Authors and Friends Part 20

At Danvers he was able to enjoy the free open air. He loved to sit under the fine trees which distinguished the lawn, to play with the dogs, and wander about unmolested until he was tired. The ladies of the house exerted themselves to give him perfect freedom and the tenderest care. The daughter became his playmate, and she never quite grew up, in his estimation. She was his lively and loving companion.

Writing from Danvers, one December, he says, "What with the child, and the dogs, and Rip Van Winkle the cat, and a tame gray squirrel who hunts our pockets for nuts, we contrive to get through the short dark days."

Again: "I am thankful that February has come, and that the sun is getting high on his northern journey. The past month has been trying to flesh and spirit.... I am afraid my letter has a complaining tone, and I am rather ashamed of it, and shall be more so when my head is less out of order.... There are two gray squirrels playing in my room.

Phoebe calls them Deacon Josiah and his wife Philury, after Rose Terry Cooke's story of the minister's 'week of works' in the place of a 'week of prayer.'"

He showed more physical vitality after he went to Danvers, and his notes evince a wide interest in matters private and public outside his own library life. He still went to Portland to see his niece and her husband whenever he was able, and now and then to Boston also. But Philadelphia at the time of the Centennial was not to be thought of.

"I sent my hymn," he wrote from Amesbury in 1876, "with many misgivings, and am glad it was so well received. I think I should like to have heard the music, but probably I should not have understood.

The G.o.ds have made me most unmusical.

"I have just got J. T. F.'s charming little book of 'Barry Cornwall and His Friends.' It is a most companionable volume, and will give rare pleasure to thousands.... I write in the midst of our Quaker quarterly meeting, and our house has been overrun for three days. We had twelve to dine to-day; they have now gone to meeting, but I am too tired for preaching.

"I don't expect to visit Philadelphia. The very thought of that Ezekiel's vision of machinery and the nightmare confusion of the world's curiosity shop appalls me. I shall not venture."

He was full of excellent resolutions about going often to Boston, but he never could make a home there. "I see a great many more things in the city than thee does," he would say, "because I go to town so seldom. The shop windows are a delight to me, and everything and everybody is novel and interesting. I don't need to go to the theatre.

I have more theatre than I can take in every time I walk out."

No sketch of Whittier, however slight, should omit to mention his friends.h.i.+p for Bayard Taylor. Their Quaker parentage helped to bring the two poets into communion; and although Taylor was so much the younger and more vigorous man, Whittier was also to see him pa.s.s, and to mourn his loss. He took a deep interest in his literary advancement, and considered "Lars" his finest poem. Certainly no one knew Taylor's work better, or brought a deeper sympathy into his reading of it. "I love him too well to be a critic of his verse," he says in one of his letters. "But what a brave worker he was!"

The reading of good books was, very late in life, as it had been very early, his chief pleasure. His travels, his romance, his friends.h.i.+ps, were indulged in chiefly by proxy of the printed page. "I felt very near Dr. Mulford through his writings," he said. "He was the strongest thinker of our time, and he thought in the right direction. 'The Republic of G.o.d' is intellectually greater than St. Augustine's 'City of G.o.d,' and infinitely nearer the Christian ideal."

"That must be a shrewd zephyr," Charles Lamb used to say, speaking of his Gentle Giantess, "that can escape her." And so we may say of Whittier and a book. "Has thee seen the new book by the author of 'Mr.

Isaacs'?" he asked (having sent me "Mr. Isaacs" as soon as it appeared, lest I should miss reading so novel and good a story). In the same breath he adds: "I have been reading 'The Freedom of Faith,'

by the author of 'On the Threshold,' just published by Houghton & Co.

It is refres.h.i.+ng and tonic as the northwest wind. The writer is one of the leaders of the new departure from the ultra-Calvinism. Thank thee just here for the pleasure of reading Annie Keary's biography. What a white, beautiful soul! Her views of the mission of spiritualism seem very much like ----'s. I do not know when I have read a more restful, helpful book.

"How good Longfellow's poem is! A little sad, but full of 'sweetness and light.' Emerson, Longfellow, Holmes, and myself are all getting to be old fellows, and that swan-song might serve for us all. 'We who are about to die.' G.o.d help us all! I don't care for fame, and have no solicitude about the verdicts of posterity.

