Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis to John S. Dwight Part 11

CONCORD, _April 17th, 1845._

As a good friend, am I not bound to advise you how my new household works, here in the very bosom of terrible civilization, which yet keeps me very warm? A long wet day like this, when I have been gloriously imprisoned by dropping diamonds, tries well the power of my new solitary life to charm me. It has not failed. It is going away now through the dark, still midnight, but it bears the image of my smile. A long wet day, with my books and fire and Burrill for external, long thoughts for internal, company. After a morning service prolonged far beyond the hour of matins, led by the sweet and solemn Milton, I read Miss Martineau's last tale, founded upon the history of Toussaint L'Ouverture, in whom I have been interested. I have just read Victor Hugo's "Bug Jargal," his first novel, and also based upon the insurrection of St. Domingo. I feel that Miss Martineau's picture is highly colored, but the features must be correct. A strong, sad, long-suffering, far-seeing man, finally privately murdered by one who had been the idol of his manhood. The interest is individual throughout, which is necessary, yet fatal to the novel. I followed the Hero away from St. Domingo to his grave, and afterwards the thought of the remaining negroes came very faintly back. We read what Napoleon said of his own conduct in the matter; but with the abolitionist Miss Martineau on one side, and the doubtful Man of Destiny on the other, the pure fact grew very attenuated, and I am not now sure that I have seen it. The moment your curiosity is really aroused about an historical circ.u.mstance, the gla.s.ses through which you have been viewing so varied and wide a landscape become suddenly very opaque. History is a gallery of pictures so individually unexpressive that you must know the artist to know their meaning. Very few men relate with cold precision what occurs daily, so much are their feelings enlisted; and no less daily experiences are the recorded events of the past to the man whose days are devoted to them, and he too must infuse himself into them. He is a Guelph or a Ghibelline, not a judge of the struggle, wiser by five or six centuries of experience. In Carlyle's book "that shall be" the "Cromwell," I feel there will be so much stress laid upon the gravity and prompt, st.u.r.dy heroism of the man that much else will be shoved out of sight. It will be the history of Cromwell as a strong man, for Carlyle loves strong men; but if there are other things to be said, we shall not hear so much about them. So in Emerson's "Napoleon." He commences with saying that Napoleon is the Incarnate Democrat, the representative of the 19th century, and the lecture is an ill.u.s.tration of that position, but most comprehensive and eloquent.

Let history and great men fade from our sight. Lately I have grown to be a sad rhymer, and shall end my letter with hints of a life sweeter than these records of mine. More and more I feel that my wine of letters is poured by the poets, not handed as cold sherbet by the philosophers. Some day I may speak more fully upon these things. Meanwhile, secretly and constantly, I turn over pebble after pebble upon the sh.o.r.e, not uncheered by the hope that one day a pearl may glitter in my hands. Even this smacks of history, for Clio had claimed this page.

LADY JANE GREY

Meek violet of History! there flows A modest fragrance from thy maiden fame Touched with the coolness of the chaste repose Which broods o'er Plato's name.

No Wanderer through the dimly arched hall Which Time has reared between thy date and ours Meeting thy form, but sees that on its pall Are broidered Grecian flowers.

Thy shrinking virgin fame is wed with one Whose calm celestial teaching was thy King; When sitting in that cloistered nook alone Thou heardst the rude shout ring.

To thee that rabble shout foretold a scene Of tearful splendor faded in its birth-- The melancholy mockery of a Queen-- And virgin dust to earth.

Ah! Princess of that golden cla.s.sic h.o.a.rd, Thy need was other than an earthly crown; But ours was such, for else couldst thou have poured Through time thy pure renown?

For us thy blood was spilled; the whetted edge Of that keen axe gave us one jewel more, As a stream-drifted lily by chance sedge Is held beside the sh.o.r.e.

Good-night. Let the remembrance of the flowers still hold mine fast, and my solemn sweet Milton shall sing my vespers too.

May you "move In perfect Phalanx to the Dorian mood Of flutes and soft Recorders...."

Your aff.

G.W.C.

XXV

CONCORD, _May 3, '45.

I am weary of these winds, which have blown so constantly through the spring; and would so gladly exchange their long wail to-night for some of your music. And yet they are musical, and when I feel vexed at their persistency they seem to fade and breathe against my face with a low sigh, like one who shouts a secret which I cannot understand, and then mourns softly that I cannot. In spite of the wind we went to a new pond near us (new to us) this afternoon. There we separated, and Burrill went roaming over the hills and along the sh.o.r.e; and I sat down with Bettine upon the margin. That is the best workbook that I know. I read it for the first time in the Brook Farm pine-woods on a still Sunday; but to-day, as I followed her vanis.h.i.+ng steps through Fairyland, the wind that rustled and raged around was like the tone of her nature interpreting to my heart, rather than to my mind, what I read. She was intellectual, spiritual more than poetical. She was such a glancing, dancing, joyous, triumphant child.

