John Greenleaf Whittier: His Life, Genius, and Writings
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Title: John Greenleaf Whittier: His Life, Genius, and Writings
Author: William Sloane Kennedy
Author of introduction, etc.: Samuel Francis Smith
Release date: August 24, 2011 [eBook #37191]
Language: English
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JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
His Life, Genius, and Writings
BY W. SLOANE KENNEDY
Author of a "Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow," Etc.
REVISED AND ENLARGED
_INTRODUCTION BY REV. S. F. SMITH, D.D._
Author of Hymn "America"
Such music as the woods and streams
Sang in his ear, he sang aloud
_The Tent on the Beach_
For all his quiet life flowed on,
As meadow streamlets flow,
Where fresher green reveals alo
The noiseless ways they go
_The Friend's Burial_
CHICAGO NEW YORK
THE WERNER COMPANY
COPYRIGHT 1892
BY D. LOTHROP COMPANY
COPYRIGHT 1895
BY THE WERNER COMPANY
John Greenleaf Whittier
INTRODUCTION.
Who does not admire and love John Greenleaf Whittier? And who does not
delight to do him honor? He was a man raised up by Providence to meet an
exigency in human history, and an exigency in the experiences of the
United States. And he met the exigency with distinguished success. He
was a true exponent of New England life and the New England spirit. He
drew his inspiration from the soil where he was born, from the
necessities of the times, from the demands of human rights, from the
love of God and of man. He was a unique man. We knew not his like before
him. We shall see no other like him after him. He was the product of his
age; and the age in which he lived belonged to him, and he to and in it.
He was a unique literary man. He was so meek and retiring; he was so
keenly sensitive to the wrongs done by man to man; he was so devoid of
self-seeking; so pure and exalted in motive, and so sturdy a defender of
the rights of the oppressed; he was so full of trust in God that we seem
never to have seen his equal among men. His beautiful gentleness of
character and his inflexible and fearless advocacy of the cause of
righteousness--even when such advocacy involved persecution and
personal harm and loss, a rare combination of qualities--remind us of
the sentiment of Oliver Wendell Holmes,
"The gentle are the strong."
If ever in modern days the character of the apostle John has been
reproduced among men it was in John G. Whittier. See with what sweetness
and meekness the shy and loving Quaker moved through the ranks of
society in times of peace and prosperity, and with what an adamantine
boldness and bravery he stood up before the mob in Philadelphia when his
types and manuscripts were scattered, his printing office burned and
himself threatened with personal violence by the foes of human equality
and freedom. Did he quail before the storm? Not he. Did he abandon his
principles and retire from the arena? Oh, no; no more than did the
apostle John--the apostle of love--forsake his Christian faith when the
persecutors immersed him in boiling oil and exiled him to a desert
island in the AEgean Sea.
The poetry of Mr. Whittier is a complete autobiography. It is a
reflection, as in a polished mirror, of himself. We miss only the
accidents of dates and places, which are of merely external importance;
but we find in his works, amply displayed, the portraiture of the man;
even as the architect records himself and his thoughts in his plans, and
builds his own soul into his edifices. Read the poetry of Mr. Whittier,
and you have no need to ask what kind of man produced it. Behold the
portrait: a thorough New England man, a son of its soil and a legitimate
product of its institutions; a fruit of the simple education which was
open to the people in the times of his youth and manhood; a
philanthropist, loving all righteousness and all men, and scorning all
oppression, injustice and iniquity; a stern advocate of human freedom,
prepared to fight for it even "to the bitter end;" a bachelor, but
having always a sweet and tender side for women; petted by society, but
never tempted to swerve from the straight line of his principles;
holding the faith of his fathers as a birthright and the result of his
honest convictions, but with sympathies as broad as the universe and an
appreciation of the privilege of private judgment on religious matters
as the right and duty of all men; animated by a patriotism which took in
his whole country, but a yearning for his own New England, its people,
its scenery, its institutions and its honor; warmly attached to the
friends whom he met along the pilgrimage of this life, but preserving to
the last the memory and the love of the survivors whom he knew in his
school days in the Haverhill Academy; living very much apart from his
fellow-men, as he did in his latter days, on account of the increasing
infirmities of his age, and absorbed in the world of his own thoughts,
yet ever most affable, and as accessible as a most warm-hearted and
cordial associate; every inch a man, as in stature, so also in soul, but
exhibiting also the simplicity and the loving and confiding spirit of a
child ("of such is the kingdom of heaven"); conscious of his human
weakness and dependence on a higher Power, as he approached the goal of
life, but relying on that higher Power with a sublime courage and a firm
faith. How the man stands forth, like an orator on the stage, in the
presence of throngs of admiring and reverent spectators! Unconsciously
he sets forth in his works, whether they be prose or poetry, an example
of the beauty of righteousness, the charm of philanthropy, the power and
attractiveness of the broadest charity, the fervor of patriotism and the
controlling force of love. The century which is about to close has been
honored and made better, as well as gladder, by his presence in it. He
has enriched its literature. He has elevated its ethics. He has breathed
a divine life into its inspirations. He has warmed its heart.
Mr. Whittier, like another Wordsworth, glorifies the scenes of common
life, and hallows the landscapes of his New England homes. His verses
speak in the dialect of the people, and deal with themes with which they
are familiar. He lifts toil above its drudgery, and sanctifies, as with
a sacred glow, the things with which men in common spheres chiefly have
to do. He admired nature as he saw in it the landscapes which surrounded
his several homes, the rolling green hills of Haverhill and Bradford,
the mighty trees of Oak Knoll, the flowing stream and graceful curves of
the Merrimack; the sober and quiet graces of Amesbury; and with his pen
he stamped upon them immortality.
The sun has set, but no night follows. The singer is gone, but his songs
remain, and will long be a power among men far beyond the places adorned
and honored by his personal presence. We love his poems which on account
of their helpfulness the grateful world will long continue to read. How
little he wrote--did he ever write anything--"which, dying, he could
wish to blot?" and his life was a poem. The seal of Death is on his
virtues, and the seal of universal approval is on his works.
S. F. SMITH.
CONTENTS.
Part I.--LIFE.
I. ANCESTRY 9
The Poet's Titles. Heredity. Spelling of the Name Whittier.
Whittier Ancestors. Greenleaf Ancestors. The Husseys and
Batchelders. Portrait of Whittier's Mother.
II. THE MERRIMACK VALLEY 24
Description of Essex County, Haverhill, Amesbury, Newburyport,
Salisbury Beach, and the Isles of Shoals. Extracts from the
"Supernaturalism of New England." The Spirit of the Age.
III. BOYHOOD 36
Birthplace. Kenoza Lake. Whitman and Whittier. The Old Homestead.
Members of the Household. Harriet Livermore and Lady Hester
Stanhope. The Poet's School Days. "My Playmate." Ellwood and Burns.
Old Stragglers. "Pilgrim's Progress." The Demon Fiddler. First
Poem. William Lloyd Garrison and the _Free Press_. Haverhill
Academy. Robert Dinsmore, the Quaint Farmer-Poet of Windham.
IV. EDITOR AND AUTHOR: FIRST VENTURES 83
Whittier as Editor of the _Boston Manufacturer_, the _Essex
Gazette_, and the _New England Review_. First Volume, "Legends of
New England." The Poet, J. G. C. Brainard. Ballad of "The Black
Fox." Whittier's Views on the Poetical Resources of the New World.
"Moll Pitcher."
V. WHITTIER THE REFORMER 97
Identifies Himself with the Anti-Slavery Movement. Publication of
his _Brochure_, "Justice and Expediency." Social Martyrdom.
Prudence Crandall and her Battle with the Philistinism of
Canterbury, Conn. Tailor Woolman and Saddler Lundy. Account of the
Philadelphia Convention for the Formation of the American
Anti-Slavery Society. Whittier's Account of the Convention. William
Lloyd Garrison draws up the Famous Declaration of Principles.
Samuel J. May Mobbed at East Haverhill. Whittier and George
Thompson Mobbed at Concord, N. H. Story of the Landlord and the
Flight by Night. The Poet's Account of the Mobbing of William Lloyd
Garrison. Letters of John Quincy Adams. Harriet Martineau on
Slavery. Attitude of Whittier toward the Quakers on the Slavery
Question.
VI. AMESBURY 123
Removal to Amesbury. Description of the Town and of the Poet's
Residence. The Study. Whittier Corresponding Editor of the
_National Era_. Various Works Written, including "Stranger in
Lowell," "Supernaturalism of New England," "Songs of Labor,"
"Child-Life," "Child-Life in Prose," "Introduction" to Woolman's
Journal, and "Songs of Three Centuries" (Edited). Whittier College
Established.
VII. LATER DAYS 141
Danvers. Oak Knoll. Summerings of the Poet at the Isles of Shoals
and the Bearcamp House. _The Literary World_ Tribute, and the
Whittier Banquet at the Hotel Brunswick. The Whittier Club. Various
Volumes of Poetry Published.
VIII. PERSONAL 153
Whittier's Personal Appearance Described by Frederika Bremer, Geo.
W. Bungay, David A. Wasson, and others. Incident of his
Kind-heartedness to a Stranger. Dom Pedro II. and Whittier at Mrs.
John T. Sargent's Reception. Letter to Mrs. Sargent. Humor. Love of
Children. Offices of Dignity and Honor.
Part II.
ANALYSIS OF HIS GENIUS AND WRITINGS.
I. THE MAN 169
The Moral in Whittier Predominates over the AEsthetic. Love of
Freedom the Central Element of his Character. Freedom, Democracy,
and Quakerism, links in one Chain. Quakerism Described; Freedom and
the Inner Light; Quakerism is Pure Democracy or Christianity, and
Pure Individualism, or Philosophical Idealism; it Resembles
Transcendentalism; the Details of the Quaker Religion Considered;
Quotations from William Penn, Mary Brook, and A. M. Powell;
Objections to Quakerism; Beautiful Lives of the Quakers; Whittier's
Attitude Toward the Religion of his Fathers. His Religious
Development, Doubt, and Trust. Patriotism. Has Blood Militant in
his Veins. A Representative American Poet. Summing Up.
II. THE ARTIST 196
Little or no _Technique_. More Fancy than Imagination. The Artistic
Quality of his Mind a Fusion of that of Wordsworth and Byron. His
Bookish Lore. The Beauty and Melody of his Finest Ballads. His
Strength and Nervous Energy. Culmination of his Genius. His Three
Crazes. Letters to the _Nation_, and to the American Anti-Slavery
Society. Illustrations of the Predominance of the Moral in his
Nature. Taine Quoted. Pope-Night. His Over-religiousness. Love of
Consecutive Rhymes. Minor Mannerisms. Originality.
III. POEMS SERIATIM 217
Mr. David A. Wasson's Classification of Epochs in the Poet's
Development. The Author's Classification. Four Periods: 1st,
_Introductory_; 2d, _Storm and Stress_; 3d, _Transition_; 4th,
_Religious and Artistic Repose_. General Review of Earlier
Productions. The Indian Poems. "Songs of Labor." The Ballad Decade.
"Prophecy of Samuel Sewall." John Chadwick on "Skipper Ireson's
Ride." The "Barbara Frietchie" Controversy. The Romance of the
"Countess." Winter in Poetry. "Snow-Bound." "The Tent on the
Beach." Various Poems.
IV. THE KING'S MISSIVE 254
Joseph Besse Quoted. Story of the Quaker and the King of England.
The Debate of Whittier and Dr. Geo. E. Ellis of Boston. Humorous
Specimen of Quaker Rant from Mather's _Magnalia_. Terrible
Sufferings of the Quakers.
V. POEMS BY GROUPS 272
The Anti-Slavery Poems Reviewed. Poems Inspired by the Civil War.
Hymns. Children's Poems: "Red Riding-Hood," "The Robin," etc.
Oriental Poems and Paraphrases.
VI. PROSE WRITINGS 279
Much of his Prose of Historical or Sectarian Interest Only.
Charming Nature- and Folk-Studies and Sketches. "Margaret Smith's
Journal." "Old Portraits and Modern Sketches." "Literary
Recreations and Miscellanies." Specimens of Whittier's Prose.
Part III.
TWILIGHT AND EVENING BELL.
I. TWILIGHT AND EVENING BELL 301
Whittier's death at Hampton Falls, N. H. Celebration of his
birthdays. Funeral and memorial services. Personal reminiscences.
