Alexander Wilson

“ Alexander Wilson, the great American ornithologist, was born in Paisley, Scotland, July 6, 1766, and died in Philadelphia, August 23, 1813. He was the son of a distiller, but at the age of thirteen was apprenticed to a weaver, and after seven years abandoned the loom and adopted the life of a peddler. ”

“ After dinner Alexander took Wilson up to his study. It was a large room over the library, and looked out upon the black river and the row of white lights along the Cambridge Embankment. The room was not at all what one might expect of an engineer's study. Wilson felt at once the harmony of beautiful things that have lived long together without obtrusions of ugliness or change. It was none of Alexander's doing, of course; those warm consonances of color had been blending and mellowing before he was born. ”

“ Bauld, slee, an' sweet, his lines mair glorious grew,
Glow'd round the heart, an' glanc'd the soul out through."
Alexander Wilson.
I had seen both the Indies and traversed the wide Pacific, ere I again set foot on the Eastern coast of Scotland. My uncle, the shipmaster, was dead, and I was still a common sailor; but I was light-hearted and skilful in my profession, and as much inclined to hope as ever. Besides, I had begun to doubt, and there cannot be a more consoling doubt when one is unfortunate, whether a man may not enjoy as much happiness in the lower walks of life as in the upper. ”

“ Wilson watched him, wondering. His old pupil always stimulated him at first, and then vastly wearied him. The machinery was always pounding away in this man, and Wilson preferred companions of a more reflective habit of mind. He could not help feeling that there were unreasoning and unreasonable activities going on in Alexander all the while; that even after dinner, when most men achieve a decent impersonality, Bartley had merely closed the door of the engine-room and come up for an airing. ”

“ Wilson reflected that he had never before known a woman who had been able, for any considerable while, to support both a personal and an intellectual passion. Sitting behind her, he watched her with perplexed admiration, shading his eyes with his hand. In her dinner-dress she looked even younger than in street-clothes, and, for all her composure and self-sufficiency, she seemed to him strangely alert and vibrating, as if in her, too, there were something never altogether at rest. ”

“ Wilson published in all forty-eight numbers, comprising seventy-three tales. Favourites among his stories are: ‘The Poor Scholar’ (with manifest autobiographical touches) , ‘Tibbie Fowler,’ ‘The Vacant Chair,’ and ‘My Black Coat, or the Breaking of the Bride's Chain.’ The series was continued by Wilson's brother, and much prolonged by Alexander Leighton (1800–1874) [q. v.] Several collected editions have been published. In 1834 appeared Wilson's ‘Enthusiast ”

“ Alexander explained, as she crossed to an upright piano that stood at the back of the room, near the windows.
Wilson followed, and, having seen her seated, dropped into a chair behind her. She played brilliantly and with great musical feeling. Wilson could not imagine her permitting herself to do anything badly, but he was surprised at the cleanness of her execution. He wondered how a woman with so many duties had managed to keep herself up to a standard really professional. It must take a great deal of time, certainly, and Bartley must take a great deal of time. ”

“ The long brown room breathed the peace of a rich and amply guarded quiet. Tea was brought in immediately and placed in front of the wood fire. Mrs. Alexander sat down in a high-backed chair and began to pour it, while Wilson sank into a low seat opposite her and took his cup with a great sense of ease and harmony and comfort.
“You have had a long journey, haven't you?” said Mrs. Alexander, after showing gracious concern about his tea. “And I am so sorry Bartley is late. He's apt to be tired when he's late. ”

“ And another curious thing, Bartley,” Wilson spoke with deliberateness and settled deeper into his chair, “is that I don’t feel it any longer. I am sure of you.”
Alexander laughed. “Nonsense! It’s not I you feel sure of; it’s Winifred. People often make that mistake.”
“No, I’m serious, Alexander. You’ve changed. You have decided to leave some birds in the bushes. You used to want them all.”
Alexander’s chair creaked. “I still want a good many,” he said rather gloomily. “After all, life doesn’t offer a man much. ”

