THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM

by William Dean Howells

1885

I.

WHEN Bartley Hubbard went to interview Silas Lapham

for the "Solid Men of Boston" series, which he undertook

to finish up in The Events, after he replaced their

original projector on that newspaper, Lapham received

him in his private office by previous appointment.

"Walk right in!" he called out to the journalist, whom he

caught sight of through the door of the counting-room.

He did not rise from the desk at which he was writing,

but he gave Bartley his left hand for welcome, and he

rolled his large head in the direction of a vacant chair.

"Sit down! I'll he with you in just half a minute."

"Take your time," said Bartley, with the ease he instantly felt.

"I'm in no hurry." He took a note-book from his pocket,

laid it on his knee, and began to sharpen a pencil.

"There!" Lapham pounded with his great hairy fist

on the envelope he had been addressing.

"William!" he called out, and he handed the letter

to a boy who came to get it. "I want that to go

right away. Well, sir," he continued, wheeling round

in his leather-cushioned swivel-chair, and facing Bartley,

seated so near that their knees almost touched, "so you

want my life, death, and Christian sufferings, do you,

young man?"

"That's what I'm after," said Bartley. "Your money

or your life."

"I guess you wouldn't want my life without the money,"

said Lapham, as if he were willing to prolong these moments

of preparation.

"Take 'em both," Bartley suggested. "Don't want your

money without your life, if you come to that. But you're

just one million times more interesting to the public than

if you hadn't a dollar; and you know that as well as I do,

Mr. Lapham. There 's no use beating about the bush."

"No," said Lapham, somewhat absently. He put out his huge

foot and pushed the ground-glass door shut between his

little den and the book-keepers, in their larger den outside.

"In personal appearance," wrote Bartley in the sketch

for which he now studied his subject, while he waited

patiently for him to continue, "Silas Lapham is a fine type

of the successful American. He has a square, bold chin,

only partially concealed by the short reddish-grey beard,

growing to the edges of his firmly closing lips.

His nose is short and straight; his forehead good,

but broad rather than high; his eyes blue, and with a light

in them that is kindly or sharp according to his mood.

He is of medium height, and fills an average arm-chair

with a solid bulk, which on the day of our interview was

unpretentiously clad in a business suit of blue serge.

His head droops somewhat from a short neck, which does

not trouble itself to rise far from a pair of massive

shoulders."

"I don't know as I know just where you want me to begin,"

said Lapham.

"Might begin with your birth; that's where most of us begin,"

replied Bartley.

A gleam of humorous appreciation shot into Lapham's

blue eyes.

"I didn't know whether you wanted me to go quite so far

back as that," he said. "But there's no disgrace in

having been born, and I was born in the State of Vermont,

pretty well up under the Canada line--so well up, in fact,

that I came very near being an adoptive citizen; for I

was bound to be an American of SOME sort, from the word

Go! That was about--well, let me see!--pretty near sixty

years ago: this is '75, and that was '20. Well, say I'm

fifty-five years old; and I've LIVED 'em, too; not an hour

of waste time about ME, anywheres! I was born on a farm,

and----"

"Worked in the fields summers and went to school winters:

regulation thing?" Bartley cut in.

"Regulation thing," said Lapham, accepting this irreverent

version of his history somewhat dryly.

"Parents poor, of course," suggested the journalist.

"Any barefoot business? Early deprivations of any kind,

that would encourage the youthful reader to go and do

likewise? Orphan myself, you know," said Bartley, with a

smile of cynical good-comradery.

Lapham looked at him silently, and then said with quiet

self-respect, "I guess if you see these things as a joke,

my life won't interest you."

"Oh yes, it will," returned Bartley, unabashed. "You'll see;

it'll come out all right." And in fact it did so,

in the interview which Bartley printed.

"Mr. Lapham," he wrote, "passed rapidly over the story

of his early life, its poverty and its hardships,

sweetened, however, by the recollections of a devoted mother,

and a father who, if somewhat her inferior in education,

was no less ambitious for the advancement of his children.