Fac-simile of letter to Oliver Wendell Holmes.
APPENDIX.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 375
* * * * *
PART I.
LIFE.
CHAPTER I.
ANCESTRY.
The Hermit of Amesbury, the Wood-thrush of Essex, the Martial Quaker,
the Poet of Freedom, the Poet of the Moral Sentiment,--such are some of
the titles bestowed upon Whittier by his admirers. Let us call him the
Preacher-Poet, for he has written scarcely a poem or an essay that does
not breathe a moral sentiment or a religious aspiration. What effect
this predetermination of character has had upon his artistic development
shall be discussed in another place.
The present chapter--which may be called the propylaeum or vestibule of
the biographical structure that follows--will deal with the poet's
ancestry, and the information afforded by it, and the two chapters that
succeed will afford unmistakable evidence of the truth that a poet, no
less than a solar system or a loaf of bread, is the logical resultant of
a line of antecedent forces and circumstances. The fine but infrangible
threads of our destiny are spun and woven out of atom-fibres indelibly
stamped with the previous owners' names. Their characters immingle in
our own,--the affluence or the indigence of their intellects, the sugar
or the nitre of their wit, the shifting sand or the unwedgeable iron of
their moral natures.
* * * * *
The name Whittier is spelled in thirty-two different ways in the old
records: a list of these different spellings is given in Daniel Bodwell
Whittier's genealogy of the family. The common ancestor of the Whittiers
is Thomas Whittier, who in the year 1638 came from Southampton, England,
to New England, in the ship "Confidence," of London, John Dobson,
master. It is recorded of Thomas Whittier, says his descendant, the
poet, in a half facetious way, that the only noteworthy circumstance
connected with his coming was that he brought with him a hive of bees.
He was born in 1620. His mother was probably a sister of John and Henry
Rolfe, with the former of whom he came to America. His name at that time
was spelled "Whittle." He married Ruth Green, and lived at first in
Salisbury, Mass. He seems afterward to have lived in Newbury. In 1650 he
removed to Haverhill, where he was admitted freeman, May 23, 1666.
It was customary in those days, says the historian of Haverhill, for the
nearest neighbors to sleep in the garrisons at night, but Thomas
Whittier refused to take shelter there with his family. "Relying upon
the weapons of his faith, he left his own house unguarded, and
unprotected with palisades, and carried with him no weapons of war. The
Indians frequently visited him, and the family often heard them, in the
stillness of the evening, whispering beneath the windows, and sometimes
saw them peep in upon the little group of practical 'non-resistants.'
Friend Whittier always treated them civilly and hospitably, and they
ever retired without molesting him."[1] Thomas Whittier died in
Haverhill, November 28, 1696. His autograph appears in the probate
records of Salem, Mass., as witness to a will of Samuel Gild. His widow
died in July, 1710, and her eldest son John was appointed administrator
of her estate. Thomas had ten children, of whom John became the ancestor
of the most numerous branch of the Whittiers. Joseph, the brother of
John, became the head of another branch of the family, and is the
great-grandfather of our poet. Joseph married Mary, daughter of Joseph
Peasley, of Haverhill, by whom he had nine children, among them Joseph,
2d, the grandfather of the poet. Joseph, 2d, married Sarah Greenleaf of
Newbury, by whom he had eleven children. The tenth child, John (the
father of the poet), married Abigail Hussey, who was a daughter of
Joseph Hussey, of Somersworth,--now Rollinsford,--N. H., a town on the
Piscataqua River, which forms the southern part of the boundary line
between New Hampshire and Maine. The mother of Abigail Hussey (the
poet's mother) was Mercy Evans, of Berwick, Me. John Whittier, the
father of the poet, died in Haverhill, June 30, 1830. His children were
four in number: (1) Mary, born September 3, 1806, married Jacob
Caldwell, of Haverhill, and died January 7, 1860; (2) John Greenleaf,
the poet, born December 17, 1807, in Haverhill; (3) Matthew Franklin,
born July 18, 1812, married Jane E. Vaughan; (4) Elizabeth Hussey, born
December 7, 1815, died September 3, 1864. From this statement it will be
seen that Matthew is the only surviving member of the family, besides
the poet himself. Matthew resides in Boston, and has sons, daughters,
and grandchildren.[2]
[Footnote 1: "The History of Haverhill, Mass.; from its first settlement
in 1640 to the year 1860. By George Wingate Chase, Haverhill. Published
by the author, 1861."]
[Footnote 2: The foregoing statements are taken from the Whittier
genealogy. But the author finds that there are a few slight
discrepancies of date between this book and the inscriptions on the
family tombstones in Amesbury. The tombstones say that John Whittier
died "11th of 6 mo., 1831," and that Mary died "1st mo. 7, 1861."]
The name Whittier constantly appears in important documents signed by
the chief citizens of Haverhill. The family was evidently respected and
honored by the community. In 1669 a Whittier was chosen town-constable.
It is recorded that in 1711 Thomas Whittier--probably a son of Thomas
(1st)--was one of a militia company provided with snow-shoes in order
the better to repel an anticipated attack of the Indians. But, in spite
of civil honors, it is well known that, down to comparatively recent
times, the family suffered considerable social persecution and slight on
account of their religious belief. For example, when the citizens built
a new meeting-house, in 1699, they peremptorily refused to allow the
Quakers to worship in it, although petitioned to do so by Joseph Peasley
and others, and although they were taxed for its support. It was not
until 1774 that an act was passed by the State exempting dissenters from
taxation for the support of what we may call the State religion. It is
important to bear this in mind, if we would know all the influences that
went to form the character of the poet.
The poet's paternal grandmother was Sarah Greenleaf, of Newbury. The
genealogist of the Greenleafs says: "From all that can be gathered it is
believed that the ancestors of the Greenleaf family were Huguenots, who
left France on account of their religious principles some time in the
course of the sixteenth century, and settled in England. The name was
probably translated from the French _Feuillevert_.[3] Edmund Greenleaf,
the ancestor of the American Greenleafs, was born in the parish of
Brixham, and county of Devonshire, near Torbay, in England, about the
year 1600." He came to Newbury, Mass., in 1635. He was by trade a
silk-dyer. Respecting the family coat-of-arms the genealogist gives, on
page 116, the following interesting statement:--
"The Hon. William Greenleaf, once of Boston, and then of New
Bedford, being in London about the year 1760, obtained from an
office of heraldry a device, said to be the arms of the family,
which he had painted, and the painting is now in the possession of
his grand-daughter, Mrs. Ritchie, of Roxbury, Mass. The field is
white (argent), bearing a chevron between three leaves (vert). The
crest is a dove standing on a wreath of green and white, holding in
its mouth three green leaves. The helmet is that of a warrior (visor
down); a garter below, but no motto."
[Footnote 3: Whittier has thus alluded to this surmise:--
"The name the Gallic exile bore,
St. Malo! from thy ancient mart,
Became upon our Western shore
Greenleaf for Feuillevert."]
What more appropriate emblazonment for the escutcheon of our Martial
Quaker poet than a warrior's helmet, and a dove holding in its mouth the
emblem of peace!
Jonathan Greenleaf, born in Newbury, in 1723, is described as possessing
a remarkably kind and conciliatory disposition. "Even the tones of his
voice were gentle and persuasive, and he was very frequently resorted to
as a peacemaker between contending parties. His dress was remarkably
uniform, usually in his later years being deep blue or drab. He seldom
walked fast, his gait being a measured and moderate step. His manners
were plain, unassuming, but very polite. He was very religious, and a
strict Calvinist. Nothing but absolute necessity kept him from public
worship on the Sabbath, and he was scarce ever known to omit regular
morning and evening worship."
Of Professor Simon Greenleaf, the Harvard Law Professor (1833-1845), the
family genealogist says: "For the last thirty years of his life he was
one of the most spiritually-minded of men, evidently intent on walking
humbly with God, and doing good to the bodies and souls of his
fellow-men; scarce ever writing a letter of friendship even, without
breathing in it a prayer, or delivering in it some good message."
Professor Greenleaf published some dozen works, both legal and
religious. It is a curious fact that his son James married Mary
Longfellow, a sister of the Cambridge poet, thus making Whittier and
Longfellow distant kinsmen.[4]
[Footnote 4: It may be added that the ancestral home of the Longfellows
is still standing in Byfield, about five miles distant from the Whittier
homestead in Haverhill. (See the author's Life of Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow, p. 15.)]
Another English Greenleaf--contemporary with Edmund, being a silk-dyer
as well as he, and in all probability a near kinsman--was a lieutenant
under Oliver Cromwell, and served also under Richard Cromwell, and was
in the army of the Protector under General Monk, at the time of the
restoration of Charles II.
It is hardly necessary to call the reader's attention to the significant
fact, elicited by the foregoing researches, that, in tracing down two
hereditary lines of the poet's paternal ancestors, we discover that for
many generations those ancestors suffered religious persecution for
loyalty to their religious convictions, and that many of them were
remarkable for their sensitive piety.
* * * * *
Turn we now to the maternal ancestry of Whittier.
In 1873 the poet wrote to Mr. D. B. Whittier, of Boston, as follows:--
"My mother was a descendant of Christopher Hussey, of Hampton, N.
H., who married a daughter of Rev. Stephen Bachelor, the first
minister of that town.
"Daniel Webster traces his ancestry to the same pair, so Joshua
Coffin informed me. Colonel W. B. Greene, of Boston, is of the same
family."[5]
[Footnote 5: The name of Daniel Webster's paternal grandmother was
Susannah Bachelor, or Batchelder.]
In the light of the preceding note, the following letter of Col. W. B.
Greene explains itself:--
"JAMAICA PLAIN, MASS., Sept. 24, 1873.
"Mr. D. B. WHITTIER, Danville, Vt.
"DEAR SIR,--Yours of September 20 is just received, and I reply to
it at once. My grandfather, on my mother's side, was the Rev.
William Batchelder, of Haverhill, Mass. In the year 1838 I had a
conversation, on a matter of military business, with the Hon.
Daniel Webster; and, to my astonishment, Mr. Webster treated me as
a kinsman. My mother afterwards explained his conduct by telling me
that one of Mr. W.'s female ancestors was a Batchelder. In 1838 or
1839, or thereabouts, I met schoolmaster [Joshua] Coffin on a
Mississippi steamboat, near Baton Rouge. The captain of the boat
told me, confidentially, that Coffin was engaged in a dangerous
mission respecting some slaves, and inquired whether my aid and
countenance could be counted on in favor of Coffin, in case
violence should be offered him. This he did because I was on the
boat as a military man, and in uniform. When Coffin found he could
count on me, he came and talked with me, and finally told me he had
[once] been hired by Daniel Webster _to go to Ipswich_, and there
look up Mr. W.'s ancestry. He spoke of Rev. Stephen Batchelder, of
New Hampshire, and said that Daniel Webster, John G. Whittier, and
myself were related by Batchelder blood. I did not feel at all
ashamed of my relatives. In 1841 or 1842 Mrs. Crosby, of Hallowell,
Me., who had charge of my grandfather when he was a boy, and knew
all about the family, told me that Daniel Webster was a Batchelder,
that she had known his father intimately, and knew Daniel when he
was a boy. At the time of my conversation with her, Aunt Crosby
might have been anywhere from seventy-five to eighty-five years of
age. When I was a boy, at (say) about the year 1827 or 1828, I used
to go often to the house of J. G. Whittier's father, a little out
of the village (now city) of Haverhill, Mass. There was a Mrs.
Hussey in the family, who baked the best squash pies I ever ate,
and knew how to make the pine floors shine like a looking-glass.
"This is, I think, all the information, in answer to your request,
that I am competent to give you.
"Yours respectfully,
"WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE."
In a note addressed to the New England Historical and Genealogical
Society, the poet says: "On my mother's side my grandfather was Joseph
Hussey, of Somersworth, N. H.; married Mercy Evans, of Berwick, Me."
