BORN, NOVEMBER 1, 1887
THERE MUST BE BEGINNINGS. To those who knew Borden only in student days it may seem out of keeping with such virility and strength to present him as a child. Yet childhood comes first and is full of the germs and seeds of later developments. While he was a sophomore at Yale, for example, an unexpected discovery connected him in an interesting way with the curly-headed little fellow of ten years previously.
His elder brother had recently married, and in preparing the Chicago home for the occupation of the young couple some papers came to light that recalled a long-past experience. One Sunday afternoon when William was only six, Mrs. Borden had gathered the children around her as usual for a Scripture lesson. Several cousins of their own ages were with them, the eldest being about eleven. Apropos of something in the lesson, Mrs. Borden suggested that they should each take a slip of paper and write down what they would most like to be when they grew up.
This was done in a serious spirit. No one saw what the others had written, and all the slips were put away in a sealed envelope and forgotten. When found ten years later and returned to those who had written them, the ideals of those early days proved to have been realized to a remarkable degree. One boy had wanted to be a gentleman like his father. One of the girls wished to travel abroad, another “to help God and the soldiers of my country” ―all through the world war the latter was to render exceptional service. And William had written:
I want to be an honest man when I grow up and true and loving and kind and faithful man.
To his last day, by the grace of God, the man could have looked into the eyes of the child without shame.
Borden’s love of a good roughhouse was early foreshadowed by his devotion to active and even dangerous games. He was “a regular little monkey,” his mother recalled, “for running round and having a good time.” His cousin, John Whiting, was his chief ally in escapades of all sorts. Together they attended successive schools in Chicago, and with another companion spent their holidays in congenial ways. It was nothing unusual for the three to start out on Saturday at five A.M., ending up at supper time, John Whiting tells us, “dead tired out.”
We found that by the use of ropes we could travel along the roofs of the houses in Bellevue Place, almost the entire length of the block. For a time, this afforded us considerable amusement. Another diversion was to go down to the river and put in the day knocking around among the boats tied to the various docks. We used to go all over the boats, climbing the rigging, etc. The noon meal we would get wherever we could, generally from the kitchen of one of the three houses.
Late one Saturday afternoon we decided that we wanted to play in the gymnasium of the school William and Kelso attended. That the building was locked up for the weekend made no difference. We found the cover of a coalhole loose and dropped in through that. We fooled around the gym until tired, then took a leisurely shower and dressed, not realizing how late it was. We got out by a window which we had to leave unfastened. I was visiting William at the time and when we reached home, about seven-thirty P.M., we were met by Mr. and Mrs. Borden, worried and almost alarmed over our nonappearance. When the cause of our tardiness was discovered, we were promptly sent to bed with bread and milk for supper. It was meant for punishment, but nothing could have suited us better. We were tired and hungry, and while it was only bread and milk, the supply was unlimited.
A marked characteristic of Borden in later life was his unflinching loyalty to the doing of hard things. Fishing, hunting, sailing, all had their attractions for the boy, as may be seen from his early letters, but he seems to have loved hard jobs best of all. When he and his cousin, for example, discovered a wreck after a terrible storm and the Lake Shore Drive was flooded and covered with debris, it was second nature to turn in at once and help. A ship loaded with lumber had gone to pieces and the great timbers were lying at all angles along the shore. Seeing from the windows the work that had to be done, the little fellows of seven or eight were soon out in the storm, gathering up the lumber and putting it in orderly piles. A gang of Italian laborers appeared before long, but William and John Whiting kept on working, and at the end of the day lined up with the others and received their pay.