They were quiet, unpretentious people, religious,

after the fashion of that time, and of sterling morality,

and they taught their children the simple virtues

of the Old Testament and Poor Richard's Almanac."

Bartley could not deny himself this gibe; but he trusted

to Lapham's unliterary habit of mind for his security

in making it, and most other people would consider it

sincere reporter's rhetoric.

"You know," he explained to Lapham, "that we have to look

at all these facts as material, and we get the habit

of classifying them. Sometimes a leading question will

draw out a whole line of facts that a man himself would

never think of." He went on to put several queries,

and it was from Lapham's answers that he generalised the

history of his childhood. "Mr. Lapham, although he did

not dwell on his boyish trials and struggles, spoke of them

with deep feeling and an abiding sense of their reality."

This was what he added in the interview, and by the time

he had got Lapham past the period where risen Americans

are all pathetically alike in their narrow circumstances,

their sufferings, and their aspirations, he had beguiled him

into forgetfulness of the check he had received, and had

him talking again in perfect enjoyment of his autobiography.

"Yes, sir," said Lapham, in a strain which Bartley was

careful not to interrupt again, "a man never sees all

that his mother has been to him till it's too late to let

her know that he sees it. Why, my mother--" he stopped.

"It gives me a lump in the throat," he said apologetically,

with an attempt at a laugh. Then he went on: "She

was a little frail thing, not bigger than a good-sized

intermediate school-girl; but she did the whole work

of a family of boys, and boarded the hired men besides.

She cooked, swept, washed, ironed, made and mended

from daylight till dark--and from dark till daylight,

I was going to say; for I don't know how she got any

time for sleep. But I suppose she did. She got time

to go to church, and to teach us to read the Bible,

and to misunderstand it in the old way. She was GOOD.

But it ain't her on her knees in church that comes back

to me so much like the sight of an angel as her on her knees

before me at night, washing my poor, dirty little feet,

that I'd run bare in all day, and making me decent for bed.

There were six of us boys; it seems to me we were all

of a size; and she was just so careful with all of us.

I can feel her hands on my feet yet!" Bartley looked at

Lapham's No. 10 boots, and softly whistled through his teeth.

"We were patched all over; but we wa'n't ragged.

I don't know how she got through it. She didn't seem

to think it was anything; and I guess it was no more

than my father expected of her. HE worked like a horse

in doors and out--up at daylight, feeding the stock,

and groaning round all day with his rheumatism, but not

stopping."

Bartley hid a yawn over his note-book, and probably,

if he could have spoken his mind, he would have suggested

to Lapham that he was not there for the purpose of

interviewing his ancestry. But Bartley had learned

to practise a patience with his victims which he did

not always feel, and to feign an interest in their

digressions till he could bring them up with a round turn.

"I tell you," said Lapham, jabbing the point of his penknife

into the writing-pad on the desk before him, "when I hear

women complaining nowadays that their lives are stunted

and empty, I want to tell 'em about my MOTHER'S life.

I could paint it out for 'em."

Bartley saw his opportunity at the word paint, and cut in.

"And you say, Mr. Lapham, that you discovered this mineral

paint on the old farm yourself?"

Lapham acquiesced in the return to business. "I didn't

discover it," he said scrupulously. "My father found

it one day, in a hole made by a tree blowing down.

There it was, lying loose in the pit, and sticking to the

roots that had pulled up a big, cake of dirt with 'em. I

don't know what give him the idea that there was money

in it, but he did think so from the start. I guess,

if they'd had the word in those days, they'd considered

him pretty much of a crank about it. He was trying

as long as he lived to get that paint introduced;

but he couldn't make it go. The country was so poor they

couldn't paint their houses with anything; and father hadn't

any facilities. It got to be a kind of joke with us;

and I guess that paint-mine did as much as any one thing

to make us boys clear out as soon as we got old enough.

All my brothers went West, and took up land; but I

hung on to New England and I hung on to the old farm,

not because the paint-mine was on it, but because the

old house was--and the graves. Well," said Lapham,

as if unwilling to give himself too much credit,

"there wouldn't been any market for it, anyway. You can go

through that part of the State and buy more farms than you

can shake a stick at for less money than it cost to build

the barns on 'em. Of course, it's turned out a good thing.