Some of the genealogical links connecting the Husseys of Somersworth
with those of Hampton have not yet been recovered. But this much is
known of the family,[6] that in 1630 Christopher Hussey came from
Dorking, Surrey, England, to Lynn, Mass. He had married, in Holland,
Theodate, the daughter of the Rev. Stephen Bachiler, a Puritan minister,
who had fled to that country to avoid persecution in England. The author
was told by a local antiquary in Hampton, N. H., that there is a
tradition in the town that Stephen Bachiler would not let his daughter
marry young Hussey unless he embraced the Puritan faith. His love was so
great that he consented, and came with his bride to America, where two
years later his father-in-law followed him. Stephen Bachiler came to
Lynn in 1632, with six persons, his relatives and friends, who had
belonged to his church in Holland, and with them he established a
little independent church in Lynn. The progenitive faculty of this
worthy divine must have been highly developed: he was married four
times, and was dismissed from his church at Lynn on account of charges
twice preferred against him by women of his congregation. The recorded
dates show that both he and his son-in-law, Hussey, came to Hampton in
the year 1639. The Hampton authorities had the previous year made Mr.
Bachiler and Mr. Hussey each a grant of three hundred acres of land, to
induce them to settle there. When and how the Husseys became Quakers is
not known to the author. But in Savage's Genealogical Dictionary, II.
507, it is recorded that as early as 1688 a certain John Hussey of
Hampton was a preacher to the Quakers in Newcastle, Del. The mother of
the poet was a devoted disciple of the Society of Friends. That she was
a person of deep and tender religious nature is evident to one looking
at the excellent oil-portrait of her which hangs in the little parlor at
Amesbury. The head is inclined graciously to one side, and the face
wears that expression of ineffable tranquillity which is always a
witness to generations of Quaker ancestry. In the picture, her garments
are of smooth and immaculate drab. The poet once remarked to the writer
that one of the reasons why his mother removed to Amesbury, in 1840, was
that she might be near the little Friends' "Meeting" in that town.
[Footnote 6: See histories of Lynn and Newbury, _passim_.]
Thus among the maternal as well as the paternal progenitors of our
Quaker poet we find the religious nature predominant.
CHAPTER II.
THE VALLEY OF THE MERRIMACK.
In the valley of the Merrimack John Greenleaf Whittier was born
(December 17, 1807), and in the same region he has passed nearly his
entire life, first in the town of Haverhill, and then in Amesbury, some
nine miles distant. To strangers, the hilly old county of Essex wears a
somewhat bleak and Scotian look; but it is fertile in poetical
resources, and the tillers of its glebe are passionately attached to its
blue hills and sunken dales, its silver rivers and winding roads,
umbrageous towns and thrifty homes. Like Burns and Cowper, Whittier is
distinctively a rustic poet, and he and Whitman are the most indigenous
and patriotic of our singers. His idyllic poetry savors of the soil and
is full of local allusions. It is, therefore, essential to the full
enjoyment of his writings that one should get, at the outset, as vivid
an idea as possible both of the Essex landscape and the Essex farmer.
Whittier was born some three miles northeast of what is now the thriving
little city of Haverhill. It was settled in 1640 by twelve men from
Newbury and Ipswich. Its Indian name was Pentucket,--the appellation of
a tribe once dwelling on its site, a tribe under the jurisdiction of
Passaconaway, chief of the Pennacooks. The city is built partly on the
river-terrace of the northern shore, and partly on the adjoining hills.
It is celebrated in colonial history for the heroic exploit of Hannah
Duston, who, when taken captive by a party of twenty savages at the time
of the Haverhill massacre, killed and scalped them all, with the aid of
her companion (also a woman), and returned in safety to the settlement.
A handsome monument has recently been erected to her memory in the city
square; it is a granite structure, with bronze bas-reliefs, and
surmounted by a bronze statue of the heroine. In the public library of
the city (founded in 1873) may be seen a fine bust of Whittier, by
Powers. On February 17 and 18, 1882, almost the entire business portion
of the city was destroyed by fire; eight acres were burned over, and
$2,000,000 worth of property destroyed. Haverhill is eighteen miles east
of Lowell, thirty-two miles northwest of Boston, and six miles northeast
of Lawrence. The manufacture of boots and shoes gives employment to
6,000 men. The population in 1870 was 13,092.
Down to the sea, some seventeen miles away, winds the beautiful
Merrimack, with the deep-shaded old town of Newburyport seated at its
mouth. A little more than half way down lies Amesbury, just where the
winding Powwow joins the Merrimack, but not before its nixies and
river-horses have been compelled to put their shoulders to the wheels of
several huge cotton mills that lift their forbidding bulk out of the
very centre of the village. A horse-railroad connects Amesbury with
Newburyport, six miles distant. At about half that distance the road
crosses the Merrimack by way of Deer Island and connecting bridges. The
sole house on this wild, rough island is the home of the Spoffords.
As you near Newburyport, coming down from Amesbury, you see the river
widened into an estuary, and bordered by wide and intensely green
salt-meadows. Numerous large vessels lie at the wharves, a "gundelow,"
with lateen sail, creeps slowly down the current; the draw of the
railroad bridge is perhaps opening for the passage of a tug, and out at
sea athwart the river's mouth--
"Long and low, with dwarf trees crowned,
Plum Island lies, like a whale aground,
A stone's toss over the narrow sound."
_Prophecy of Samuel Sewall._
Far off to the left lie Salisbury and Hampton beaches, celebrated by
Whittier in his poems "Hampton Beach," "Snow-Bound," and "The Tent on
the Beach":--
"Where Salisbury's level marshes spread
Mile-wide as flies the laden bee;
Where merry mowers, hale and strong,
Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along
The low green prairies of the sea."
_Snow-Bound._
Standing on the sand-ridge by the beach, you have before you the washing
surf, and miles on miles of level sand, rimmed with creeping, silver
water-lace, overhung here and there by thinnest powdery mist. Out at
sea the waves are tossing their salt-threaded manes, or flinging the
sunlight from their supple coats--(aeonian roar; white-haired, demoniac
shapes)--while at evening you see far away to the northeast the
revolving light of the Isles of Shoals.
"Quail and sandpiper and swallow and sparrow are here;
Sweet sound their manifold notes, high and low, far and near;
Chorus of musical waters, the rush of the breeze,
Steady and strong from the south,--what glad voices are these!"
So sings the poet of the Isles of Shoals, Celia Thaxter, who, it is
said, was discovered and introduced to the world by Whittier,--her rocky
home being still one of his favorite summer resorts.
Landward, your gaze sweeps the beautiful salt-meadows and rests on the
woods beyond, or reaches still farther to the steeples of Newburyport
rising sculpturesquely in the pellucid atmosphere, and often at evening
filling the air with faint silver hymns that chime with the liquid
undertone of the pouring surf.
The valley of the Merrimack with the surrounding region, is, or was
until recently, full of legends of the marvellous and the supernatural,
which, in this remote and isolated corner of the State, have come down
in unbroken tradition from earlier times. One of the distinguishing
peculiarities of Whittier's genius is his story-telling power, and since
he has not only written many poems about the legends of his native
province, but also published in his youth two small collections of those
legends in prose form, it will be proper to give the reader a taste of
them, both here and elsewhere in the volume, and thus assist him to an
understanding of our poet's early environment.
The following extracts from his "Supernaturalism of New England,"
published in the year 1847, are germane to the subject in hand:--
"One of my earliest recollections," he says, "is that of an old
woman residing at Rocks Village, in Haverhill, about two miles from
the place of my nativity, who for many years had borne the
unenviable reputation of a witch. She certainly had the look of
one,--a combination of form, voice, and features, which would have
made the fortune of an English witch-finder in the days of Matthew
Paris or the Sir John Podgers of Dickens, and insured her speedy
conviction in King James' High Court of Justiciary. She was accused
of divers ill-doings, such as preventing the cream in her
neighbor's churn from becoming butter, and snuffing out candles at
huskings and quilting parties. The poor old woman was at length so
sadly annoyed by her unfortunate reputation, that she took the
trouble to go before a Justice of the Peace, and made a solemn oath
that she was a Christian woman and no witch."
* * * * *
"Some forty years ago, on the banks of the pleasant little creek
separating Berwick, in Maine, from Somersworth, in New Hampshire,
within sight of my mother's home, dwelt a plain, sedate member of
the Society of Friends, named Bantum. He passed, throughout a
circle of several miles, as a conjurer and skilful adept in the art
of magic. To him resorted farmers who had lost their cattle,
matrons whose household gear, silver spoons, and table-linen had
been stolen, and young maidens whose lovers were absent; and the
quiet, meek-spirited old man received them all kindly, put on his
huge, iron-rimmed spectacles, opened his 'conjuring book,' which my
mother describes as a large clasped volume, in strange language and
black-letter type, and after due reflection and consideration gave
the required answers without money and without price. The curious
old volume is still in possession of the conjurer's family.
Apparently inconsistent as was this practice of the Black Art with
the simplicity and truthfulness of his religious profession, I have
not been able to learn that he was ever subjected to censure on
account of it."
This incident reminds one of some verses in a poem of Whittier's
entitled "Flowers in Winter":--
"A wizard of the Merrimack--
So old ancestral legends say--
Could call green leaf and blossom back
To frosted stem and spray.
The dry logs of the cottage wall,
Beneath his touch, put out their leaves;
The clay-bound swallow, at his call,
Played round the icy eaves.
The settler saw his oaken flail
Take bud, and bloom before his eyes;
From frozen pools he saw the pale,
Sweet summer lilies rise.
* * * * *
The beechen platter sprouted wild,
The pipkin wore its old-time green;
The cradle o'er the sleeping child
Became a leafy screen."
In chapter second of the "Supernaturalism" we have a whimsical story
about a certain "Aunt Morse," who lived in a town adjoining Amesbury:--
"After the death of Aunt Morse no will was found, though it was
understood before her decease that such a document was in the hands
of Squire S., one of her neighbors. One cold winter evening, some
weeks after her departure, Squire S. sat in his parlor, looking
over his papers, when, hearing some one cough in a familiar way, he
looked up, and saw before him a little crooked old woman, in an
oil-nut colored woollen frock, blue and white tow and linen apron,
and striped blanket, leaning her sharp, pinched face on one hand,
while the other supported a short black tobacco pipe, at which she
was puffing in the most vehement and spiteful manner conceivable.
"The squire was a man of some nerve; but his first thought was to
attempt an escape, from which he was deterred only by the
consideration that any effort to that effect would necessarily
bring him nearer to his unwelcome visitor.
"'Aunt Morse,' he said at length, 'for the Lord's sake, get right
back to the burying-ground! What on earth are you here for?'
"The apparition took her pipe deliberately from her mouth, and
informed him that she came to see justice done with her will; and
that nobody need think of cheating her, dead or alive. Concluding
her remark with a shrill emphasis, she replaced her pipe, and
puffed away with renewed vigor. Upon the squire's promising to obey
her request, she refilled her pipe, which she asked him to light,
and then took her departure."
"Elderly people in this region," says our author, "yet tell
marvellous stories of General M., of Hampton, N. H., especially of
his league with the devil, who used to visit him occasionally in
the shape of a small man in a leathern dress. The general's house
was once burned, in revenge, as it is said, by the fiend, whom the
former had outwitted. He had agreed, it seems, to furnish the
general with a boot full of gold and silver poured annually down
the chimney. The shrewd Yankee cut off, on one occasion, the foot
of the boot, and the devil kept pouring down the coin from the
chimney's top, in a vain attempt to fill it, until the room was
literally packed with the precious metal. When the general died, he
was laid out, and put in a coffin, as usual; but, on the day of the
funeral, it was whispered about that his body was missing; and the
neighbors came to the charitable conclusion that the enemy had got
his own at last."
It should be understood that the state of society which produced such
superstitions and legends as the foregoing lingers now only in secluded
corners of New England. The railroad, the newspaper, and the influx of
foreign population, have combined to frighten away ghost, conjurer, and
witch, or to drive them up into the mountainous districts. There are
still plenty of quaint and picturesque old Puritan farmers; and their
mythology is antique and rusty enough, to be sure. But the folk-lore of
the early days,--where is it? Let the shriek of the steam-demon answer,
or that powerful magician, the "Spirit of the Age," who, ten thousand
times divided, and slyly hidden in plethoric leathern mail bags, daily
rushes into the remotest nooks and corners of the land, there to enter
into the nooks and corners of the mind of man. The "Spirit of the Age"
has exorcised the spirits of the ingle and the forest.
CHAPTER III.
BOYHOOD.