A chief enjoyment when about ten years old was to go down on Saturday to their uncle’s foundry, some distance from Chicago, and spend their holiday working around with the men. Of this they never seemed to tire. The house of an uncle in Indiana also offered attractions along the line of work, and that of all sorts. It was a farm to which as a child William had often been sent to escape the severe winds of the Chicago spring. Of these visits his aunt wrote:
He was never idle, always inclined to make work his play and to find in work well done ample compensation for his efforts. I remember that on his visit in the spring of 1898 William wanted to make cider. His uncle told him that after years of neglect the cider-press was unfit for use and could never be made sufficiently clean again. But William cleaned the cider-press. I can see the little fellow now, making many trips up the hill for hot water, carrying his buckets two at a time. After several hours of scraping and scrubbing, the press was spotless and cider-making began.
On a visit in the spring of 1900, when he was twelve, William was up at sunrise and in the barn before the men arrived, beginning their day’s work for them. This was the time he took such interest in the McKinley sawmill, making strawberry boxes, going to work and stopping with the mill whistle. At the end of his visit Mr. McKinley handed him a sum of money, saying he had earned it, but William declined payment on the ground that it had been a privilege to learn.
On his last stay with us, May 1912, he was the same dear, affectionate, lovable boy as of old. He arrived at six A.M. and we had an early breakfast, after which we went out on the porch and William saw the teamster, an old man of seventy-five who had been in the employ of the family for about forty years, driving toward the corn-cut. William hailed him joyously, jumped off the porch, ran down the hill and was soon beside him on the wagon. Gently he put his arm round the old man’s shoulder, and when they reached the corncrib he took the shovel and filled the wagon with corn, driving off with him and emptying the load at its destination. He then went over to the McKinley sawmill, greeting many acquaintances and helping them in their work as in earlier years.
I always think of William as I used to see him when a boy, coming home after a day’s work in his blue sweater―rosy cheeks, eyes full of love and hair covered with shavings―calling to me as he started to run up the hill, hoping he had not detained supper. Was there ever another boy of his means, so humble, with a heart so full of love and with such pure thoughts!
One of the deepest things in Borden’s life was devotion to his mother, and that too was very manifest in the child. From the time when he used to play quietly in her room “not to disturb her writing,” and leaving his toys would steal up behind her chair to raise the wavy hair at the back of her neck and kiss her without a word, on to the days of bereavement, after his father’s death, when he made time in the midst of college claims and studies to write to her every day, he was more like a lover than a son. This attitude comes out in his very first letter, written when just five years old:
Nov. 23, 1892
DEAR MAMA―I send my love to you. I wish you would come to my house. Sorry that you don’t come home.
Well I am.
And a little later, on her birthday:
DEAR MAMA―I did not have anything to give you. I am very sorry that I did not anything for you. So I gave you a bunch of flowers and this letter.
Goodbye, from WILLIAM BORDEN
He was quite a correspondent, even in those days, and the observation and attention to detail apparent in his early letters gave promise of the man whom nothing escaped.
89 BELLEVUE PLACE
DEAR GRANDMAMMA―HOW are you feeling. I think the baby is awful tuning. It has a little cold in her head. She is 19 in. long, and weighs 6 lbs. One day the butcher came in and found the maids all so happy because it was a little baby, so he told Mrs. Hatch and Mrs. Hatch told Mrs. Stone and Mrs. Stone told Mrs. Shelden.
Goodbye from
WILLIAM BORDEN
LAKE GENEVA, WIS.
DEAR GRANDMOTHER―Papa bought a new sailboat for us. We have sailed down to Golf Club and back twice. The first day we fished I caught 11 fish, Papa 11, John 3. The baby has been in the bathtub for the first time. Miss Duns has gone. Every night the baby comes downstairs, and Mama reads John Halafax aloud to us. Papa bought a new covered carriage for Mama and the baby. We are going ciscoe-fishing today.