I keep the old house up in good shape, and we spend a month

or so there every summer. M' wife kind of likes it,

and the girls. Pretty place; sightly all round it.

I've got a force of men at work there the whole time,

and I've got a man and his wife in the house. Had a

family meeting there last year; the whole connection from

out West. There!" Lapham rose from his seat and took

down a large warped, unframed photograph from the top

of his desk, passing his hand over it, and then blowing

vigorously upon it, to clear it of the dust. "There we are,

ALL of us."

"I don't need to look twice at YOU," said Bartley,

putting his finger on one of the heads.

"Well, that's Bill," said Lapham, with a gratified laugh.

"He's about as brainy as any of us, I guess. He's one

of their leading lawyers, out Dubuque way; been judge

of the Common Pleas once or twice. That's his son--just

graduated at Yale--alongside of my youngest girl.

Good-looking chap, ain't he?"

"SHE'S a good-looking chap," said Bartley, with prompt

irreverence. He hastened to add, at the frown which

gathered between Lapham's eyes, "What a beautiful creature

she is! What a lovely, refined, sensitive face! And she looks GOOD, too."

"She is good," said the father, relenting.

"And, after all, that's about the best thing in a woman,"

said the potential reprobate. "If my wife wasn't good

enough to keep both of us straight, I don't know what

would become of me." "My other daughter," said Lapham,

indicating a girl with eyes that showed large, and a face

of singular gravity. "Mis' Lapham," he continued,

touching his wife's effigy with his little finger.

"My brother Willard and his family--farm at Kankakee.

Hazard Lapham and his wife--Baptist preacher in Kansas.

Jim and his three girls--milling business at Minneapolis.

Ben and his family--practising medicine in Fort Wayne."

The figures were clustered in an irregular group

in front of an old farm-house, whose original ugliness

had been smartened up with a coat of Lapham's

own paint, and heightened with an incongruous piazza.

The photographer had not been able to conceal the fact

that they were all decent, honest-looking, sensible people,

with a very fair share of beauty among the young girls;

some of these were extremely pretty, in fact. He had put

them into awkward and constrained attitudes, of course;

and they all looked as if they had the instrument of torture

which photographers call a head-rest under their occiputs.

Here and there an elderly lady's face was a mere blur;

and some of the younger children had twitched

themselves into wavering shadows, and might have passed

for spirit-photographs of their own little ghosts.

It was the standard family-group photograph, in which most

Americans have figured at some time or other; and Lapham

exhibited a just satisfaction in it. "I presume,"

he mused aloud, as he put it back on top of his desk,

"that we sha'n't soon get together again, all of us."

"And you say," suggested Bartley, "that you stayed right

along on the old place, when the rest cleared out West?"

"No o-o-o," said Lapham, with a long, loud drawl;

"I cleared out West too, first off. Went to Texas.

Texas was all the cry in those days. But I got enough

of the Lone Star in about three months, and I come back

with the idea that Vermont was good enough for me."

"Fatted calf business?" queried Bartley, with his pencil

poised above his note-book.

"I presume they were glad to see me," said Lapham,

with dignity. "Mother," he added gently, "died that winter,

and I stayed on with father. I buried him in the spring;

and then I came down to a little place called Lumberville,

and picked up what jobs I could get. I worked round at

the saw-mills, and I was ostler a while at the hotel--I

always DID like a good horse. Well, I WA'N'T exactly

a college graduate, and I went to school odd times.

I got to driving the stage after while, and by and

by I BOUGHT the stage and run the business myself.

Then I hired the tavern-stand, and--well to make a long

story short, then I got married. Yes," said Lapham,

with pride, "I married the school-teacher. We did

pretty well with the hotel, and my wife she was always

at me to paint up. Well, I put it off, and PUT it off,

as a man will, till one day I give in, and says I,

'Well, let's paint up. Why, Pert,'--m'wife's name's

Persis,--'I've got a whole paint-mine out on the farm.