“ In the pocket of his coat Winifred found the letter that he had written her the night before he left New York, water-soaked and illegible, but because of its length, she knew it had been meant for her.
For Alexander death was an easy creditor. Fortune, which had smiled upon him consistently all his life, did not desert him in the end. His harshest critics did not doubt that, had he lived, he would have retrieved himself. Even Lucius Wilson did not see in this accident the disaster he had once foretold.
When a great man dies in his prime there is no surgeon who can say whether he did well ”

“ But predicting, in the case of boys, is not so easy as you might imagine, Mrs. Alexander. Some get a bad hurt early and lose their courage; and some never get a fair wind. Bartley”—he dropped his chin on the back of his long hand and looked at her admiringly—“Bartley caught the wind early, and it has sung in his sails ever since.”
Mrs. Alexander sat looking into the fire with intent preoccupation, and Wilson studied her half-averted face. ”

“ We are to have a lot of people to dinner to-night, and Winifred’s lying down. You will excuse her, won’t you? And now what about yourself? Sit down and tell me everything.”
“I think I’d rather move about, if you don’t mind. I’ve been sitting in the train for a week, it seems to me.” Wilson stood before the fire with his hands behind him and looked about the room. “You have been busy. Bartley, if I’d had my choice of all possible places in which to spend Christmas, your house would certainly be the place I’d have chosen. Happy people do a great deal for their friends. ”

“ Under his influence Wilson began to draw birds, having conceived the idea of illustrating the ornithology of the United States; and thenceforward he steadily accumulated materials and made many expeditions. ”

“ Late one brilliant April afternoon Professor Lucius Wilson stood at the head of Chestnut Street, looking about him with the pleased air of a man of taste who does not very often get to Boston. ”

“ I think that through all the phases of the war the German Page 62 opinion of Mr. Wilson has suffered from sheer exaggeration. The chief mistake lay in separating Wilson's personality from public opinion in the United States. In spite of his strong will and his autocratic leanings, Mr. Wilson is still, in the first place, a perfect type of the American politician. In his speeches he always tries to voice public opinion, and in his policy to follow its wishes. ”

“ There is a modesty in his character that keeps him back. He is about 36 years old.
Mr. Wilson ranks among the foremost in legal and political knowledge. He has joined to a fine genius all that can set him off and show him to advantage. He is well acquainted with Man, and understands all the passions that influence him. Government seems to have been his peculiar Study, all the political institutions of the World he knows in detail, and can trace the causes and effects of every revolution from the earliest stages of the Greecian commonwealth down to the present time. ”

“ The guidwife of Cairnkibbie herself was violently laid hold of round the neck and saluted with a loud smack, which, sounding in the ears of the guidman, produced a hearty laugh at the boldness, which was excused by the reckless jollity of the extraordinary gaberlunzie. Nor did he yet allow them to flag.
"Keep at it, Will!" he cried to the young man. "Ye'll hae aneuch o' Lilly for ae nicht, or my name's no Wat Wilson. Aneuch o' 'King William's Note,' Tam. Come awa wi' anither—'In Simmer I mawed my meadow,' wi' double quick time. ”

“ At the conclusion of the Royal Agricultural Society's show of 1905, of which Wilson was honorary director, King Edward VII conferred on him the distinction of K.C.V.O. A few days later he was seized with illness which terminated fatally from heart failure on 11 July 1905. He was buried at Chillingham. A memorial service was held at St. George's, Hanover Square.
Wilson was tall and handsome, with ingratiating manners. His skill in administration and tactful dealing with men made him a power in the agricultural world. ”

“ Such an outlook, but from a lower altitude, delighted daily the eyes of Nature-loving Wilson, whose very prose was poetry, of a calibre not less than Kingsley's in his celebrated 'Devonshire Idylls,' or than Ruskin's rhapsodies on Switzerland. His ardent temperament and unusual virility compelled him to throw himself heartily into almost every possible form of physical and intellectual enjoyment. There never was such a man as he for undertaking everything and anything, and for doing nothing badly, including the art of 'loafing,' when he was in the cue for it. ”

