Charles Carleton Coffin had a face
that helped one to believe in God. His whole
life was an evidence of Christianity. His was
a genial, sunny soul that cheered you. He was
an originator and an organizer of happiness.
He had no ambition to be rich. His investments
were in giving others a start and helping them to
win success and joy. He was a soldier of the
pen and a knight of truth. He began the good warfare
in boyhood. He laid down armor and weapons only
on the day that he changed his world. His was
a long and beautiful life, worth both the living and
the telling. He loved both fact and truth so well
that one need write only realities about him.
He cared little for flattery, so we shall not flatter
him. His own works praise him in the gates.
He had blue eyes that often twinkled
with fun, for Mr. Coffin loved a joke. He was
fond to his last day of wit, and could make quick
repartee. None enjoyed American humor more than
he. He pitied the person who could not see a
joke until it was made into a diagram, with annotations.
In spirit, he was a boy even after three score and
ten. The young folks “lived in that mild
and magnificent eye.” Out of it came sympathy,
kindness, helpfulness. We have seen those eyes
flash with indignation. Scorn of wrong snapped
in them. Before hypocrisy or oppression his glances
were as mimic lightning.
We loved to hear that voice.
If one that is low is “an excellent thing in
woman,” one that is rich and deep is becoming
to a man. Mr. Coffin’s tones were sweet
to the ear, persuasive, inspiring. His voice
moved men, his acts more.
His was a manly form. Broad-footed
and full-boned, he stood nearly six feet high.
He was alert, dignified, easily accessible, and responsive
even to children. With him, acquaintanceship was
quickly made, and friendship long preserved.
Those who knew Charles Carleton Coffin respected,
honored, loved him. His memory, in the perspective
of time, is as our remembrance of his native New Hampshire
hills, rugged, sublime, tonic in atmosphere, seat
of perpetual beauty. So was he, a moral invigorant,
the stimulator to noble action, the centre of spiritual
charm.
Who was he, and what did he do that
he should have his life-story told?
First of all, he was the noblest work
of God, an honest man. Nothing higher than this.
The New Hampshire country boy rose to one of the high
places in the fourth estate. He became editor
of one of Boston’s leading daily newspapers.
On the battle-field he saw the movements of the mightiest
armies and navies ever gathered for combat. As
a white lily among war correspondents, he was ever
trusted. He not only informed, but he kept in
cheer all New England during four years of strain.
With his pen he made himself a master of English style.
He was a poet, a musician, a traveller, a statesman,
and, best of all and always, a Christian. He
travelled around the globe, and then told the world’s
story of liberty and of the war that crushed slavery
and state sovereignty and consolidated the Union.
With his books he has educated a generation of American
boys and girls in patriotism. He died without
entering into old age, for he was always ready to entertain
a new idea. Let us glance at his name and inheritance.
He was well named, and ever appreciated his heritage.
In his Christian, middle, and family name, is a suggestion.
In each lies a story.
“Charles,” as we say,
is the Norman form of the old Teutonic Carl, meaning
strong, valiant, commanding. The Hungarians named
a king Carl.
“Carleton” is the ton or town of Carl
or Charles.
“Coffin” in old English meant a cask,
chest, casket, box of any kind.
The Latin Cophinum was usually a basket. When Wickliffe
translated the Gospel, he rendered the verse at Matt. xi, “They took up of
that which remained over of the broken pieces, twelve coffins full.”
The name as a family name is still
found in England, but all the Coffins in America are
descended from Tristram Coffin, who sailed from Plymouth,
England, in 1642, and in 1660 settled in Nantucket.
The most ancient seat of the name and family of the
Coffins in England is Portledge, in the parish of
Alwington. To his house, and last earthly home,
in Brookline, Mass., built under his own eye, and in
which Charles Carleton Coffin died, he gave the name
of Alwington.
“Carleton’s” grandfather,
Peter Coffin, married Rebecca Hazeltine, of Chester,
N. H., whose ancestors had come from England to Salem,
Mass., in 1637, and settled at Bradford. Carleton
has told something of his ancestry and kin in his
“History of Boscawen.” In his later
years, in the eighties of this century, at the repeated
and urgent request of his wife, Carleton wrote out,
or, rather, jotted down, some notes for the story
of the earlier portion of his life. He was to
have written a volume had his wife succeeded,
after due perseverance, in overcoming his modesty entitled
“Recollections of Seventy Years.”
To this, we, also, that is, the biographer and others,
often urged him. It was not to be.
Excepting, then, these hastily jotted
notes, Mr. Coffin never indicated, gave directions,
or prepared materials for his biography. To the
story of his life, as gathered from his own rough notes,
intended for after-reference and elaboration, let us
at once proceed, without further introduction.