Let's go out and look at it.' So we drove out. I'd let

the place for seventy-five dollars a year to a shif'less

kind of a Kanuck that had come down that way; and I'd

hated to see the house with him in it; but we drove out

one Saturday afternoon, and we brought back about a bushel

of the stuff in the buggy-seat, and I tried it crude, and I

tried it burnt; and I liked it. M'wife she liked it too.

There wa'n't any painter by trade in the village, and I

mixed it myself. Well, sir, that tavern's got that coat

of paint on it yet, and it hain't ever had any other,

and I don't know's it ever will. Well, you know,

I felt as if it was a kind of harumscarum experiment,

all the while; and I presume I shouldn't have tried it

but I kind of liked to do it because father'd always

set so much store by his paint-mine. And when I'd got

the first coat on,"--Lapham called it CUT,--"I presume I

must have set as much as half an hour; looking at it and

thinking how he would have enjoyed it. I've had my share

of luck in this world, and I ain't a-going to complain

on my OWN account, but I've noticed that most things get

along too late for most people. It made me feel bad,

and it took all the pride out my success with the paint,

thinking of father. Seemed to me I might 'a taken more

interest in it when he was by to see; but we've got to

live and learn. Well, I called my wife out,--I'd tried

it on the back of the house, you know,--and she left

her dishes,--I can remember she came out with her sleeves

rolled up and set down alongside of me on the trestle,--

and says I, 'What do you think, Persis?' And says she,

'Well, you hain't got a paint-mine, Silas Lapham;

you've got a GOLD-mine.' She always was just so enthusiastic

about things. Well, it was just after two or three

boats had burnt up out West, and a lot of lives lost,

and there was a great cry about non-inflammable paint,

and I guess that was what was in her mind. 'Well, I

guess it ain't any gold-mine, Persis,' says I; 'but I

guess it IS a paint-mine. I'm going to have it analysed,

and if it turns out what I think it is, I'm going

to work it. And if father hadn't had such a long name,

I should call it the Nehemiah Lapham Mineral Paint.

But, any rate, every barrel of it, and every keg,

and every bottle, and every package, big or little,

has got to have the initials and figures N.L.f. 1835,

S.L.t. 1855, on it. Father found it in 1835, and I tried it

in 1855.'"

"'S.T.--1860--X.' business," said Bartley.

"Yes," said Lapham, "but I hadn't heard of Plantation

Bitters then, and I hadn't seen any of the fellow's labels.

I set to work and I got a man down from Boston; and I

carried him out to the farm, and he analysed it--made

a regular Job of it. Well, sir, we built a kiln, and we

kept a lot of that paint-ore red-hot for forty-eight hours;

kept the Kanuck and his family up, firing. The presence

of iron in the ore showed with the magnet from the start;

and when he came to test it, he found out that it

contained about seventy-five per cent. of the peroxide

of iron."

Lapham pronounced the scientific phrases with a sort

of reverent satisfaction, as if awed through his pride

by a little lingering uncertainty as to what peroxide was.

He accented it as if it were purr-ox-EYED; and Bartley

had to get him to spell it.

"Well, and what then?" he asked, when he had made a note

of the percentage.

"What then?" echoed Lapham. "Well, then, the fellow set

down and told me, 'You've got a paint here,' says he,

'that's going to drive every other mineral paint out of

the market. Why' says he, 'it'll drive 'em right into

the Back Bay!' Of course, I didn't know what the Back Bay

was then, but I begun to open my eyes; thought I'd had 'em

open before, but I guess I hadn't. Says he, 'That paint

has got hydraulic cement in it, and it can stand fire

and water and acids;' he named over a lot of things.

Says he, 'It'll mix easily with linseed oil, whether you

want to use it boiled or raw; and it ain't a-going

to crack nor fade any; and it ain't a-going to scale.

When you've got your arrangements for burning it properly,

you're going to have a paint that will stand like the

everlasting hills, in every climate under the sun.'