I imagine great dark eyes, sparkling to the centre, and heavy locks overhanging--pine-trees drooping over diamonds, deepest brilliancy, with splendor, and a low singing sadness like the wind again, for her position is sad. The ardent, bursting, seeking-ripe girl, and the calm old man, wise and cold, not harsh. A sense of singular unfitness, a sweet-brier and an oak, a feeling as if some string in the great harp had slipped from its harmony, always strikes me when I read Bettine. Will you say no youthful lover would have inspired such a gush of the tenderest and profoundest girlishness? But it was no more than the bursting out of an irrepressible fountain, and it would have flowed as clearly and sweetly through a new wood conduit of to-day as through the polished golden channel which lay there for it. She must love, and love the best, and if only the best had been younger, fitter! Would not the steady ma.s.siveness of Goethe's nature have been splendidly adorned by the arabesques and intricately graceful woof of Bettine's? Now it was spring flowers on an old brow, with all the sweetness, but not the freshness, of youth. The imperial Goethe, supreme in wisdom and age, smelling a violet! Ah! though the flowers and the laughter and the dance and the sparkle are for the child, but sadly serious autumnal wreaths for the old man; but the world does the best it knows how to do with the poets, so did Goethe with his young lover.

Friendly, cool, gentle, never flattering, Bettine asks him half sadly, as if for once those world-roving eyes were still: Do I speak to you or only speak in your presence? She answered her question by asking it.

She speaks much of music. It is beauty impersonized to her; she pours out gems and flowers of words, and sketches grotesquely exquisite shapes dimly all over the landscape, coins all the beautiful fancies that crowd her brain, throws them to Goethe sparkling in the sunlight, and says: This is music, and finds at last that music is G.o.d. That is the most orthodox Pantheism.

The year has piloted us into the flowery haven of May, but I lay so languidly charmed with the beauty, and looking to see if I cannot this time see the G.o.ddess whose smiles I feel, that it will be June and summer before I know it. I treat the season as I do poetry. Sometimes I dissect a line which has fascinated me, or a poem, to expose the secret. But it folds and fades and changes under my glance as a cloud at twilight; and the beauty of the spring is as elusive as the foam upon a wave. In the midst of summer, the summer that we antic.i.p.ated in January seems farther off. It sinks constantly into itself. The deep solitude of rest, the murmurous silence of woods at noon, these are as real in winter as when we are melting in June. The senses will have their share. It is melancholy that a man with the stomach-ache cannot enjoy Shakespeare; and that this wild, wayward, glowing, and glorious Bettine must disappear in the Frau von Arnim, wearing caps and taking snuff, and instead of these pine-trees, false curls, cut from the last criminal, perhaps, and then croaking and child-bearing and nursing and diapering! things so beautiful for many, but not for her. She is not yet a woman, but belongs to us and the woods and the waters and the midnight. A child singing wonderful songs in the starlight, serenading with tender, pa.s.sionate love-songs the old man who waves his hand and breathes down a kiss which is chilled by the night air, and falls like a snow-flake into her hot bosom, not as a star upon her brow.

We had some May-baskets left for us by unknown hands upon May-day. The flowers drooped over the sides, as if they would not meet my eye to tell the secret; but a group of smiling girls next morning were not so inexorable, and I thanked nature for such almoners of her gifts. These beautiful tributes are touching if one is serious. They are hung upon our wall, which is adorned with the Urania and sketches from Michel Angelo, and one or two drawings of Burrill's.

Mrs. Brown (Mrs. Emerson's sister) wishes Charles Newcomb to return some letters he has about little Waldo's death. Will you speak to him and say that Mrs. Brown will like them by the first opportunity?

I hope my name is down as a subscriber to the Paper. When shall we see it?

Mr. Emerson read us a part of your letter.

Here is another of the unconscionable epistles; not to mention answering, it is too audacious to demand that they shall be read.

Ever yr

G.W.C.

XXVI

CONCORD, _May 31, '45, Sat.u.r.day morning._

My dear Friend,--Mr. Hosmer just tells me that he is going to Brook Farm, and I must say a word of regret that I could not come at this time, as Mr.

Ripley, whom I saw in Boston, asked me to do. I have no doubt that the essence of all good things which are said, I shall gather from you some day, somehow. I send my subscription to the Harbinger. Almira is well, and would send you love and flowers if she knew that Mr. Hosmer was going.

I am fairly launched in "Consuelo," which I must read as fast as I can, for Mr. Hedge is to take it to Maine. Already it interests me as a new life, and, if I could, I would have it developing all summer; but I must feed upon the remembrance.

Will you say to Mr. Keith, the postmaster at West Roxbury, that we have despatched sundry messages to Messrs. Greeley and McElrath to have our _Tribune_ come to Concord and not to West Roxbury, and that to-day, upon receipt of his note, we have written a very concise letter upon that subject to the publishers.

Tell Mrs. Ripley that she must not fail to come this summer; and how soon are you coming to have a vacation in civilization?--not a day or two in winter, but a week for summer rambles.

Give my love to the Eyrie, for I believe all my friends are there save Miss Russell; and forgiving me for using you so unsparingly with messages, believe me always,

G.W.C.

If Geo. Wells is or shall be at Brook Farm, tell him that Almira and the rest of the Concordians are waiting to see him.