The birthplace and early home of Whittier is a lonely farm-house
situated at a distance of three miles northeast of the city of
Haverhill, Mass. The winding road leading to it is the one described in
"Snow-Bound." A drive or a walk of one mile brings you to sweet Kenoza
Lake, with the castellated stone residence of Dr. J. R. Nichols crowning
the summit of the high hill that overlooks it. From the hill the eye
sweeps the horizon in every direction to a distance of fifty or a
hundred miles. Far to the northwest rise bluely the three peaks of
Monadnock. Nearer at hand, in the same direction, the towns of Atkinson
and Strafford whiten the hillsides, while southward, through a clove in
the hills, one catches a glimpse of the smoky city of Lawrence.
[Illustration: WHITTIER'S BIRTHPLACE, NEAR HAVERHILL, MASS.]
Two other lakes besides Kenoza lie in the immediate vicinity: namely,
Round Lake and Lake Saltonstall. Kenoza is the lake in which Whittier
used to fish and boat. It was he who gave to it its present name
(meaning pickerel): he wrote a very pretty poem for the day of the
rechristening, in 1859. The lake lies in a bowl-shaped depression. The
country thereabouts seems entirely made up of huge earth-bowls, here
open to the sky, and there turned bottom-upwards to make hills.
No prettier, quieter, lovelier lake than Kenoza exists,--a pure and
spotless mirror, reflecting in its cool, translucent depths the rosy
clouds of morning and of evening, the silver-azure tent of day, the
gliding boat, the green meadow-grasses, and the massy foliage of the
terraced pines and cedars that sweep upward from its waters in stately
pomp, rank over rank, to meet the sky. Here, in one quarter of the lake,
the surface is only wrinkled by the tiniest wavelets or crinkles;
yonder, near another portion of its irregularly picturesque shore, a
thousand white sun-butterflies seem dancing on the surface, and the
loveliest wind-dapples curve and gleam. Along the shore are sweet wild
roses interpleached, and flower-de-luce, and yellow water-lilies. In
such a circular earth-bowl the faintest sounds are easily heard across
the water. Far off you hear the cheery cackle of a hen; in the meadows
the singing of insects, the chattering of blackbirds, and the cry of the
peewee; and the ring of the woodman's axe floats in rippling echoes over
the water.
In one of his earlier essays Mr. Whittier tells the following romantic
story: "Whoever has seen Great Pond, in the East Parish of Haverhill,
has seen one of the very loveliest of the thousand little lakes or ponds
of New England. With its soft slopes of greenest verdure--its white and
sparkling sand-rim--its southern hem of pine and maple, mirrored with
spray and leaf in the glassy water--its graceful hill-sentinels round
about, white with the orchard-bloom of spring, or tasselled with the
corn of autumn--its long sweep of blue waters, broken here and there by
picturesque headlands,--it would seem a spot, of all others, where
spirits of evil must shrink, rebuked and abashed, from the presence of
the beautiful. Yet here, too, has the shadow of the supernatural
fallen. A lady of my acquaintance, a staid, unimaginative church-member,
states that a few years ago she was standing in the angle formed by two
roads, one of which traverses the pond-shore, the other leading over the
hill which rises abruptly from the water. It was a warm summer evening,
just at sunset. She was startled by the appearance of a horse and cart
of the kind used a century ago in New England, driving rapidly down the
steep hillside, and crossing the wall a few yards before her, without
noise or displacing of a stone. The driver sat sternly erect, with a
fierce countenance; grasping the reins tightly, and looking neither to
the right nor the left. Behind the cart, and apparently lashed to it,
was a woman of gigantic size, her countenance convulsed with a blended
expression of rage and agony, writhing and struggling, like Laocoon in
the folds of the serpent." The mysterious cart moved across the street,
and disappeared at the margin of the pond.
The two miles of road that separate Kenoza from the old Whittier
homestead form a lonely stretch, passing between high hills rolled back
on either side in wolds that show against the sky. The homestead is
situated at the junction of the main road to Amesbury and a cross-road
to Plaistow. It is as wild and lonely a place as Craigen-puttock,--the
hills shutting down all around, so that there is absolutely no prospect
in any direction, and no other house visible. But so much the better for
meditation. "The Children of the Light" need only their own souls to
commune with. The expression that rose continually to the author's lips
on visiting this place was a line from "Snow-Bound,"--
"A universe of sky and snow."
Not that the time was winter, but that the locality explained the line
so vividly,--better than any commentary could do. Locality exercises a
great influence on a poet's genius. Whitman, for example, has always
lived by the sea, and he is the poet of the infinite. Whittier was born,
and passed his boyhood and youth, in a green, sunken pocket of the
inland hills, and he became the poet of the heart and the home. The one
poet wrestled with the waves of the sea and the waves of humanity in
great cities; the other lived the simple, quiet life of a farmer, loving
his mother, his sister, his Quaker sect, freedom, and his own hearth.
Both are as lowly in origin as Carlyle or Burns.
Between the front door of the old homestead and the road rises a grassy,
wooded bank, at the foot of which flows a little amber-colored brook.
The brook is mentioned in "Snow-Bound":--
"We minded that the sharpest ear
The buried brooklet could not hear,
The music of whose liquid lip
Had been to us companionship,
And, in our lonely life, had grown
To have an almost human tone."
Across the road is the barn. The house is very plain, and not very
large. Entering the front door you are in a small entry with a steep,
quaint, little staircase. On the right is the parlor where Whittier
wrote. In the tiny, low-studded room on the left, he was born, and in
the same room his father and "Uncle Moses" died. The room is about
fourteen by fourteen feet, is partly wainscoted, has a fireplace and
three windows.
All the windows in the house have small panes, nine in the upper and six
in the lower sash. The building is supposed to be two hundred and twelve
years old. The kitchen is, of course, the great attraction. Let us
suppose that it is winter, and that we are all cosily seated around the
blazing fireplace. Now, let us talk over together the old days and
scenes. The best picture of the inner life of the Quaker farmer's family
can of course be had in "Snow-Bound,"--a little idyl as delicate,
spontaneous, and true to nature in its limnings as a minute
frost-picture on a pane of glass, or the fairy landscape richly mirrored
in the film of a water-bubble. After such a picture, painted by the poet
himself, it only remains for the writer to give a few supplementary
touches here and there. The old kitchen, although diminished in size by
a dividing partition, is otherwise almost unchanged. It is a cosey old
room, with its fireplace, and huge breadth of chimney with inset
cupboards and oven and mantelpiece. Above the mantel is the nail where
hung the old bull's-eye watch. Set into one side of the kitchen is the
cupboard where the pewter plates and platters were ranged; and here upon
the wall is the circle worn by the "old brass warming-pan, which
formerly shone like a setting moon against the wall of the kitchen":--
"Shut in from all the world without,
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north-wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat;
And ever, when a louder blast
Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
The merrier up its roaring draught
The great throat of the chimney laughed,
The house-dog on his paws outspread,
Laid to the fire his drowsy head,
The cat's dark silhouette on the wall
A couchant tiger's seemed to fall;
And, for the winter fireside meet,
Between the andirons' straddling feet,
The mug of cider simmered slow,
The apples sputtered in a row,
And, close at hand, the basket stood
With nuts from brown October's wood."
_Snow-Bound._
John Whittier, the father of the poet, is described by citizens of
Haverhill as being a rough but good, kind-hearted man. He went by the
soubriquet of "Quaker Whycher." In "Snow-Bound," we learn something of
his _Wanderjahre_,--how he ate moose and samp in trapper's hut and
Indian camp on Memphremagog's wooded side, and danced beneath St.
Francois' hemlock-trees, and ate chowder and hake-broil at the Isle of
Shoals. He was a sturdy, decisive man, and deeply religious. Although
there was no Friends' church in Haverhill, yet on "First-Days" Quaker
Whycher's "one-hoss shay" could be seen wending toward the old brown
meeting-house in Amesbury, six miles away.
* * * * *
[Illustration: KITCHEN IN THE WHITTIER HOMESTEAD, HAVERHILL.
"_Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free._"--SNOW-BOUND.]
The mother has been alluded to in Chapter I. p. 12. Hers was a deeply
emotional and religious nature, pure, chastened, and sweet, lovable, and
kind-hearted to a fault. In "Snow-Bound," she tells incidents of her
girlhood in Somersworth on the Piscataqua, and retells stories from
Quaker Sewell's "ancient tome," and old sea-saint Chalkley's Journal. An
incident in Mr. Whittier's "Yankee Gypsies" (Prose Works, II. p. 326,)
will afford an indication of her kind-heartedness:--
"On one occasion," says the poet, "a few years ago, on my return
from the field at evening, I was told that a foreigner had asked
for lodgings during the night, but that, influenced by his dark,
repulsive appearance, my mother had very reluctantly refused his
request. I found her by no means satisfied with her decision. 'What
if a son of mine was in a strange land?' she inquired,
self-reproachfully. Greatly to her relief, I volunteered to go in
pursuit of the wanderer, and, taking a cross-path over the fields,
soon overtook him. He had just been rejected at the house of our
nearest neighbor, and was standing in a state of dubious perplexity
in the street. His looks quite justified my mother's suspicions. He
was an olive-complexioned, black-bearded Italian, with an eye like
a live coal, such a face as perchance looks out on the traveller in
the passes of the Abruzzi,--one of those bandit-visages which
Salvator has painted. With some difficulty, I gave him to
understand my errand, when he overwhelmed me with thanks, and
joyfully followed me back. He took his seat with us at the
supper-table; and when we were all gathered around the hearth that
cold autumnal evening, he told us, partly by words, and partly by
gestures, the story of his life and misfortunes, amused us with
descriptions of the grape-gatherings and festivals of his sunny
clime, edified my mother with a recipe for making bread of
chestnuts; and in the morning when, after breakfast, his dark
sullen face lighted up and his fierce eye moistened with grateful
emotion as in his own silvery Tuscan accent he poured out his
thanks, we marvelled at the fears which had so nearly closed our
doors against him; and, as he departed, we all felt that he had
left with us the blessing of the poor.
"It was not often that, as in the above instance, my mother's
prudence got the better of her charity. The regular 'old
stragglers' regarded her as an unfailing friend; and the sight of
her plain cap was to them an assurance of forthcoming creature
comforts."
In "Snow-Bound," too, we learn that the good mother often stayed her
step to express a warm word of gratitude for their own comforts, and to
hope that the unfortunate might be cared for also. It is a facetious
saying in Philadelphia that beggars are shipped to that city from all
parts of the country that they may share the never-failing bounty of the
Quakers. However this may be, it is evident that benevolence was the
predominant trait in the character of our poet's mother.
* * * * *
Other members of the household in Whittier's boyhood were his elder
sister Mary, who died in 1861; Uncle Moses Whittier, who in 1824
received fatal injuries from the falling of a tree which he was cutting
down; the poet's younger brother Matthew, who was born in 1812, and has
been for many years a resident of Boston,--himself a versifier, and a
contributor to the newspapers of humorous dialect articles, signed
"Ethan Spike, from Hornby"; and finally the aunt, Mercy E. Hussey, the
younger sister Elizabeth, and occasionally the "half-welcome" eccentric
guest, Harriet Livermore.
Elizabeth Hussey Whittier--the younger sister and intimate literary
companion of her brother, the poet--was a person of rare and saintly
nature. In the little parlor of the Amesbury home there hangs a crayon
sketch of her. The face wears a smile of unfailing sweetness and
patience. That her literary and poetical accomplishments were of an
unusually high order is shown by the poems of hers appended to Mr.
Whittier's "Hazel Blossoms," published after her death. Her poem, "Dr.
Kane in Cuba," would do honor to any poet. In the piece entitled the
"Wedding Veil," we have a hint of an early love transformed by the death
of its object into a spiritual worship and hope, nourished in the still
fane of the heart. In the prefatory note to "Hazel Blossoms," Mr.