"'When the gra.s.s is green above us And they who know us and who love us Are sleeping by our side, Will it avail us aught that men Tell the world with lip and pen That we have lived and died?'

"What we _are_ will then be more important than what we have done or said in prose or rhyme, or what folks that we never saw or heard of think of us."

The following hitherto unpublished poem was written about this period upon the marriage of the daughter of his friend Mrs. Leonowens:--

TO A. L.

WITH THE CONGRATULATIONS OF HER MOTHER'S FRIEND

The years are many, the years are old, My dreams are over, my songs are sung, But, out of a heart that has not grown cold, I bid G.o.d-speed to the fair and young.

Would that my prayer were even such As the righteous pray availing much, But nothing save good can Love befall, And naught is lacking since Love is all, Thy one great blessing of life the best, Like the rod of Moses swallows the rest!

(Signed) JOHN G. WHITTIER.

Oak Knoll, 6th mo. 7, 1878.

Later he describes himself as listening to the "Life of Mrs. Stowe."

"It is a satisfying book, a model biography, or, rather, autobiography for dear Mrs. Stowe speaks all through it. Dr. Holmes's letters reveal him as he is--wise, generous, chivalrous. Witness the kindliness and delicate sympathy of his letters during the Lord Byron trouble....

Miss W. has read us some of Howells's 'Hazard of New Fortunes.' It strikes me that it is a strong book. That indomitable old German, Linden--that saint of the rather G.o.dless sect of dynamiters and anarchists--is a grand figure; one can't help loving him."

The poet's notes and letters are full of pa.s.sages showing how closely he followed public affairs. "If I were not sick, and to-morrow were not election day," he says, "I should go to Boston. I hope to be there in a few days, at any rate. You must 'vote early and often,' and elect Hooper. Here we are having Marryat's triangular duel acted over by our three candidates. I wish they were all carpet-bagging among the Kukluxes. It wouldn't hurt us to go without a representative until we can raise one of our own." ...

And again: "I am somewhat disappointed by the vote on the suffrage question. It should be a lesson to us not to trust to political platforms. A great many Republicans declined to vote for it or against it. They thought the leaders of the suffrage movement had thrown themselves into the hands of Butler and the Democrats. However, it is only one of those set-backs which all reforms must have--temporary, but rather discouraging.

"I worked hard in our town, and we made a gain of nearly one hundred votes over last year."

"I am happy," he says later, "in the result of the election--thankful that the State has sat down heavily on ----. I never thought of taking an active interest in politics this year, but I could not help it when the fight began."

And still later in life: "I am glad of the grand overturn in Boston, and the courage of the women voters. How did it seem to elbow thy way to the polls through throngs of men folk?"

Whittier never relinquished his house at Amesbury, where his kind friends, Judge Cate and his wife, always made him feel at home. As the end of his life drew near, it was easy to see that the village home where his mother and his sister lived and died was the place he chiefly loved; but he was more inaccessible to his friends in Amesbury, and the interruptions of a fast-growing factory town were sometimes less agreeable to him than the country life at Oak Knoll. He was a great disbeliever in too much solitude, however, and used to say, "The necessary solitude of the human soul is enough; it is surprising how great that is."

Once only he expresses this preference for the dear old village home in his letters. "I have been at Amesbury for a fortnight. Somehow I seem nearer to my mother and sister; the very walls of the rooms seem to have become sensitive to the photographs of unseen presences."

As the end drew near, he pa.s.sed more and more time with his beloved cousins Gertrude and Joseph Cartland in Newburyport, whose interests and aims in life were so close to his own.

The habit of going to the White Mountains in their company for a few weeks during the heat of summer was a fixed one. He grew to love Asquam, with its hills and lakes, almost better than any other place for this sojourn. It was there he loved to beckon his friends to join him. "Do come, if possible," he would write. "The years speed on; it will soon be too late. I long to look on your dear faces once more."

His deafness began to preclude general conversation; but he delighted in getting off under the pine-trees in the warm afternoons, or into a quiet room upstairs at twilight, and talking until bedtime. He described to us, during one visit, his first stay among the hills. His parents took him where he could see the great wooded slope of

Agamenticus. As he looked up and gazed with awe at the solemn sight, a cloud drooped, and hung suspended as it were from one point, and filled his soul with astonishment. He had never forgotten it. He said nothing at the time, but this cloud hanging from the breast of the hill filled his boyish mind with a mighty wonder, which had never faded away.