XXVII

CONCORD, _June 24th, 1845._

My dear Friend,--I finished "Consuelo" some time since, though I have not yet read the "Countess." I read what you said in the _Harbinger_, and am waiting for the promised continuation. Meanwhile you shall hear something of the impression she made upon me.

Consuelo is a natural, not a pious person. She lives in the world like a flower, not like a flame; and though you feel that nothing is beyond her, since beauty and fidelity comprehend all, yet she does not directly suggest those personal relations with the Invisible which a saint always does. She sings as a bird, with her whole soul; and though she consents to relinquish the profession if she marries Albert, you feel very well that it will not be so. Porhora constantly urges the art upon her attention, but she grows in that by instinct. She is always in that to which he exhorts her, and the difference between her life and singing is no more perceived than in the life and singing of a bird. She is one of the persons from whom the rules of the art are drawn, because in her they are so clearly but unconsciously expressed. It is a character which fuses everything which it attracts to itself, and in whose outline no seam or crevice is visible. She is entirely impulsive, and every impulse is an inspiration. She leaves the castle of the Giants as soon as it occurs to her to do so, and the perfect submission to her impulse indicates the power and depth of her nature. Therefore, too, though she seems always right, she is free from all self-discipline. In meeting her one should not feel especially that she was a good person. She is not virtuous, for she has no moral struggle; nor pious, for she is too impersonal; and even her love, at least to the end of "Consuelo," is not a life. Her regard for Anzoleto you feel will pa.s.s. It is a personal relation, necessary among the flowers and music and moonlight of Venice. It is not the sentiment which love is to such a nature, nor could Anzoleto ever awaken that. With Albert it is much the same in another way. The waters do not at once flow to a level. She is consolation to him, but he is not life and hope to her.

Music is, but she is too human to be satisfied so. A character like hers is always seeking for its completeness the strengthening sympathy of love, although its relations are very far from personal. Thus she seems as if she ought to love Albert, and that she will at last. Her life is too self-poised and true to allow you a moment's anxiety. The waves of circ.u.mstance roll and break at her feet, and she walks queen-like over the waters. The characters are grouped around her as friends or courtiers; and so she preserves the unity of the book as the figures of Jesus in the old paintings. It is the memoirs of the court of Queen Consuelo.

As in life such a person would make every scene in which she was an actor impressive and graceful, so the strong conception of the character makes the book so. I was thirsting for music when I read it, and it satisfied me like a strain of the sweetest and best; like a beautiful picture or a flower, it left nothing to be asked, although suggesting a general and not an individual beauty and satisfaction like itself. The graceful Venetian life wrought of song and fragrance fades so suddenly into the sombre Bohemian forest where the careless girl who dabbles in the water with Anzoleto becomes the mistress of the destiny of the morbid Albert, and all s.h.i.+fts again into the clear, vigorous friends.h.i.+p with Hadyn and the sunny journey where the woman of the castle becomes a girl again, as cheerful but so much wiser than the Venetian girl, singing and saddening and sleeping in barns and leaping abbey walls, that it was like lying on a hillside under the shades and sunlight of the April sky. There is an indirect developing of the character throughout which is very fine as it makes the harmonies more intricate and profound. It is like the reflection of the moon in the water to one who has cast his eyes down from the sky, as where Hadyn silently conquers the love which she has inspired, because in her mien and tone he reads her love for another. That is a golden key to her character.

It was pleasant just after reading it to make a trip to Wachusett with Mr.

Hawthorne and Mr. Bradford. We had soft, warm weather, and a beautiful country to pa.s.s. From the mountain the prospect was very grand. It is not too high to make the landscape indistinct, but enough so to throw the line of the level country on the east back into the misty horizon and so leave a sea-like impression. To the north was Monadnock, lonely and grim and cold. A solitary lover he seemed, of the rough Berserkir sort, of the round and virgin-delicate Wachusett. Towards the northwest the lower part of the Green mountain range built a misty wall beyond which we could not have seen had it been away. Nearer were smaller hills and ponds and woods.

On the mountain we found the pink azalia and the white _Patenlila tridenta_. It was a fine episode in the summer.

About the 12th of July Burrill and I mean to go into Berks.h.i.+re, and if possible to reach the White Mountains before the autumn catches us. This last is doubtful. But I felt when I came down from Wachusett as if I should love to go on from mountain to mountain until winter stopped me.

Last Sunday Father Taylor preached here. All the heretics went to church.

In the evening he preached temperance. After the afternoon service we tea'd with him at Mr. Emerson's. He is a n.o.ble man, truly the Christian apostle of this time. It is impossible to pin him anywhere. He is like the horizon, wide around, but impossible to seize. I know no man who thrills so with life to the very tips, nor is there any one whose eloquence is so thrilling to me. I have found that one of the best things of living in Concord is that we have here the types of cla.s.ses of men and in society generally only the members of the cla.s.s. The types are magnetic to each other and draw each into their vicinity.

The lonely life pleases as much as ever. If I sometimes say inwardly that such is not the natural state of man, I contrive to quiet myself by the a.s.surance that such is the best state For bachelors. What disembodied comforter of Job suggests such things?

Yr friend,

G.W.C.