Whittier says: "I have ventured, in compliance with the desire of dear
friends of my beloved sister, Elizabeth H. Whittier, to add to this
little volume the few poetical pieces which she left behind her. As she
was very distrustful of her own powers, and altogether without ambition
for literary distinction, she shunned everything like publicity, and
found far greater happiness in generous appreciation of the gifts of her
friends than in the cultivation of her own. Yet it has always seemed to
me that, had her health, sense of duty and fitness, and her extreme
self-distrust permitted, she might have taken a high place among lyrical
singers. These poems, with perhaps two or three exceptions, afford but
slight indications of the inward life of the writer, who had an almost
morbid dread of spiritual and intellectual egotism, or of her tenderness
of sympathy, chastened mirthfulness, and pleasant play of thought and
fancy, when her shy, beautiful soul opened like a flower in the warmth
of social communion. In the lines on Dr. Kane, her friends will see
something of her fine individuality,--the rare mingling of delicacy and
intensity of feeling which made her dear to them. This little poem
reached Cuba while the great explorer lay on his death-bed, and we are
told that he listened with grateful tears while it was read to him by
his mother.
"I am tempted to say more, but I write as under the eye of her who,
while with us, shrank with painful deprecation from the praise or
mention of performances which seemed so far below her ideal of
excellence. To those who best knew her, the beloved circle of her
intimate friends, I dedicate this slight memorial."
Many readers of "Snow-Bound" have doubtless often wondered who the
beautiful and mysterious young woman is who is sketched in such vigorous
portraiture,--"the not unfeared, half-welcome guest," half saint and
half shrew. She is no other than the religious enthusiast and fanatical
"pilgrim preacher," Harriet Livermore,[7] the same who startled
"On her desert throne
The crazy Queen of Lebanon
With claims fantastic as her own."
[Footnote 7: For many items of information concerning this strange woman
we are indebted to the sketch of her published by Miss Rebecca I. Davis,
of East Haverhill.]
By the "Queen of Lebanon" is meant Lady Hester Stanhope. Harriet
Livermore was the grand-daughter of Hon. Samuel Livermore, of
Portsmouth, N. H., and the daughter of Hon. Edward St. Loe Livermore, of
Lowell. She was born April 14, 1788, at Concord, N. H. Her misfortune
was her temper, inherited from her father. When Whittier was a little
boy, she taught needlework, embroidery, and the common school branches,
in the little old brown school-house in East Haverhill, and was a
frequent guest at Farmer Whittier's. The poet thus characterizes her:--
"A certain pard-like, treacherous grace
Swayed the lithe limbs and dropped the lash,
Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash;
And under low brows, black with night,
Rayed out at times a dangerous light;
The sharp heat-lightnings of her face
Presaging ill to him whom Fate
Condemned to share her love or hate.
A woman tropical, intense
In thought and act, in soul and sense."
When a mere girl, she fell in love with a young gentleman of East
Haverhill, but the parents of both families opposed the match, and were
not to be moved by her honeyed words of persuasion or by her little
gifts. The poet says she often visited at his father's home, "and had at
one time an idea of becoming a member of the Society of Friends; but an
unlucky outburst of rage, resulting in a blow, at a Friend's house in
Amesbury, did not encourage us to seek her membership." She embraced the
Methodist Perfectionist doctrine, and one day strenuously maintained
that she was incapable of sinning. But a few minutes afterward she
burst out into a violent passion about something or other. Her opponent
could only say to her, "Christian, thou hast lost thy roll." She became
an itinerant preacher, and spoke in the meetings of various sects in
different parts of the country. She made three voyages to Jerusalem.
Says one: "At one time we find her in Egypt, giving our late consul, Mr.
Thayer, a world of trouble from her peculiar notions. At another we see
her amid the gray olive slopes of Jerusalem, demanding, not begging,
money for the Great King [God]. And once when an American, fresh from
home, during the late rebellion, offered her a handful of greenbacks,
she threw them away with disdain, saying, 'The Great King will only have
gold.' She once climbed the sides of Mt. Libanus, and visited Lady
Stanhope,--that eccentric sister of the younger Pitt, who married a
sheik of the mountains,--and thus had a fine opportunity of securing the
finest steeds of the Orient. Going to the stable one day, Lady Hester
pointed out to Harriet Livermore two very fine horses, with peculiar
marks, but differing in color. 'That one,' said Lady Hester, 'the Great
King when he comes will ride, and the other I will ride in company with
him.' Thereupon Miss Livermore gave a most emphatic 'no!' declaring with
foreknowledge and _aplomb_ that 'the Great King will ride this horse,
and it is I, as his bride, who will ride upon the other at his second
coming.' It is said she carried her point with Lady Hester, overpowering
her with her fluency and assertion."
* * * * *
To pass now to the boy-poet himself. An old friend and schoolmate of
his, in Haverhill, told the author that Whittier, instead of doing sums
on his slate at school, was always writing verses, even when a little
lad. His first schoolmaster was Joshua Coffin, afterward the historian
of Newbury. Another master of his was named Emerson. To Coffin, Whittier
has written a poetical epistle, in which he says:--
"I, the urchin unto whom,
In that smoked and dingy room,
Where the district gave thee rule
O'er its ragged winter school,
Thou didst teach the mysteries
Of those weary A, B, C's, Where,
to fill the every pause
Of thy wise and learned saws,
Through the cracked and crazy wall
Came the cradle-rock and squall,
And the goodman's voice, at strife
With his shrill and tipsy wife,--
Luring us by stories old,
With a comic unction told,
More than by the eloquence
Of terse birchen arguments
(Doubtful gain, I fear), to look
With complacence on a book!--
I,--the man of middle years,
In whose sable locks appears
Many a warning fleck of gray,--
Looking back to that far day,
And thy primal lessons, feel
Grateful smiles my lips unseal," etc.
[Illustration: THE OLD SCHOOLHOUSE, HAVERHILL, MASS.]
In "School Days" he gives us another and a pleasanter picture:--
"Still sits the school-house by the road,[8]
A ragged beggar sunning;
Around it still the sumachs grow,
And blackberry-vines are running.
Within, the master's desk is seen,
Deep scarred by raps official;
The warping floor, the battered seats,
The jack-knife's carved initial;
The charcoal frescos on its wall;
Its door's worn sill, betraying
The feet that, creeping slow to school
Went storming out to playing!
Long years ago a winter sun
Shone over it at setting;
Lit up its western window-panes,
And low eaves' icy fretting.
It touched the tangled golden curls,
And brown eyes full of grieving,
Of one who still her steps delayed
When all the school were leaving.
For near her stood the little boy
Her childish favor singled;
His cap pulled low upon a face
Where pride and shame were mingled.
Pushing with restless feet the snow
To right and left, he lingered;--
As restlessly her tiny hands
The blue-checked apron fingered.
He saw her lift her eyes; he felt
The soft hand's light caressing,
And heard the tremble of her voice,
As if a fault confessing.
'I'm sorry that I spelt the word:
I hate to go above you,
Because,'--the brown eyes lower fell,--
'Because, you see, I love you!'"
[Footnote 8: The old brown school-house is now no more, having been
removed to make room for a reservoir.]
It is probable that "My Playmate" is in memory of this same sweet little
lady:--
"O playmate in the golden time!
Our mossy seat is green,
Its fringing violets blossom yet,
The old trees o'er it lean.
The winds so sweet with birch and fern
A sweeter memory blow;
And there in spring the veeries sing
The song of long ago.
And still the pines of Ramoth Wood
Are moaning like the sea,--
The moaning of the sea of change
Between myself and thee!"
Elsewhere in the poem we are told that the little maiden went away
forever to the South:--
"She lives where all the golden year
Her summer roses blow;
The dusky children of the sun
Before her come and go.
There haply with her jewelled hands
She smooths her silken gown,--
No more the homespun lap wherein
I shook the walnuts down."
We also learn from the poem that he was the boy "who fed her father's
kine." What a pretty little romance!--and, let us hope, not too sad a
one. Shall we have one more stanza about this lovely little school-idyl?
It is from "Memories":--
"I hear again thy low replies,
I feel thy aim within my own,
And timidly again uprise
The fringed lids of hazel eyes,
With soft brown tresses overblown.
Ah! memories of sweet summer eves,
Of moonlit wave and willowy way,
Of stars and flowers, and dewy leaves,
And smiles and tones more dear than they!"
The reading material that found its way to Farmer Whittier's house
consisted of the almanac, the weekly village paper, and "scarce a score"
of books and pamphlets, among them Lindley Murray's "Reader":--
"One harmless novel, mostly hid
From younger eyes, a book forbid,
And poetry (or good or bad,
A single book was all we had),
Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted Muse,
A stranger to the heathen Nine,
Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine,
The wars of David and the Jews."
Knowing, as we do, the great influence exerted upon our mental
development by the books we read as children, and knowing that a rural
life, such as Whittier's has been, is especially conducive to tenacity
of early customs, it becomes important to know what the books were that
first formed his style and colored his thought. It seems that Ellwood's
"Davideis; or the Life of David, King of Israel," was one of these. The
book was published in 1711, and had a sale of five or more editions.
Ellwood, born in 1639, early adopted the then new doctrines of George
Fox. He has written a quaint and pictorial autobiography, somewhat like
that of Bunyan or that of Fox. In 1662 he was for six weeks reader to
Milton, who was then blind, and living in London, in Jewin Street. It
was he who first suggested to Milton that he should write "Paradise
Regained."[9]
[Footnote 9: This was in 1665, when Milton was living at Giles-Chalfont.
Ellwood says: "After some common discourse had passed between us, he
called for a manuscript of his, which he delivered to me, bidding me
take it home with me and read it at my leisure; and, when I had done so,
return it to him with my judgment thereon." It was "Paradise Lost." When
Ellwood returned it, and was asked his opinion, he gave it, and added:
"'Thou hast said much here of "Paradise Lost," but what hast thou to say
of "Paradise Found"?' He made no answer, but sat some time in a muse."]
An idea of the execrable nature of his versification may be obtained
from a few specimens. Upon the passing of a severe law against Quakers,
he relieves his mind in this wise:--
"Awake, awake, O arm o' th' Lord, awake!
Thy sword up take;
Cast what would thine forgetful of thee make,
Into the lake.
Awake, I pray, O mighty Jah! awake,
Make all the world before thy presence quake,
Not only earth, but heaven also shake."
Another poem, entitled "A Song of the Mercies and Deliverances of the
Lord," begins thus:--
"Had not the Lord been on our side,
May Israel now say,
We were not able to abide
The trials of that day:
When men did up against us rise,
With fury, rage, and spite,
Hoping to catch us by surprise,
Or run us down by night."
An opponent's poetry is lashed by Ellwood in such beautiful stanzas as
the following:--
"So _flat_, so _dull_, so _rough_, so _void of grace_,
Where _symphony_ and _cadence_ have no place;
So full of _chasmes_ stuck with _prosie pegs_,
Whereon his _tired_ Muse might rest her legs,
(Not having wings) and take new breath, that then
She might with much adoe hop on again."
A striking peculiarity of Whittier's poetry is the exceedingly small
range of his rhymes and metres. He is especially fond of the four-foot
iambic line, and likes to rhyme successive or alternate lines in a
wofully monotonous and see-saw manner. These are the characteristics of
much of the lyric poetry of a hundred years ago, and especially
distinguish the verses of Burns and Ellwood,--the first poets the boy
Whittier read. Burns, especially, he learned by heart, and there can be
no doubt that the Ayrshire ploughman gave to the mind of his
brother-ploughman of Essex its life-direction and coloring,--as respects
the swing of rhythm and rhyme at least. Indeed, we shall presently find
him contributing to the _Haverhill Gazette_ verses in the Scotch
dialect. His introduction to the poetry of Burns was in this wise: He
was one afternoon gathering in hay on the farm, when by good hap a
wandering peddler stopped and took from his pack a copy of Burns, which
was eagerly purchased by the poetical Quaker boy. Alluding to the
circumstance afterward in his poem, "Burns," he says:--
"How oft that day, with fond delay,
I sought the maple's shadow,
And sang with Burns the hours away,
Forgetful of the meadow!
Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead
I heard the squirrels leaping,
The good dog listened while I read,
And wagged his tail in keeping."
By the reading of Burns his eyes were opened, he says, to the beauty in
homely things. In familiar and humble things he found the "tender idyls
of the heart." But the wanton and the ribald lines of the Scotch poet
found no entrance to his pure mind.[10]
[Footnote 10: See Appendix II.]
He had other relishing tastes of the rich dialect of heather poetry. In
"Yankee Gypsies" he says: "One day we had a call from a 'pawky auld
carle' of a wandering Scotchman. To him I owe my first introduction to
the songs of Burns. After eating his bread and cheese and drinking his
mug of cider, he gave us Bonny Doon, Highland Mary, and Auld Lang Syne.
