ROBERT was the first-born son of Nathaniel and Julia Logan Richardson. Nathaniel Richardson was a prosperous merchant. Calling himself "Ship's Chandeler," he presided over a store on Market Street, between Third and Fourth avenues. Here he sold rope, sails, rigging, and supplies for keelboats, flatboats, river steamers, and ocean-going vessels. He was a man of position and of good reputation, a charter member and vestryman of the Trinity Episcopal Church.¹ He had been in Pittsburgh since 1800 or earlier, having come directly from Ireland. In the New World he had prospered so that his name ranked with those of the other leading families in the city: Ammon, Bakewell, Bigham, Bruce, Cheverton, Childs, Craig, Dallas, Darlington, Hostetter, Kerr, McFarlane, Murray, Negley, Nevin, Passavant, Pears, Rea, Thaw, Wilkins, Van Bonnhorst.²

      Julia Logan had come to the New World in 1800, accompanying her brother David, Jr., and her mother and father, also named Julia and David Logan. Her Irish parents had migrated from Londonderry. She had been married to Nathaniel Richardson in 1803.

      Julia Logan Richardson possessed a refined temperament and a rich sympathy. Her cultivated taste found expression in music, art, and literature; she continued these Old World interests in her new home. The air of culture which surrounded her was not overstrained or posed, for it was her own native element; it provided the [25] atmosphere in which gentle traits of character blossomed and where mutual consideration was a natural fruit.

      Thus, in many ways, the personalities of Nathaniel and Julia Richardson were indeed complementary; for Nathaniel was a dignified businessman whose interests were largely materialistic. Beneath his normally polished exterior, there smoldered a hot Irish temper, which he managed to conceal from most of his friends, and most of the time from his family, and even from himself. He was as interested as Julia in fine things and fine living, but for different reasons. To him, these were of little value in themselves. They served, rather, as signs of his prosperity. They gave him distinction and made him a prominent citizen.

      Robert, the first of twelve children, was born on September 26, 1806. All but one of his eleven brothers and sisters grew to maturity.

      The mansion at 58 Fourth Street was the home of a genteel family in a rich neighborhood. Third, Fourth, and Fifth avenues, extending across lower Penn Street as far north as the Allegheny River, defined Pittsburgh's finest residential section. There were the mansions, the stables, and servant quarters of the wealthy. In this quiet, well-bred island of culture, businessmen isolated themselves and their families from the vulgarizing effects of their own commercial traffic and there preserved some of the charm and dignity of the Old World.

      The Pittsburgh of Robert's boyhood was a gangling frontier town rapidly outgrowing its buckskins. By the time he was ten years of age the population of this "Gateway to the West" was about 8,000. The settlement presented a curious appearance, for the houses composing it [26] were of all sorts: frame, brick, and stone, with a few log cabins built by the earliest settlers standing as reminders of their youth. These assorted domiciles possessed individuality; each stood on its lot without reference to its neighbors, cornerwise or endwise, just as its owner had pleased to build it:

      There had been exciting things to see and do in this Pittsburgh in the early days of the century. At the point of the triangle of land on which the city stood, old Fort Pitt and crumbling Fort Duquesne moldered into ruin. With brothers and friends Robert had played French and English soldiers in these ruins, crawling into their empty powder magazines and old drains, or peering along a mock gun barrel around the broken walls, as imaginary Indians lurked just beyond musket fire.

      At the river banks, on both the Monongahela and the Allegheny sides, it was possible to see long rows of keelboats and flatboats nudging the banks like gregarious water beetles. In the shipyards one could see the giant ribs of a future sailing vessel taking shape. Watching them rise, Robert had often seen visions of the Atlantic Ocean, to be reached by a long voyage down the Ohio and Mississippi and out through the Gulf of Mexico. It was always possible to see flatboats, or "Kentucky boats" as they were called, being banged together to accommodate the unending inland tide of people which poured across this wedge of land down the Ohio and on into the realm of the Indian and the buffalo.

      At these same river docks, the lad had often watched graceful gondola-shaped keelboats put in on their return voyages from Cincinnati, carrying freight. He and his playmates had drawn back in respectful awe as the heroic, [27] roistering keelboat men swaggered past. Perhaps the legendary Mike Fink was among them. Robert had seen flatboats fitted out as floating department stores, and he had gazed admiringly at gleaming river steamers. These bright passenger boats, furnished with mahogany and rosewood furniture, and deeply carpeted, were America's inland luxury liners. While roads and railroads were still lacking in the wilderness, the rivers were broad, thronging arteries of traffic.