Then he went into a lot of particulars, and I begun

to think he was drawing a long-bow, and meant to make his

bill accordingly. So I kept pretty cool; but the fellow's

bill didn't amount to anything hardly--said I might pay

him after I got going; young chap, and pretty easy;

but every word he said was gospel. Well, I ain't a-going

to brag up my paint; I don't suppose you came here to hear

me blow"

"Oh yes, I did," said Bartley. "That's what I want.

Tell all there is to tell, and I can boil it down afterward.

A man can't make a greater mistake with a reporter than

to hold back anything out of modesty. It may be the very

thing we want to know. What we want is the whole truth;

and more; we've got so much modesty of our own that we can

temper almost any statement.

Lapham looked as if he did not quite like this tone,

and he resumed a little more quietly. Oh, there isn't

really very much more to say about the paint itself.

But you can use it for almost anything where a paint is wanted,

inside or out. It'll prevent decay, and it'll stop it,

after it's begun, in tin or iron. You can paint the inside

of a cistern or a bath-tub with it, and water won't hurt it;

and you can paint a steam-boiler with it, and heat won't.

You can cover a brick wall with it, or a railroad car,

or the deck of a steamboat, and you can't do a better thing

for either."

"Never tried it on the human conscience, I suppose,"

suggested Bartley.

"No, sir," replied Lapham gravely. "I guess you want to keep

that as free from paint as you can, if you want much use of it.

I never cared to try any of it on mine." Lapham suddenly

lifted his bulk up out of his swivel-chair, and led the

way out into the wareroom beyond the office partitions,

where rows and ranks of casks, barrels, and kegs stretched

dimly back to the rear of the building, and diffused

an honest, clean, wholesome smell of oil and paint.

They were labelled and branded as containing each so many

pounds of Lapham's Mineral Paint, and each bore the mystic

devices, N.L.f. 1835--S.L.t. 1855. "There!" said Lapham,

kicking one of the largest casks with the toe of his boot,

"that's about our biggest package; and here," he added,

laying his hand affectionately on the head of a very small keg,

as if it were the head of a child, which it resembled

in size, "this is the smallest. We used to put the paint

on the market dry, but now we grind every ounce of it

in oil--very best quality of linseed oil--and warrant it.

We find it gives more satisfaction. Now, come back

to the office, and I'll show you our fancy brands."

It was very cool and pleasant in that dim wareroom,

with the rafters showing overhead in a cloudy perspective,

and darkening away into the perpetual twilight at the rear

of the building; and Bartley had found an agreeable seat

on the head of a half-barrel of the paint, which he was

reluctant to leave. But he rose and followed the vigorous

lead of Lapham back to the office, where the sun of a

long summer afternoon was just beginning to glare in at

the window. On shelves opposite Lapham's desk were tin

cans of various sizes, arranged in tapering cylinders,

and showing, in a pattern diminishing toward the top,

the same label borne by the casks and barrels in the wareroom.

Lapham merely waved his hand toward these; but when Bartley,

after a comprehensive glance at them, gave his whole

attention to a row of clean, smooth jars, where different

tints of the paint showed through flawless glass,

Lapham smiled, and waited in pleased expectation.

"Hello!" said Bartley. "That's pretty!"

"Yes," assented Lapham, "it is rather nice.

It's our latest thing, and we find it takes with

customers first-rate. Look here!" he said, taking down

one of the jars, and pointing to the first line of the label.

Bartley read, "THE PERSIS BRAND," and then he looked

at Lapham and smiled.

"After HER, of course," said Lapham. "Got it up and

put the first of it on the market her last birthday.

She was pleased."

"I should think she might have been," said Bartley,

while he made a note of the appearance of the jars.

"I don't know about your mentioning it in your interview,"

said Lapham dubiously.

"That's going into the interview, Mr. Lapham, if nothing

else does. Got a wife myself, and I know just how you feel."

It was in the dawn of Bartley's prosperity on the Boston

Events, before his troubles with Marcia had seriously begun.

"Is that so?" said Lapham, recognising with a smile

another of the vast majority of married Americans;

a few underrate their wives, but the rest think them

supernal in intelligence and capability. "Well," he added,

"we must see about that. Where'd you say you lived?"

"We don't live; we board. Mrs. Nash, 13 Canary Place."