He had a rich full voice, and entered heartily into the spirit of his
lyrics. I have since listened to the same melodies from the lips of
Dempster (than whom the Scottish bard has had no sweeter or truer
interpreter); but the skilful performance of the artist lacked the novel
charm of the gaberlunzie's singing in the old farm-house kitchen."
* * * * *
A page or two of these personal recollections of the poet will serve to
fill out the picture of his boyhood life; and, at the same time, give
the reader a taste of his often charming prose pieces:--
"The advent of wandering beggars, or 'old stragglers,' as we were
wont to call them, was an event of no ordinary interest in the
generally monotonous quietude of our farm life. Many of them were
well known; they had their periodical revolutions and transits; we
could calculate them like eclipses or new moons. Some were sturdy
knaves, fat and saucy; and whenever they ascertained that the
'men-folks' were absent would order provisions and cider like men
who expected to pay for them, seating themselves at the hearth or
table with the air of Falstaff,--'Shall I not take mine ease in mine
own inn?' Others poor, pale, patient, like Sterne's monk, came
creeping up to the door, hat in hand, standing there in their gray
wretchedness, with a look of heart-break and forlornness which was
never without its effect on our juvenile sensibilities. At times,
however, we experienced a slight revulsion of feeling when even
these humblest children of sorrow somewhat petulantly rejected our
proffered bread and cheese, and demanded instead a glass of cider.
* * * * *
"One--I think I see him now, grim, gaunt, and ghastly, working his
way up to our door--used to gather herbs by the wayside, and call
himself doctor. He was bearded like a he-goat, and used to
counterfeit lameness, yet when he supposed himself alone would
travel on lustily, as if walking for a wager. At length, as if in
punishment for his deceit, he met with an accident in his rambles,
and became lame in earnest, hobbling ever after with difficulty on
his gnarled crutches. Another used to go stooping, like Bunyan's
pilgrim, under a pack made of an old bed-sacking, stuffed out into
most plethoric dimensions, tottering on a pair of small, meagre
legs, and peering out with his wild, hairy face from under his
burden, like a big-bodied spider. That 'man with the pack' always
inspired me with awe and reverence. Huge, almost sublime in its
tense rotundity, the father of all packs, never laid aside and never
opened, what might there not be within it! With what flesh-creeping
curiosity I used to walk round about it at a safe distance, half
expecting to see its striped covering stirred by the motions of a
mysterious life, or that some evil monster would leap out of it,
like robbers from Ali Baba's jars, or armed men from the Trojan
horse!"
* * * * *
"Twice a year, usually in the spring and autumn, we were honored
with a call from Jonathan Plummer, maker of verses, peddler and
poet, physician and parson,--a Yankee Troubadour,--first and last
minstrel of the valley of the Merrimack, encircled to my wondering
eyes with the very nimbus of immortality. He brought with him pins,
needles, tape, and cotton thread for my mother; jack-knives, razors,
and soap for my father; and verses of his own composing, coarsely
printed and illustrated with rude woodcuts, for the delectation of
the younger branches of the family. No love-sick youth could drown
himself, no deserted maiden bewail the moon, no rogue mount the
gallows, without fitting memorial in Plummer's verses. Earthquakes,
fires, fevers and shipwrecks he regarded as personal favors from
Providence, furnishing the raw material of song and ballad. Welcome
to us in our country seclusion as Autolycus to the clown in Winter's
Tale, we listened with infinite satisfaction to his readings of his
own verses, or to his ready improvisation upon some domestic
incident or topic suggested by his auditors. When once fairly over
the difficulties at the outset of a new subject, his rhymes flowed
freely, 'as if he had eaten ballads, and all men's ears grew to his
tunes.' His productions answered, as nearly as I can remember, to
Shakespeare's description of a proper ballad,--'doleful matter
merrily set down, or a very pleasant theme sung lamentably.' He was
scrupulously conscientious, devout, inclined to theological
disquisitions, and withal mighty in Scripture. He was thoroughly
independent; flattered nobody, cared for nobody, trusted nobody.
When invited to sit down at our dinner-table, he invariably took the
precaution to place his basket of valuables between his legs for
safe-keeping. 'Never mind thy basket, Jonathan,' said my father, 'we
shan't steal thy verses.' 'I'm not sure of that,' returned the
suspicious guest. 'It is written, Trust ye not in any brother.'"
* * * * *
"Thou, too, O Parson B.,--with thy pale student's brow and thy
rubicund nose, with thy rusty and tattered black coat, overswept by
white flowing locks, with thy professional white neckcloth
scrupulously preserved, when even a shirt to thy back was
problematical,--art by no means to be overlooked in the muster-roll
of vagrant gentlemen possessing the _entree_ of our farm-house. Well
do we remember with what grave and dignified courtesy he used to
step over its threshold, saluting its inmates with the same air of
gracious condescension and patronage with which in better days he
had delighted the hearts of his parishioners. Poor old man! He had
once been the admired and almost worshipped minister of the largest
church in the town, where he afterwards found support in the winter
season as a pauper. He had early fallen into intemperate habits, and
at the age of threescore and ten, when I remember him, he was only
sober when he lacked the means of being otherwise."
* * * * *
Among the books read by Whittier when a boy we must number the
"Pilgrim's Progress" of Bunyan.
In his "Supernaturalism of New England" the poet says: "How hardly
effaced are the impressions of childhood! Even at this day, at the
mention of the Evil Angel, an image rises before me like that with which
I used especially to horrify myself in an old copy of 'Pilgrim's
Progress.' Horned, hoofed, scaly, and fire-breathing, his caudal
extremity twisted tight with rage, I remember him illustrating the
tremendous encounter of Christian in the valley where 'Apollyon
straddled over the whole breadth of the way.' There was another print of
the enemy which made no slight impression upon me; it was the
frontispiece of an old, smoked, snuff-stained pamphlet (the property of
an elderly lady, who had a fine collection of similar wonders, wherewith
she was kind enough to edify her young visitors), containing a solemn
account of the fate of a wicked dancing party in New Jersey, whose
irreverent declaration that they would have a fiddler, if they had to
send to the lower regions after him, called up the fiend himself, who
forthwith commenced playing, while the company danced to the music
incessantly, without the power to suspend their exercise until their
feet and legs were worn off to the knees! The rude woodcut represented
the Demon Fiddler and his agonized companions literally _stumping_ it up
and down in 'cotillions, jigs, strathspeys, and reels.'"
* * * * *
So grew up the Quaker farmer's son, drinking eagerly in such knowledge
as he could, and receiving those impressions of nature and home-life
which he was afterward to embody in his popular lyrics and idyls. Above
all, his home education saturated his mind with religious and moral
earnestness. In the second part of this volume will be given some
remarks on Quaker life in America, and an analysis of the blended
influence of Quakerism and Puritanism upon the development of Whittier's
genius. Enough has been said to show that the surroundings of his early
life were of the plainest and simplest character, and not different from
those of a thousand other secluded New England farms of the period.
We are now to follow the shy young poet out into the world. He is
nineteen years of age. The circle of his experiences begins to widen
outward; manhood is dawning; the village paper has taught him that there
are men beyond the mountains. He thirsts for individuality,--to know his
powers, to cast the horoscope of his future, and see if the
consciousness within him of unusual gifts be a trustworthy one. To begin
with, he will write a poem for "our weekly paper." Accordingly one day
in 1826 the following poem, written in blue ink on coarse paper, was
slipped by the postman under the door of the office of the _Free Press_,
in Newburyport,--a short-lived paper, then recently started by young
William Lloyd Garrison, and subscribed for by Farmer Whittier.
The poem is the first ever published by the poet, and is his earliest
known production.[11] The manuscript of it is now in the possession of
Whittier's kinsman, Mr. S. T. Pickard, associate editor of the _Portland
Transcript_, in which journal it was republished November 27, 1880:--
THE DEITY.
The Prophet stood
On the high mount and saw the tempest-cloud
Pour the fierce whirlwind from its reservoir
Of congregated gloom. The mountain oak
Torn from the earth heaved high its roots where once
Its branches waved. The fir-tree's shapely form
Smote by the tempest lashed the mountain side;
Yet, calm in conscious purity, the seer
Beheld the awful devastation, for
The Eternal Spirit moved not in the storm.
The tempest ceased. The caverned earthquake burst
Forth from its prison, and the mountain rocked
Even to its base: The topmost crags were thrown
With fearful crashing down its shuddering slopes.
Unawed the Prophet saw and heard: He felt
Not in the earthquake moved the God of Heaven.
The murmur died away, and from the height,
Torn by the storm and shattered by the shock,
Rose far and clear a pyramid of flame,
Mighty and vast! The startled mountain deer
Shrank from its glare and cowered beneath the shade:
The wild fowl shrieked; yet even then the seer
Untrembling stood and marked the fearful glow--
For Israel's God came not within the flame.
The fiery beacon sank. A still small voice
Now caught the Prophet's ear. Its awful tone,
Unlike to human sound, at once conveyed
Deep awe and reverence to his pious heart.
Then bowed the holy man; his face he veiled
Within his mantle, and in meekness owned
The presence of his God, discovered not in
The storm, the earthquake, or the mighty flame,
But in the still small whisper to his soul.
[Footnote 11: See note on p. 301.]
It is characteristic of the man that his first poem should be of a
religious nature. There is grandeur and majesty in the poem. The
rhetoric is juvenile, but the diction is strong, nervous, and intense,
and the general impression made upon the mind is one of harmony and
solemn stateliness, not unlike that of "Thanatopsis," composed by Bryant
when he was about the same age as was Whittier when he wrote "The
Deity." It was probably owing to its anonymity that the first impulse of
the editor was to throw it into the waste-basket. But as he glanced
over the sheet his attention was caught: he read it, and some weeks
afterward published it in the poet's corner. But in the interval of
waiting the boy's heart sank within him. Every writer knows what he
suffered. Did we not all expect that first precious production of ours
to fairly set the editor wild with enthusiasm, so that nothing short of
death or apoplexy could prevent him from assigning it the most
conspicuous position in the _very next issue_ of his paper?
But one day, as our boy-poet was mending a stone fence along the
highway, in company with Uncle Moses, along came the postman on
horseback, with his leathern bag of mail, like a magician with a
Fortunatus' purse; and, to save the trouble of calling at the house, he
tossed a paper to young Whittier. He opened it with eager fingers, and
behold! his poem in the place of honor. He says that he was so
dumfounded and dazed by the event that he could not read a word, but
stood there staring at the paper until his uncle chided him for
loitering, and so recalled him to his senses. Elated by his success, he
of course sent other poems to the _Free Press_. They attracted the
attention of Garrison so strongly that he inquired of the postman who it
was that was sending him contributions from East Haverhill. The postman
said that it was a "farmer's son named Whittier." Garrison decided to
ride over on horseback, a distance of fifteen miles, and see his
contributor. When he reached the farm, Whittier was at work in the
field, and when told that there was a gentleman at the house who wanted
to see him, he felt very much like "breaking for the brush," no one
having ever called on him in that way before. However, he slipped in at
the back door, made his toilet, and met his visitor, who told him that
he had power as a writer, and urged him to improve his talents. The
father came in during the conversation, and asked young Garrison not to
put such ideas into the mind of his son, as they would only unfit him
for his home duties. But, fortunately, it was too late: the spark of
ambition had been fanned into a flame. Years afterward, in an
introduction to Oliver Johnson's "William Lloyd Garrison and his Times,"
Mr. Whittier said: "My acquaintance with him [Garrison] commenced in
boyhood. My father was a subscriber to his first paper, the _Free
Press_, and the humanitarian tone of his editorials awakened a deep
interest in our little household, which was increased by a visit he made
us. When he afterwards edited the _Journal of the Times_, at Bennington,
Vt., I ventured to write him a letter of encouragement and sympathy,
urging him to continue his labors against slavery, and assuring him that
he could do great things." Indeed, the acquaintance thus begun ripened
into the most intimate friendship and mutual respect. Mr. Whittier told
the writer that when he went to Boston, in the winter of 1828-29, he and
Garrison roomed and boarded at the same house. Mr. Whittier frequently
contributed to the _Liberator_, and was for a quarter of a century
associated with Garrison in anti-slavery labors.