      Familiar to him, too, was the music of hamebells on the harness of Conestoga horses. These magnificent six-horse teams, driven by burly German immigrants, pulled picturesque Conestoga wagons. Their boat-shaped, blue painted beds, red running gear, and flaring, white canvas covers made a colorful and exciting spectacle. He saw the daily stagecoaches dashing into town, only six days out of distant Philadelphia. Carrying the mails and twelve well-shaken passengers at $20 per fare, these queens of the road were a part of the restless movement of a migrating nation.

      These sights, sounds, and adventures were all part of Robert's boyhood world, but they did not long occupy the center of attention. Gradually Julia Richardson's private world of culture won him over, and these outward excitements were pushed to the margins. With the complete acquiescence of his father, his mother had brought to this home private tutors in painting, music, and the French language. These interests came to displace the pure activism of boyhood, and Robert found that his mother's element was also natural to him. He learned to play the flute and the violin. So great was his aptness for music that he was even given his own Stradivarius. Sometimes [28] he composed music for it, an enjoyment which persisted through the years. In the same way, painting also became a hobby. His early introduction to the French language made him as much at home in this tongue and literature as in his own; he read it with ease and with pleasure and spoke it fluently.

      Robert also explored the world of books. In his father's large, spacious library he found himself contentedly at home. More and more of his leisure hours were spent here. Great minds from far countries and from the distant past invited him to the lure of learning. So habitual did his reading become, and so keen was his delight in it, that his father's severest punishments for childish misdemeanors took the form of exclusion from the library!

      Likewise, Robert found fulfillment in his schoolwork. In 1815-17 he had been enrolled in an academy whose master was the wise and kindly Thomas Campbell. His father and a neighbor, James Irwin, had helped Mr. Campbell to gather the pupils the previous fall.³ The Richardsons at that time knew or cared little about the mushrooming religious reformation which had sprung from Thomas Campbell's epochal Declaration and Address, published only six years before. Thomas Campbell was valued as a teacher of their children and as a guest and friend of the family.

      Scarcely was Thomas Campbell settled when on December 14, 1815, his son, Alexander, had visited them in the Richardson household. This decisive, and forceful young man, then twenty-seven, was also welcome as a friend. Neither Robert nor his family guessed his future fame, nor did they at this time even so much as glimpse [29] the revolutionary character of his religious views. Although Robert could not fail to be impressed by the aristocratic face and bearing of the younger Campbell, he did not then see the way in which this man would come to occupy his future.

      Alexander was on a three months' tour to raise a building fund for his church at Charlestown, Virginia (now Wellsburg, W. Va.). Nathaniel Richardson, as a supporter of churches and a patron of the decencies, made a generous gift of $20. This was the first contribution to the undertaking.⁴

      Sitting under the tutelage of the elder Campbell and meeting the younger on the occasion of his brief visits, Robert formed a strong impression of the differing personalities of these two men.

      The father, full of affectionate sympathy and oversensitive in regard to the feelings of others, could not bear to inflict the slightest pain, and would rather withhold than confer a benefit which could be imparted only by wounding the recipient. The son, with more mastery of his emotional nature, could calmly contemplate the entire case, and, for the accomplishment of higher good, could resolutely inflict a temporary suffering. The former was cautious, forbearing, apologetic; the latter, decided, prompt and critical.

      When Thomas Campbell left Pittsburgh in the summer of 1817, Robert was enrolled in a private academy conducted by George Forrester, who was also lay minister of a tiny independent congregation of "Haldane Christians," who met in the courthouse. At thirteen years of age, he was still a pupil in this same school when, in the summer of 1819, a young schoolmaster, recently arrived from Scotland, walked over the [30] Allegheny Mountains and, as Forrester's assistant, straight into Robert's life. This teacher was Walter Scott, aged twenty-two.

      Though separated by nine years and inhabiting the respective world's of early youth and young manhood, these two found a mystical kinship of spirit. Robert yielded himself gladly to the rigorous discipline of the new schoolmaster.