Notwithstanding his strong feeling for Amesbury, and his presence there always at "quarterly meeting," he found himself increasingly comfortable in the companions.h.i.+p of his devoted relatives. Something nearer "picturesqueness" and "the beautiful" came to please the sense and to soothe the spirit at Oak Knoll. He did not often make record in his letters of these things; but once he speaks charmingly of the young girl in a red cloak, on horseback, with the dog at her side, scampering over the lawn and brus.h.i.+ng under the sloping branches of the trees. The sunset of his life burned slowly down; and in spite of illness and loss of power, he possessed his soul in patience. After a period when he usually felt unable to write, he revived and wrote a letter, in which he spoke as follows of a poem which had been sent for his revision: "The poem is solemn and tender; it is as if a wind from the Unseen World blew over it, in which the voice of sorrow is sweeter than that of gladness--a holy fear mingled with holier hope. For myself, my hope is always a.s.sociated with dread, like the s.h.i.+ning of a star through mist. I feel, indeed, that Love is victorious, that there is no dark it cannot light, no depth it cannot reach; but I imagine that between the Seen and the Unseen there is a sort of neutral ground, a land of shadow and mystery, of strange voices and undistinguished forms. There are some, as Charles Lamb says, 'who stalk into futurity on stilts,' without awe or self-distrust. But I can only repeat the words of the poem before me."....

One of the last, perhaps the very last visit he made to his friends in Boston was in the beautiful autumn weather. The familiar faces he hoped to find were absent. He arrived without warning, and the very loveliness of the atmosphere which made it possible for him to travel had tempted younger people out among the falling leaves. He was disappointed, and soon after sent these verses to rehea.r.s.e his experience:--

"I stood within the vestibule Whose granite steps I knew so well, While through the empty rooms the bell Responded to my eager pull.

"I listened while the bell once more Rang through the void, deserted hall; I heard no voice, nor light foot-fall, And turned me sadly from the door.

"Though fair was Autumn's dreamy day, And fair the wood-paths carpeted With fallen leaves of gold and red, I missed a dearer sight than they.

"I missed the love-transfigured face, The glad, sweet smile so dear to me, The clasp of greeting warm and free; What had the round world in their place?

"O friend, whose generous love has made My last days best, my good intent Accept, and let the call I meant Be with your coming doubly paid."

But even this journey was beyond his strength. He wrote: "Coming back from Boston in a crowded car, a window was opened just behind me and another directly opposite, and in consequence I took a bad cold, and am losing much of this goodly autumnal spectacle. But Oak Knoll woods were never, I think, so beautiful before."

In future his friends were to seek him; he could go no more to them: the autumn had indeed set in.

Now began a series of birthday celebrations, which were blessings not unmixed in his cup of life. He was in the habit of writing a brief note of remembrance on these anniversaries; in one of which, after confessing to "a feeling of sadness and loneliness," he turns to the Emerson Calendar, and says, "I found for the day some lines from his 'World Soul:'--

"'Love wakes anew this throbbing heart, And we are never old; Over the winter glaciers I see the summer glow, And through the wild piled snow-drift The warm rose-buds blow.'

Reading them, I took heart."

On another occasion he says: "In the intervals of visitation on that day my thoughts were with dear friends who have pa.s.sed from us; among whom, I need not say, was thy dearest friend. How vividly the beautiful mornings with you were recalled! Then I wondered at my age, and if it was possible that I was the little boy on the old Haverhill farm, unknown, and knowing n.o.body beyond my home horizon. I could not quite make the connection of the white-haired man with the black- locked boy. I could not help a feeling of loneliness, thinking of having outlived many of my life-companions; but I was still grateful to G.o.d that I had not outlived my love for them and for those still living. Among the many tokens of good will from all parts of the country and beyond the sea, there were some curious and amazing missives. One Southern woman took the occasion to include me in her curse of the 'mean, hateful Yankees.' To offset this, I had a telegram from the Southern Forestry Congress a.s.sembled in Florida, signed by president and secretary, informing me that 'In remembrance of your birthday, we have planted a live-oak tree to your memory, which, like the leaves of the tree, will be forever green.'"