“ In October, 1895, he received the degrees of the Royal Order of Scotland at Washington, D. C., and in October, 1899, was given the supreme and honorary thirty-third degree at Washington. In May, 1903, during the session of the Imperial Council in Topeka he was made a Knight of the Red Cross of Constantine.
For many years Mr. Wilson has likewise been prominent in Grand Army circles and is a member of Lincoln Post No. 1 of Topeka. His friends have long appreciated the fact that Mr. Wilson has accomplished a great deal in the world and much more than many men whose early advantages were greater. ”

“ Wilson was a man of one piece. His personal and literary characters were the same. The chief characteristic of both is a marvellously rich endowment of fine qualities, marred by want of restraining judgment and symmetrical proportion. As a man he was the soul of generosity and magnanimity, but exaggerated in everything, and by recklessness and wilfulness was frequently unjust where he intended to be the reverse. ”

“ Our people understood and appreciated President Wilson and his native land. He was for long their strengthening consolation and hope, their helper and friend, and today he will be their model of a citizen and a democrat.
A great American and a great man is dead, a man to whose work we owe a great dea in our fight for freedom. He will long live in the memory of us all!
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929. ”

“ Amidst his severest adversities he frequently sent remittances to his mother, in Scotland, his father having died and left her poor. To the day of her death he manifested an earnest and commendable solicitude for her comfort, and used every means within his power to alleviate her wants and smooth her downward path to the tomb.
With the commencement of British oppression the political career of Mr. Wilson began. He freely spoke and ably wrote in favour of equal rights and liberal principles. He was an early, zealous, and able advocate of the American cause. ”

“ The Kaffirs kept massing more densely in front of us. Wilson asked whether I saw no chance of forcing my way through their ranks in order to inform Forbes of our situation and to urge him to prompt action and co-operation. I said I did not think so, for before I had advanced five hundred yards the Kaffirs would attack me; but if he would send another man with me, I would try. Captain Borrows hearing this, rode up to Major Wilson and said : 'Let Gooding go with him, he has a good horse.' Wilson agreed, and ordered Gooding to accompany me. ”

“ Wilson's second daughter, Lucrece, married Sir George Belgrave of Belgrave, Leicestershire.
Wilson has generally been confused with one or more contemporaries of the same name; a confusion of him with Sir Thomas Wilson (1560?–1629) [q. v.] has led to his being frequently styled a knight. Other contemporaries were Thomas Wilson (d. 1586) , a fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, who took refuge at Frankfurt during Mary's reign, was elected dean of Worcester in 1571, and died on 20 July 1586 (Cooper, Athenæ Cantabr. ii. 5–6) ”

“ Wilson gradually grasped the fact that the War was a fight on behalf of the new world-democracy, a fight against European monarchical and aristocratic survivals. And thus he became the herald of the new Europe, the new world, the new life. An American Democrat, Lincoln’s successor and the spokesman of the American ideals of humanity, he became in this way the protector of European democracy and likewise the conscience of the world in the most fateful and tragical moment of the history of the modern age. ”

“ No American President except Lincoln had ever been concerned with matters of such vital importance to the nation; and not even Lincoln had had to deal with a world so complex and so closely interrelated with the United States. Washington, Jefferson and Madison had to guide the country through the complications caused by a great world war; but the nation which they led was small and obscure, concerned only in keeping out of trouble as long as it could. The nation which Wilson ruled was a powerful State whose attitude from the very first was of supreme importance to both sides. ”

“ Down in Washington sometimes when the days are hot and the business presses intolerably and there are so many things to do that it does not seem possible to do anything in the way it ought to be done, it is always possible to lift one's thought above the task of the moment and, as it were, to realize that great thing of which we are all parts, the great body of American feeling and American principle. No man could do the work that has to be done in Washington if he allowed himself to be separated from that body of principle. ”