"Well, we've all got to commence that way,"

suggested Lapham consolingly.

"Yes; but we've about got to the end of our string.

I expect to be under a roof of my own on Clover Street

before long. I suppose," said Bartley, returning to business,

"that you didn't let the grass grow under your feet much

after you found out what was in your paint-mine?"

"No, sir," answered Lapham, withdrawing his eyes from a long

stare at Bartley, in which he had been seeing himself

a young man again, in the first days of his married life.

"I went right back to Lumberville and sold out everything,

and put all I could rake and scrape together into paint.

And Mis' Lapham was with me every time. No hang back

about HER. I tell you she was a WOMAN!"

Bartley laughed. "That's the sort most of us marry."

"No, we don't," said Lapham. "Most of us marry silly

little girls grown up to LOOK like women."

"Well, I guess that's about so," assented Bartley,

as if upon second thought.

"If it hadn't been for her," resumed Lapham, "the paint

wouldn't have come to anything. I used to tell her it

wa'n't the seventy-five per cent. of purr-ox-eyed

of iron in the ORE that made that paint go; it was

the seventy-five per cent. of purr-ox-eyed of iron in HER."

"Good!" cried Bartley. "I'll tell Marcia that."

"In less'n six months there wa'n't a board-fence, nor

a bridge-girder, nor a dead wall, nor a barn, nor a face

of rock in that whole region that didn't have 'Lapham's

Mineral Paint--Specimen' on it in the three colours we begun

by making." Bartley had taken his seat on the window-sill,

and Lapham, standing before him, now put up his huge

foot close to Bartley's thigh; neither of them minded that.

"I've heard a good deal of talk about that S.T.--1860--

X. man, and the stove-blacking man, and the kidney-cure man,

because they advertised in that way; and I've read articles

about it in the papers; but I don't see where the joke

comes in, exactly. So long as the people that own the barns

and fences don't object, I don't see what the public has

got to do with it. And I never saw anything so very sacred

about a big rock, along a river or in a pasture, that it

wouldn't do to put mineral paint on it in three colours.

I wish some of the people that talk about the landscape,

and WRITE about it, had to bu'st one of them rocks OUT

of the landscape with powder, or dig a hole to bury it in,

as we used to have to do up on the farm; I guess they'd

sing a little different tune about the profanation

of scenery. There ain't any man enjoys a sightly bit

of nature--a smooth piece of interval with half a dozen

good-sized wine-glass elms in it--more than I do.

But I ain't a-going to stand up for every big ugly rock

I come across, as if we were all a set of dumn Druids.

I say the landscape was made for man, and not man for

the landscape."

"Yes," said Bartley carelessly; "it was made for the

stove-polish man and the kidney-cure man."

"It was made for any man that knows how to use it,"

Lapham returned, insensible to Bartley's irony.

"Let 'em go and live with nature in the WINTER, up there

along the Canada line, and I guess they'll get enough

of her for one while. Well--where was I?"

"Decorating the landscape," said Bartley.

"Yes, sir; I started right there at Lumberville,

and it give the place a start too. You won't find it

on the map now; and you won't find it in the gazetteer.

I give a pretty good lump of money to build a town-hall,

about five years back, and the first meeting they held

in it they voted to change the name,--Lumberville WA'N'T

a name,--and it's Lapham now."

"Isn't it somewhere up in that region that they get

the old Brandon red?" asked Bartley.

"We're about ninety miles from Brandon. The Brandon's

a good paint," said Lapham conscientiously. "Like to show

you round up at our place some odd time, if you get off."

"Thanks. I should like it first-rate. WORKS there?"

"Yes; works there. Well, sir, just about the time I

got started, the war broke out; and it knocked my paint

higher than a kite. The thing dropped perfectly dead.

I presume that if I'd had any sort of influence, I might

have got it into Government hands, for gun-carriages

and army wagons, and may be on board Government vessels.

But I hadn't, and we had to face the music. I was about

broken-hearted, but m'wife she looked at it another way.

'I guess it's a providence,' says she. 'Silas, I guess

you've got a country that's worth fighting for.