-embracing memory and constructive imagination transport him to the woods, and the strain of the effort is betrayed only by a certain tenseness of style. But in “Vassal Morton” he let himself out, and under the mask of Morton’s agony in his dungeon, his own sufferings are revealed. The novel is full of sharply drawn portraits, vivid descriptions of nature and life-like pictures of manners. It is a little melodramatic in plot, rather too brilliant in conversation, and unreal at critical junctures, but it is interesting, and hardly deserved oblivion. Parkman did not include it in his works, and is said not to have liked to hear it mentioned. One cannot help feeling that as he attained distinction he felt a certain shame at having betrayed his feelings even in that indirect fashion and recovered his consistency of stoicism by ignoring this single lapse.

  Francis Parkman is hailed by general consent of critics and the reading public as our greatest historian, as one of our four or five supreme literary artists.

  Parkman, Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, Irving: these are the historians of past generations in this country whose writings may be said to remain potent still. Various have been their fortunes. Motley and Irving have been the most popular, but Bancroft won the earliest and highest fame. Parkman rose to his eminence slowly; indeed, he scarcely came into his own until old age had gathered round him, but chief among them all stands Parkman now. Bancroft seems already to have been threatened with being superseded, or at least with remaining no longer essential. Among all the historians who have written in English, where, in fact, save to Gibbon, shall we look for a superior to Parkman, in originality of research, accuracy of statement, and charm of style? Surely not to Macaulay, with his brilliant fragment steeped in partisanship; not to Hume, with his chronic indifference to facts; not to Green; not to Stubbs; nor to Freeman or Froude…. His books are unrivalled among histories as books of the finest romance. The events he chronicled happened on frontiers; often at mere trading posts; sometimes on the shores of lakes, where no one dwelt except savages; again in the dense forest, as at Great Meadows, where Washington won his spurs as a soldier, and where, in the death of Jumonville, was fired the shot which, as Parkman says, “set the world on fire.” No volumes have been written by any historian which Americans ought to read with more absorbing interest, or with minds more completely charmed. It is not merely the theme which produces all this; not the savage martyrdom of Father Jogues, not the tales Bressani told, not the expedition of Pepperell, not Wolfe, wishing rather than to win the morrow’s battle that he might have been the author of Gray’s “Elegy”—that memorable scene on that momentous night before he scaled the heights of Quebec to win a renown that surely ought to last as well as Gray’s. Parkman’s style accounts measurably for the charm of all his books. While he has the restraint that befits the man of learning, he has elevation of style and picturesqueness. In the student and man of letters we see the accomplished artist. Something of graceful dignity always abides with him, and at times superb grandeur is there. Many pitfalls of style into which Gibbon fell and for which the world has held Gibbon blameful, Parkman escaped. If he be not our hero among men of letters, where shall we find a better name to fill that place?

  Parkman’s style was chastened with practice until it became in its blending of charm and power and flexibility almost unrivalled among the American authors of his epoch.

  Parkman’s style of writing changed with the ripening of the man. From the outset his observation was fresh and vivid. But otherwise his early style, influenced perhaps by the prevailing standards of the time, was often florid, the images formal, and the illustrations commonplace. His power of more spontaneous expression developed slowly, in part, it may be, because of his illness. He was seldom able to read more than five minutes without rest, or to listen to reading more than twenty; and the limitations of safety which his nervous condition placed upon his efforts at composition were not less cramping. Still, there is no sign of physical weakness in his manner of writing, not even the tenseness which intermittent dictation might be expected to produce. His style seems rather to reflect the increasing moral strength with which he adhered to the purpose of his youth. Losing nothing of its vividness, it becomes fluent and direct, an adequate medium for the expression of his strong narrative impulse.