* * * * *
Before we pass with our young Quaker from the farm to the world at
large, let us correct an erroneous statement that has been made about
him. It has been said that he worked at the trade of shoemaking when a
boy. The truth is that almost every farmer in those days was accustomed
to do a little cobbling of his own, and what shoemaker's work Whittier
performed was done by him solely as an amateur in his father's house.
* * * * *
In the year of his _debut_ as a poet (1826), he being then nineteen
years of age, Whittier began attending the Haverhill Academy, or Latin
School. Whether his parents were influenced to take this step for his
advantage by the visit of the editor Garrison, and by his evident taste
for learning, is not positively known, but it is quite possible that
such was the case. In 1827 he read an original ode at the dedication of
the new Academy. The building is still standing on Winter Street. While
at the Academy he read history very thoroughly, and his writings show
that it has always been a favorite study with him. He also contributed
poems at this time to the _Haverhill Gazette_. Many of them were in the
Scotch dialect: it would be interesting to see a few of these; but
unfortunately no file of the _Gazette_ for those years can be found. A
friendly rival in the writing of Scotch poems was good Robert Dinsmore,
the "Farmer Poet of Windham," as Whittier calls him. A few specimens of
Farmer Dinsmore's verse have been preserved. Take this on "The
Sparrow":--
"Poor innocent and hapless Sparrow!
Why should my moul-board gie thee sorrow?
This day thou'll chirp, and mourn the morrow
Wi' anxious breast;
The plough has turned the mould'ring furrow
Deep o'er thy nest!
Just i' the middle o' the hill
Thy nest was placed wi' curious skill,
There I espied thy little bill
Beneath the shade.
In that sweet bower, secure frae ill,
Thine eggs were laid.
Five corns o' maize had there been drappit,
An' through the stalks thy head was pappit,
The drawing nowt could na be stappit
I quickly foun',
Syne frae thy cozie nest thou happit,
Wild fluttering roun'.
The sklentin stane beguiled the sheer,
In vain I tried the plough to steer,
A wee bit stumpie i' the rear
Cam 'tween my legs,
An' to the jee-side gart me veer
An' crush thine eggs."
The following elegiac stanza, written by honest Robert on the occasion
of the death of his wife, is irresistibly ludicrous:--
"No more may I the Spring Brook trace,
No more with sorrow view the place
Where Mary's wash-tub stood;
No more may wander there alone,
And lean upon the mossy stone,
Where once she piled her wood.
'T was there she bleached her linen cloth,
By yonder bass-wood tree;
From that sweet stream she made her broth,
Her pudding and her tea."
Mr. Whittier says that the last time he saw Robert, "Threescore years
and ten," to use his own words,
'Hung o'er his back,
And bent him like a muckle pack,'
yet he still stood stoutly and sturdily in his thick shoes of cowhide,
like one accustomed to tread independently the soil of his own
acres,--his broad, honest face seamed by care and darkened by exposure
to all the 'airts that blow,' and his white hair flowing in patriarchal
glory beneath his felt hat. A genial, jovial, large-hearted old man,
simple as a child, and betraying neither in look nor manner that he was
accustomed to
'Feed on thoughts which voluntary move
Harmonious numbers.'"
CHAPTER IV.
EDITOR AND AUTHOR: FIRST VENTURES.
The winter of 1828-29 was passed by Whittier in Boston. He once with
characteristic modesty told the writer that he drifted into journalism
that winter, as editor of the _American Manufacturer_, in the following
way: He had gone to Boston to study and read. He undertook the writing
for the _Manufacturer_ not because he had much liking for questions of
tariff and finance, but because his own finances would thereby be
improved. Mr. Whittier's chief personal trait is extreme shyness and
distrust of himself, and he deprecated the idea that he had any special
power as a writer at the time of which we are speaking, saying that he
had to study up his subjects before writing. But undoubtedly he must
have wielded a vigorous pen, and been known to possess a cool and
careful head, or he would not have been invited to assume the
editorship of such a paper. He himself admitted, in the course of the
conversation, that at that time he had political ambitions, and made a
study of political economy and civil politics.
In 1830 we find Whittier at Haverhill again. In March of that year he
was occupying the position of editor of the _Essex Gazette_, and "issued
proposals to publish a 'History of Haverhill,' in one volume of two
hundred pages, duodecimo, price eighty-seven and one-half cents per
copy. 'If the material swelled the volume above two hundred pages, the
price was to be one dollar per copy.'" But the limited encouragement
offered, and the amount of work required to compile the volume, led the
young editor to abandon the project. Whittier was editor of this
_Gazette_ for six months,--from January 1 to July 10, 1830. On May 4,
1836, after he had returned from Philadelphia, he resumed the editorship
of the journal, retaining the position until December 17 of the same
year.
He left the _Gazette_ at the time of his first connection with it, to go
to Hartford for the purpose of editing the _New England Weekly Review_
of that city. His first acquaintance with this Connecticut periodical
had been made while attending the Academy at Haverhill. While there he
happened to see a copy of the _Review_, then edited by George D.
Prentice. He was pleased with its sprightly and breezy tone, and sent it
several articles. Great was his astonishment on finding that they were
accepted and published with editorial commendation. He sent numerous
other contributions during the same year.
One day in 1830, he was at work in the field, when a letter was brought
to him from the publishers of the Hartford paper, in which they said
that they had been asked by Mr. Prentice to request him to edit the
paper during the absence of Mr. Prentice in Kentucky, whither he had
gone to write a campaign life of Henry Clay. "I could not have been more
utterly astonished," said Mr. Whittier once, "if I had been told that I
was appointed prime minister to the great Khan of Tartary."
* * * * *
Mr. Whittier was at this time a member of the National Republican
party. He afterward belonged to the anti-slavery Liberty party, a
faction of the Abolitionists which had separated from the Garrison band.
In 1855 Mr. Whittier acted with the Free Democratic party. In the
conversation alluded to a moment ago, the poet laughingly remarked that
the proprietors of the paper had never seen him when he went to Hartford
in 1830 to take charge of their periodical. They were much surprised at
his youth. But at the first meeting he discreetly kept silence, letting
them do most of the talking. Here most assuredly, if never again, his
Quaker doctrine of silence stood him in good stead; since, if we may
believe him, he was most wofully deficient in a knowledge of the
intricacies of the political situation of the time.
Whittier was twenty-four years old when he published his first volume.
It is a thin little book entitled "Legends of New England" (Hartford:
Hanmer and Phelps, 1831), and is a medley of prose and verse. The style
is juvenile and extravagantly rhetorical, and the subject-matter is far
from being massive with thought. The libretto has been suppressed by
its author, and it would be ungracious as well as unjust to criticise it
at any length, or quote more than a single morsel of its verses, which
are inferior to the prose. But one may be pardoned for giving two or
three specimens of the prose stories, for they are intrinsically
interesting. In the preface we have a striking passage, which may be
commended to those who accuse Whittier of hatred of the Puritan fathers,
and undue partiality toward the Quakers. He says: "I have in many
instances alluded to the superstition and bigotry of our ancestors, the
rare and bold race who laid the foundation of this republic; but no one
can accuse me of having done injustice to their memories. A son of New
England, and proud of my birthplace, I would not willingly cast dishonor
upon its founders. My feelings in this respect have already been
expressed in language which I shall be pardoned, I trust, for
introducing in this place:--
Oh!--never may a son of thine,
Where'er his wandering steps incline,
Forget the sky which bent above
His childhood like a dream of love,
The stream beneath the green hill flowing,
The broad-armed tree above it growing,
The clear breeze through the foliage blowing;
Or hear unmoved the taunt of scorn,
Breathed o'er the brave New England born;
Or mark the stranger's jaguar hand
Disturb the ashes of thy dead--
The buried glory of a land
Whose soil with noble blood is red,
And sanctified in every part,
Nor feel resentment, like a brand,
Unsheathing from his fiery heart!"
The flow of language in these prose pieces is smooth and easy, and the
narratives are in the same vein and style as the "Twice Told Tales," or
Irving's stories, only they are very much weaker than these, and more
extravagant and melodramatic in tone. "The Midnight Attack" describes
the adventure of Captain Harmon and thirty Eastern rangers on the banks
of the Kennebec River in June, 1722. A party of sleeping Indians are
surprised by them and all shot dead by one volley of balls. An idea of
the style of the piece will be obtained from the following paragraphs.
The men are waiting for the signal of Harmon:--
"'Fire!' he at length exclaimed, as the sight of his piece
interposed full and distinct between his eye and the wild
scalp-lock of the Indian. 'Fire, and rush on!'
"The sharp voice of thirty rifles thrilled through the heart of the
forest. There was a groan--a smothered cry--a wild and convulsive
movement among the sleeping Indians; and all again was silent.
"The rangers sprang forward with their clubbed muskets and hunting
knives; but their work was done. The red men had gone to their
audit before the Great Spirit; and no sound was heard among them
save the gurgling of the hot blood from their lifeless bosoms."
It was one of the superstitions of the New England colonists that the
rattlesnake had the power of charming or fascinating human beings.
Whittier's story, "The Rattlesnake Hunter," is based upon this fact. An
old man with meagre and wasted form is represented as devoting his life
to the extermination of the reptiles among the hills and mountains of
Vermont, the inspiring motive of his action being the death of his
young and beautiful wife, many years previously, from the bite of a
rattlesnake.
"The Human Sacrifice" relates the escape of a young white girl from the
hands of the Matchit-Moodus, an Indian tribe formerly dwelling where
East Haddam now stands. The Indians are frightened from their purpose of
sacrificing the girl by a rumbling noise proceeding from a high hill
near by. In his note on the story Mr. Whittier says: "There is a story
prevalent in the neighborhood, that a man from England, a kind of
astrologer or necromancer, undertook to rid the place of the troublesome
noises. He told them that the sound proceeded from a carbuncle--a
precious gem, _growing in the bowels of the rock_. He hired an old
blacksmith shop, and worked for some time with closed doors, and at
night. All at once the necromancer departed, and the strange noises
ceased. It was supposed he had found the precious gem, and had fled with
it to his native land." This story of the carbuncle reminds us of
Hawthorne's story on the same subject.
The following remarks are prefixed to the poem, "The Unquiet Sleeper":
"Some fifty or sixty years since an inhabitant of ----, N. H., was found
dead at a little distance from his dwelling, which he left in the
morning in perfect health. There is a story prevalent among the people
of the neighborhood that, on the evening of the day on which he was
found dead, strange cries are annually heard to issue from his grave! I
have conversed with some who really supposed they had heard them in the
dead of the night, rising fearfully on the autumn wind. They represented
the sounds to be of a most appalling and unearthly nature."
"The Spectre Ship" is the versification of a legend related in Mather's
"Magnalia Christi." A ship sailed from Salem, having on board "a young
man of strange and wild appearance, and a girl still younger, and of
surpassing beauty. She was deadly pale, and trembled even while she
leaned on the arm of her companion." They were supposed by some to be
demons. The vessel was lost, and of course soon reappeared as a
spectre-ship.
Mr. Whittier's next work was the editing, in 1832, of the "Remains" of
his gifted friend, J. G. C. Brainard. Students of Whittier's poems know
that for many years the genius and writings of Brainard exercised a
potent influence on his mind. Brainard undoubtedly possessed genius. He
was at one time editor of the _Connecticut Mirror_. He died young, and
his work can be considered as hardly more than a promise of future
excellence. Whittier, in his Introduction to the "Remains," shows a nice
sense of justice, and a delicate reserve in his eulogistic estimate of
his dead brother-poet and friend. That he did not falsely attribute to
him a rare genius will be evident to those who read the following
portion of Brainard's spirited ballad of "The Black Fox":--
"'How cold, how beautiful, how bright
The cloudless heaven above us shines;
But 'tis a howling winter's night,--
'Twould freeze the very forest pines.
'The winds are up while mortals sleep;
The stars look forth while eyes are shut;
The bolted snow lies drifted deep
Around our poor and lonely hut.
'With silent step and listening ear,
With bow and arrow, dog and gun,
We'll mark his track, for his prowl we hear,
Now is our time--come on, come on.'
O'er many a fence, through many a wood,
Following the dog's bewildered scent,
In anxious haste and earnest mood,
The Indian and the white man went.
The gun is cock'd, the bow is bent,
The dog stands with uplifted paw;
And ball and arrow swift are sent,
Aim'd at the prowler's very jaw.