      "Mr. Scott possessed a peculiar tact as a teacher," he later reported, "having a quick perception of character, and knowing well how to excite the diligent, rouse the slothful and punish the disobedient. Though kind in his feelings, he pursued the strict system of discipline to which he had been accustomed in Europe, and which required perfect order and accurate recitations, or, as an alternative, the 'argumentum baccculinum' [a caning, perhaps!]"⁵

      To the French which he had learned earlier, Robert now added Greek and Latin. It was Scott's invariable practice to require "memorized recitations of portions of the ancient classic authors, as well as written translations of them." Robert, as one of the most gifted pupils, was also asked to commit nearly all the Greek New Testament to memory, until he could repeat, "chapter by chapter, the whole of the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the Greek language."⁶

      Robert was now "friend and companion, as much as pupil," to Walter Scott. It was thus that he came to glimpse an aspect of his teacher's life that other pupils little suspected. Walter Scott was not only deeply religious; he was in the throes of an inner revolution [31] of religious thinking. Revolting from sectarianism and orthodoxy, he was poring over his Bible far into the night, seeking a new insight into the meaning of Christianity. This quest finally drove him eastward, breaking up the school, and temporarily separating the friends. This was in the spring of 1821.

      In the loss of his mentor and friend, Robert was desolate. Nathaniel Richardson moved quickly to remedy matters. Learning by mail that Scott's eastern quest had been fruitless, he enticed him back to Pittsburgh with the promise of an apartment in the Richardson home, a small school of fifteen of his most gifted pupils, and an inviting salary.⁷

      When Scott returned, the pieces of his religious puzzle were beginning to fall into place. Though Robert did not then know all that was going on in his teacher's mind, he could see that its "ruling thought" was the personal creed of Christianity, "that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God," which he called the "Golden Oracle," and which he believed to be the key to the Scriptures and the essence of the whole Christian religion.⁸ The words "Jesus is the Christ" were written in chalk over the door of the schoolroom, on the inside. These bold white letters engraved themselves on Robert's mind, even before he could grasp their significance.

      That winter Alexander Campbell came to visit, and a meeting took place between him and Walter Scott. Robert witnessed this meeting, which was the beginning of a lifelong friendship. Both these men were to become increasingly involved in his own affairs. Though Robert did not then realize it, both men were absorbed by the [32] cause of church reform and found themselves in amazing agreement on such matters. It pleased him more than a little that these two friends of his had met and that they were drawn to one another. Outwardly, he noticed, they had little in common. Young Campbell was tall and athletic, possessed of strong animal spirits. Scott, on the contrary, was slight in build; he looked more like a recluse or a scholar. He detected in Campbell none of the lyrical, poetic temperament which he knew so well in Scott. Campbell seemed to him to have the most massively intellectual and coldly logical mind he, had ever known. Scott, too, was logical and rational; but his was a flashing brilliance, like that of a waxing and waning bonfire, depending upon a strong draft from his emotions. Campbell's mind shone like the unblinking stare of the sun, depending only upon itself for its light. Strange that these two should be drawn together! Perhaps it was because they were complementary, and that in their very differences there was a harmonious blending. Anyway, Robert was glad they had become friends.

      The young Richardson continued to spend many hours with his teacher, hours beyond the requirements of the schoolroom. Nathaniel Richardson had a small farm on the outskirts of the city, located in what is now the very heart of downtown Pittsburgh. In the evening, when the lessons were over, Robert would sometimes walk with the brooding Scott out to this farm. On one occasion, when Robert had plucked a rose and presented it to him, Scott, disclosing his religious preoccupation, took it with a question: "Do you know, my dear, why in the Scriptures Christ is called the Rose of Sharon?" [33]

      When Robert could make no immediate answer, Scott replied for him, "It is because the rose of Sharon has no thorns." Then he broke into a poetic discussion of the character of Christ and passed on to the power of the Creator which the beauty and perfection of the rose suggested.⁹

      Although Robert had a connection with the Episcopal church and his father was a vestryman there, this formal religion meant little to him. It was Scott who quickened the spark of interest; at the same time, he never sought to make a proselyte of his pupil. Nevertheless, a seed had been planted by those gentle hands, and under the warming influence of that friendship, it would grow and eventually bear fruit.

      Robert Richardson had reached his sixteenth year. Refined, artistic, gifted son of a gentle mother; accurate and precise scholar of an exacting teacher; considerate member of a large household; well-bred, well-born heir of a respected father; citizen of a bustling city on the threshold of a frontier; friend of men who were to become great; talented in measure suspected by others but as yet not fully discovered to himself, his future loomed before him, promising and alluring but undefined. [34]

[HTB 25-34]