―Yours truly,
W. BORDEN
89 BELLEVUE PLACE,
January, 1898
DEAR PAPA―I hope you and your father are feeling well and enjoying your visit to New York.... Saturday Jan. 15th it snowed all day nearly. Friday 14th we had thirteen children hear and played all sorts of games. After everybody was gone and everybody asleep except Marie, Mama and myself, we smelt gas and went searching all over the house trying to find it. We did not find it but opened some windows, by that time it was twelve o’clock. It was snowing when I went to bed, and on Saturday as I told you before. In the morning we went out by the build-out and coasted down those day hills onto a pond of ice. There was skating but it was not good so we didn’t go. About ten o’clock we came back and hitched on wagons. One time I got laughing so I couldn’t hold onto my rope and let go, and then I couldn’t run fast enough to catch up with it again. In the afternoon a lot of boys were out hitching, and we all hitched our sleds together and made a long train that reached from our house to the Maniers nearly. I was at the front and it pulled my arms nearly off. Kelso was at the end and it switched him all over into the curbstone and everywhere. We had supper at 7 o’clock.... Your loving son,
WILLIAM WHITING BORDEN
The baby is just as sweet as can be, hair is all curled.
BORDEN, INDIANA
DEAR MAMA―We have arrived here safe and sound, the train was 20 minutes late. After breakfast John and Papa went hunting, I did not go with them, papa shot one bird, he was a nice fat quail and that is all they got.
After lunch John and I went out and shot at a target with a rifle and revolver and papa went off hunting but did not get anything. He is asleep now and it is just 20 minutes of 5 and is getting dark. This is written on. Wednesday.―Your loving son,
W. W. BORDEN
BORDEN, INDIANA
DEAR MAMA―Monday I was down at Mr. McKinley’s sawmill, they sawed long boards off and made short ones for crates and me and another man stacked them up. In the afternoon I went with Jim McKinley up on the knobs for hay, the roads were very muddy and we had to let the horses rest. When we got back they had the big rip-saw going.... Monday morning Mr. Burns and I fed the pigs and then began to boil some potatoes for them. We built such a big fire that they boiled over and put part of the fire out. Tuesday morning Fraulein and Mary went out walking and I went down to the sawmill and stayed all morning. They have been getting a drag-saw ready, and will have it going before we get back in the afternoon. We were sawing a big red oak and nearly in the middle we found two big bullets. The saw had sawed them in two. It took an hour to get through sawing that one big log.
Hope all are well.―Your loving WILLIAM
Written Tuesday.
ELKHORN LODGE,
ESTES PARK, COLORADO
DEAR GRANMA―I hope you are feeling well. The 3rd day that we were up here Papa, Mary and I went fishing over to the Big Thomson which is about half a mile south of our house, but we didn’t catch anything.... A little while after that we went fishing again, and John caught 10 but the rest of us didn’t catch anything.
About two weeks ago, this being Tuesday the 18th, John, Mary, Ella James and I went out after some of James’s horses. We went out about 2 o’clock and we hunted the country high and low all over Beaver Flat and didn’t get home until 8 o’clock, and Papa was just starting out in the buggy after us.
Now I’m going to tell you where we went and what we did. Well first we forded the Fall River and rode way up into Horshoe Park, but we didn’t find the horses there, so we came buck and crossed the river in a place where it was pretty deep and then we had to go through a lot of bushes which nearly swept us off our saddles. Then we crossed the ridge right near Deer Mountain. We found to get across into Beaver Flat that we had to go across a rail fence, so John took off some of the rails but one and then the horses jumped or stepped over the one. Well we went on and came to another rail fence and managed it in the same way. Then we came to a Barb Wire Fence! Well we finally managed to pull up one of the posts and laid it down and made the horses go over, all but mine whose name was Buckskin and he positively refused to go over, and in trying to make him go over he backed off and pulled him onto the Barb Wire and tore his pants and cut his finger.
Well, seeing my horse wouldn’t go over, I had to go back and get out as best I could.... I then rode up into Beaver Flat about 3 miles, and was just about half way back when I met John, Ella and Mary. We went back where I’d been, only we went farther, but could not find the horses, so we went home.
On Saturday the 22nd there was going to be a Base Ball game, so we all went in the hayracks. We stopped at the Post Office and got some balls, and most everybody bought candy and gum and treated everybody to it. We got to the field which was up the Thomson a little way. They started to make the diamond. It began to rain and everybody that could got under the wagon, it stopped after a while and they practiced. I will give you a copy of the score card... We won as you see, and coming back yelled,
“Ripetak, sipetak, siss bum ba!
Elkhorn, Elkhorn, ra! ra! ra!
Who are we? who are we?
We are the gang from James’, see!”
Here I say goodbye, your loving grandson,
WILLIAM W. BORDEN
It was a happy, wholesome life, and in their father the children had an understanding friend. Every night he worked with them over their lessons, and they knew that he was no less interested in their games and sports. He was a man of few words, but the intimacies of home life revealed the strength and nobility of his character. The following unstudied lines―written by one of his daughters upon hearing of her father’s death―give an impression of his influence over his children.
Oh Lord, I thank Thee that Thou gavest me
This strength to cling to all my childhood years,
This noble man, my father, mine to be―
Though not as now―mine through eternity.
See, Lord! I am almost smiling through these tears,
For Thou hast made me rich of all mankind
By giving me to be his daughter-friend;
For his was calm nobility of mind
That, selfless, saw the truth and gave clear-lined
Full justice unto all things, to the end!
A sense of justice born of a pure heart
That loved a few dear ones, how sacredly!
Silent and grave, long hours he spent apart
In thought, until a word of love would start
A deep sweet look behind his eyes, and he
Would sit with us and talk from his great store,
Of beauty, poetry, and of great men.
And as the days and years opened the door
Of his dear heart to me I loved hint more,
As I had more of love to give, and then―
Then, Lord, You took him from me and I wept.
It seemed so piteous, for I loved him so,
Until I fell upon my knees and crept
A little child to Thee, and wearied slept,
While quiet drifted down like cooling snow
Upon my throbbing heart. A voice then said,
“Dear child, give Me yourself and all your fears,
He now is living, loving you, not dead;
For him, for you, for this, My blood was shed.”
And I awoke―strange―smiling through my tears.
Some of his strongest traits Borden inherited through his father, who came of old Puritan stock. For the love of conquest which had taken the Bordens of Bourdonnaye to England with the Norman Duke (1066) was followed centuries later by the love of freedom which made them exiles for conscience’ sake. To exchange the rich pastures and woodlands of Kent for the barren shore and tangled forests of New England was no easy step, but Richard and John Borden, who seem to have been brothers, were driven to it by the distress of the times. The burning of heretics had ceased in their day, but ostracism and persecution were still the common lot of “dissenters.”
And so it came about that the first child born of European parents in Rhode Island (1638) was Matthew, third son of Richard Borden. Much interesting information is available concerning the family; for at an early period they joined the Society of Friends, whose practice it is to keep careful records concerning its members. “Glad should every Borden be that his ancestors were Quakers,” writes their historian in California, and as one turns her illuminating pages, noting the contribution of generation after generation to the development of this great country, one cannot but echo the sentiment.
The tendency of the family was always to move westward, and in the sixth generation a certain John Borden settled in Indiana, who was the great-grandfather of the William Borden of this record.
On his mother’s side Borden came of a long line of soldiers, magistrates and preachers, reaching back to the early annals of English history. The best blood of the old country was in their veins, but the terrible years of Archbishop Laud’s administration (1628-1640) had driven them too from the land they loved. Colonel William Whiting, who brought the name to America, belonged to the Suffolk branch of the family, and came with his wife Susannah from ‘Yarmouth on the East Coast. With about a hundred others, they founded the city of Hartford, Connecticut, and became members of the first church established there, under “the animated and able ministry” of the Rev. Thomas Hooker.
Three generations later, Charles Whiting married the beautiful Elizabeth Bradford, a descendant of Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Colony and of John Alden, who won as his bride “the Puritan maiden Priscilla.” The sons of this Charles Whiting, himself a soldier, lived in the stormy days of the Revolutionary War and bore a brave part in its vicissitudes. A tribute is paid to one of them, William Bradford Whiting, in the family records, where he is spoken of as “a gentleman and a Christian, an upright, honorable man, possessing great dignity of manner and such integrity of character that his very presence was a rebuke to the wicked.” In middle life he moved his home from Connecticut to Canaan, a beautiful part of the State of New York, which thus became the residence of Mrs. Borden’s more immediate ancestors.
Bradford Whiting’s descendants moved with the times, and the old homestead at Canaan was forsaken for regions further west. Detroit was little more than a village when Mrs. Borden’s grandfather settled there; and her father, John Tatman Whiting, played an outstanding part in the development of the State. Mrs. Borden (Mary de Garmo) was one of seven children, and passed on many of his lovable qualities to her son, William Whiting.
But there was something more important that she passed on to this child, for when William was about seven years old Mrs. Borden entered upon a new experience spiritually which was deeply to affect his life. A devoted mother before, she now became an earnest, rejoicing Christian. To her, Christ was real, and fellowship with Him satisfying in no ordinary degree. Instead of losing everything when she turned to Him from the gaieties and allurements of the world, she found that she had gained not only peace with God but a new zest in living, a new joy in home and loved ones. New friends were brought into the family circle; new interests and ideals filled her life. In the Moody Church to which she transferred her membership, she found opportunities for service and the clear Bible teaching she coveted for the children. The result was very evident in the life of her younger son, who owed the strength and grasp of his spiritual convictions largely to that church home.
It was there he took his first step in open confession of Christ. Seated by his mother one Sunday morning, he heard Dr. R. A. Torrey, then pastor of the Moody Church, give the invitation to the communion service about to be held.
“Is it not time that you were thinking about this yourself, William?” his mother whispered.
“I have been,” was the unexpected reply.
When the elements were handed from pew to pew, to Mrs. Borden’s surprise, William quietly took the bread and wine as did those about him. Rather taken aback at this interpretation of her question, Mrs. Borden mentioned the matter to Dr. Torrey, who smiled and said:
“Let him come and see me about it tomorrow.”
Young though he was, his answers to Dr. Torrey’s questions made it evident that he was ready for the step he had taken, and the interview led to his joining the church in the regular way.
Another important decision was made when Dr. Torrey gave an opportunity for all who wished to dedicate their lives to the service of God to indicate this purpose by rising for prayer.
He made his meaning very plain, that it was a step of life consecration. William quietly rose―a little fellow in a blue sailor suit. He had to stand a long, long time while the service went on, but there was no wavering, and it was a consecration from which he never drew back.
Dependence upon prayer and love for the Word of God were becoming even then the warp and woof of his life. “Getting off to school” was a rush for him as for other boys. He hated to be late, and with books strapped on his back and cap and lunch box in hand might be in “a tearing hurry.” But, somehow, there was always time for the little word of prayer with Mother without which the day would not have been right. They would just drop on their knees together and pray that William might know in his experience the power of the blood of Jesus Christ. That was their daily prayer in those early years, and later it was that the will of God might be done in his life.
As to his love of the Bible, Mrs. Borden can never forget the picture she saw one evening on going to his room when the children had returned from a delightful party. Instead of finding William undressing, there he was, just as he had come home, in his velvet suit with knee breeches, pumps and a stiff collar, seated on the edge of the bed, eagerly and serenely reading his Bible, from which he looked up at her with beaming eyes.
Later, on a journey round the world, his companion remarked that however long the day of sightseeing might be, the boy never failed to close it with Bible reading and prayer. All through college and seminary it was the same. Strenuous as life was for him in their Princeton home―with all his work in theology, religious and social claims, business responsibilities, and examinations looming ever in the background―when his mother went to his study the last thing at night, it would be to find him deep in the Book he loved, from which he would look up with the same glad light in his eyes.