--The ball, to kill that fox, is run
Not in a mould by mortals made!
The arrow which that fox should shun
Was never shap'd from earthly reed!
The Indian Druids of the wood
Know where the fatal arrows grow--
They spring not by the summer flood,
They pierce not through the winter snow!"[12]
[Footnote 12: Mr. Whittier quotes this fine ballad in Vol. II. p. 243 of
his prose works, but with numerous changes of punctuation and phrase.
The differences between the poem as it there appears and as it is given
in his own edition of Brainard, published in 1832, seem to show that he
has amended the ballad and punctuated it to suit himself, or else has
quoted it from memory, or at third or fourth remove. It must be admitted
that the changes are all improvements, however they were made. The
ballad is quoted above, however, as it appears in Brainard's Poems.]
Whittier's Introduction to Brainard's poems reveals a mind matured by
much reading and thought. We hardly recognize in the author and editor
of Hartford the shy girlish boy we so recently left on the farm at
Haverhill. There has evidently been a good deal of midnight oil burned
since then.
The following sentiments respecting the resources and the proper field
of the American poet show that thus early had Whittier taken the manly
and patriotic resolution to find in his native land the chief sources of
poetic inspiration: "It has been often said that the New World is
deficient in the elements of poetry and romance; that its bards must of
necessity linger over the classic ruins of other lands; and draw their
sketches of character from foreign sources, and paint Nature under the
soft beauty of an Eastern sky. On the contrary, New England is full of
romance; and her writers would do well to follow the example of
Brainard. The great forest which our fathers penetrated, the red men,
their struggle and their disappearance, the powwow and the war-dance,
the savage inroad and the English sally, the tale of superstition and
the scenes of witchcraft,--all these are rich materials of poetry. We
have, indeed, no classic vale of Tempe, no haunted Parnassus, no temple
gray with years, and hallowed by the gorgeous pageantry of idol worship,
no towers and castles over whose moonlight ruins gathers the green pall
of the ivy; but we have mountains pillaring a sky as blue as that which
bends over classic Olympus, streams as bright and beautiful as those of
Greece and Italy, and forests richer and nobler than those which of old
were haunted by sylph and dryad."
It is easy to see here a foreshadowing of "Mogg Megone," "The Bridal of
Pennacook," the "Supernaturalism of New England," and a hundred poems
and ballads of Whittier's founded on native themes. The sentiments in
the quotation just made remind one of Emerson's "Nature," the preface of
Whitman to his first portentous quarto, "Leaves of Grass," and
Wordsworth's essay on the nature of the poetic art. But however laudable
was the Quaker poet's resolve to choose indigenous subjects, it cannot
be said that either he or Bryant attained to more than an indigeneity of
theme. In form and style they are imitative. Emerson and Whitman are
our only purely original poets.
Whittier was editor of the _New England Weekly Review_ for about
eighteen months, at the end of which time he returned to the farm at
Haverhill, and engaged in agricultural pursuits for the next five or six
years. In 1831 or 1832 he published "Moll Pitcher," a tale of the Witch
of Nahant. This youthful poem seems to have completely disappeared, and
Mr. Whittier will no doubt be devoutly thankful that the writer has been
unable to procure a copy.
CHAPTER V.
WHITTIER THE REFORMER.
_"God said: 'Break thou these yokes; undo
These heavy burdens. I ordain
A work to last thy whole life through,
A ministry of strife and pain._
_'Forego thy dreams of lettered ease,
Put thou the scholar's promise by,
The rights of man are more than these.'
He heard, and answered: 'Here am I!'"_
WHITTIER, _Sumner_.
On New Year's day of 1831 William Lloyd Garrison issued the first number
of the _Liberator_ from his little attic room, No. 6 Merchants' Hall,
Boston. Its clear bugle-notes sounded the onset of reform and the
death-knell of slavery. It called for the buckling on of moral armor.
Its words were the touchstone of wills, the shibboleth of souls. Cowards
and time-servers quickly ranged themselves on one side, and heroes on
the other. Before young Whittier,--editor, _litterateur_, and poet,--a
career full of brilliant promise had opened up at Hartford. But through
the high chambers of his soul the voice of duty rang in solemn and
imperative tones. He heard and obeyed. The cost was counted, and his
resolution taken. Upon his brow he placed the lustrous fire-wreath of
the martyr, well assured of his power to endure unflinchingly to the end
its sharpest pains. It was the most momentous act of his life; it formed
the keystone in the arch of his destinies.
The first decided anti-slavery step taken by him was the publication of
his fiery philippic, "Justice and Expediency." About this time also he
began the writing of his stirring anti-slavery poems, many of them full
of pathos, fierce invective, cutting irony and satire,--stirring the
blood like a trumpet-call, giving impulse and enthusiasm to the despised
and half-despairing Abolitionists of that day, and becoming a part of
the very religion of thousands of households throughout the land.
It is almost impossible for those who were not participants in the
anti-slavery conflict, or who have not read histories and memoirs of
the struggle, to realize the deep opprobrium that attached to the word
"Abolitionist." To avow one's self such meant in many cases suspicion,
ostracism, hunger, blows, and sometimes death. It meant, in short,
self-renunciation and social martyrdom. All this Whittier gladly took
upon himself; and he knew that it was a long struggle upon which he was
entering. As he says in one of his poems, he was
"Called from dream and song,
Thank God! so early to a strife so long,
That, ere it closed, the black, abundant hair
Of boyhood rested silver-sown and spare
On manhood's temples."
That the martyrdom was a severe one to all who took up the cross goes
without saying. Mr. Whittier remarked to the writer that it was at some
sacrifice of his ambition and plans for the future that he decided to
throw in his lot with the opponents of slavery. He knew that it meant
the annihilation of his hopes of literary preferment, and the exclusion
of his articles from the pages of magazines and newspapers. "For twenty
years," said he, "my name would have injured the circulation of any of
the literary or political journals of the country."
When Whittier joined the ranks of the despised faction, Garrison had
been imprisoned and fined in Baltimore for his arraignment of the slave
traffic; Benjamin Lundy had been driven from the same city by threats of
imprisonment and personal outrage; Prudence Crandall was waging her
battle with the Philistinism of Canterbury, Conn.; and the Legislature
of Georgia had offered a reward of five thousand dollars for "the
arrest, prosecution, and trial to conviction under the laws of the
State, of the editor or publisher of a certain paper called _The
Liberator_, published in the town of Boston, and State of
Massachusetts."
But it is not within the province of this biography to give an
exhaustive _resume_ of the anti-slavery conflict, but only to speak of
such of its episodes as were especially participated in by Mr. Whittier.
How tailor John Woolman became a life-long itinerant preacher of his
mild Quaker gospel of freedom; how honest saddler Lundy left his leather
hammering, and walked his ten thousand miles, carrying his types and
column-rules with him, and printing his "Genius of Universal
Emancipation" as he went; in what way and to what extent the labors and
writings of Lucretia Mott, Samuel J. May, Lydia Maria Child, George
Thompson, James G. Birney, and Gerrit Smith helped on the noble
cause,--to all these things only allusion can be made. For a full
account of those perilous times one must go to the pages of Henry
Wilson's "History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power," and to the
fascinating "Recollections" of Samuel J. May. Let us now return to
Whittier and consider his own writings, labors, and adventures in the
service of the cause.
It was in the spring of 1833 that he published at his own expense
"Justice and Expediency; or, Slavery Considered with a view to its
Rightful and Effectual Remedy, Abolition." [Haverhill: C. P. Thayer and
Co.] It is a polemical paper, full of exclamation points and italicized
and capitalized sentences. The hyperbole speaks well for the author's
heart, but betrays his juvenility. He shrieks like a temperance lecturer
or a stump politician. The pamphlet, however, shows diligent and
systematic study of the entire literature of the subject. Every
statement is fortified by quotation or reference. He enumerates six
reasons why the African Colonization Society's schemes were unworthy of
good men's support, and buttresses up his theses by citations from the
official literature of his opponents. A thorough familiarity with
slavery in other lands and times is also manifested. As a specimen of
the style of the book the following will serve:--
"But, it may be said that the miserable victims of the System have
our sympathies.
"Sympathy!--the sympathy of the Priest and the Levite, looking on,
and acknowledging, but holding itself aloof from mortal suffering.
Can such hollow sympathy reach the broken of heart, and does the
blessing of those who are ready to perish answer it? Does it hold
back the lash from the slave, or sweeten his bitter bread?
"Oh, my heart is sick--my very soul is weary of this sympathy--this
heartless mockery of feeling....
"No--let the TRUTH on this subject--undisguised, naked, terrible as
it is, stand out before us. Let us no longer seek to cover it--let
us no longer strive to forget it--let us no more dare to palliate
it."
In his sketch of Nathaniel P. Rogers, the anti-slavery editor, Whittier
remarks incidentally that the voice of Rogers was one of the few which
greeted him with words of encouragement and sympathy at the time of the
publication of his "Justice and Expediency."[13]
[Footnote 13: "He gave us a kind word of approval," says Whittier, "and
invited us to his mountain home, on the banks of the Pemigewasset, an
invitation which, two years afterwards, we accepted."]
* * * * *
On the fourth day of December, 1833, the Philadelphia Convention for the
formation of the American Anti-slavery Society held its first sitting;
Beriah Green, President, Lewis Tappan and John G. Whittier, Secretaries.
This assembly, if not so famous as that which framed the Declaration of
Independence in the same city some two generations previously, was at
any rate as worthy of fame and respect as its illustrious predecessor.
A deep solemnity and high consecration filled the heart of every man and
woman in that little band. Heart answered unto heart in glowing
sympathy. They did their work like men inspired. Perfect unanimity
prevailed. They were too eagerly engaged to adjourn for dinner, and
"baskets of crackers and pitchers of cold water supplied all the bodily
refreshment." Among those who were present and spoke was Lucretia Mott,
"a beautiful and graceful woman," says Whittier, "in the prime of life,
with a face beneath her plain cap as finely intellectual as that of
Madame Roland." She "offered some wise and valuable suggestions, in a
clear sweet voice, the charm of which I have never forgotten."
* * * * *
A committee, of which Whittier was a member, with William Lloyd Garrison
as chairman, was appointed to draw up a Declaration of Principles.
Garrison sat up all night, in the small attic of a colored man, to draft
this Declaration. The two other members of the committee, calling in the
gray dawn of a December day, found him putting the last touches to this
famous paper, while his lamp burned on unheeded into the daylight. His
draft was accepted almost without amendment by the Convention, and,
after it had been engrossed on parchment, was signed by the sixty-two
members present.[14]
[Footnote 14: Twenty-one of these persons were Quakers, as Mr. Whittier
and the writer proved by actual count of the names on Mr. Whittier's
fac-simile copy of the Declaration.]
[Illustration: JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER AT MIDDLE LIFE.]
In the _Atlantic Monthly_ for February, 1874, Mr. Whittier has given an
interesting account of the Convention. Some of his pictures are so
graphic that they shall here be given in his own words:--
"In the gray twilight of a chill day of late November, forty years
ago, a dear friend of mine residing in Boston, made his appearance
at the old farm-house in East Haverhill. He had been deputed by the
Abolitionists of the city, William L. Garrison, Samuel E. Sewall,
and others, to inform me of my appointment as a delegate to the
Convention about to be held in Philadelphia for the formation of an
American Anti-slavery Society; and to urge upon me the necessity of
my attendance.
"Few words of persuasion, however, were needed. I was unused to
travelling; my life had been spent on a secluded farm; and the
journey, mostly by stage-coach, at that time was really a
formidable one. Moreover the few abolitionists were everywhere
spoken against, their persons threatened, and, in some instances, a
price set on their heads by Southern legislators. Pennsylvania was
on the borders of slavery, and it needed small effort of
imagination to picture to oneself the breaking up of the Convention
and maltreatment of its members. This latter consideration I do not
think weighed much with me, although I was better prepared for
serious danger than for anything like personal indignity. I had
read Governor Trumbull's description of the tarring and feathering
of his hero MacFingal, when after the application of the melted
tar, the feather-bed was ripped open and shaken over him, until
Not Maia's son with wings for ears,
Such plumes about his visage wears,
Nor Milton's six-winged angel gathers
Such superfluity of feathers,
and I confess I was quite unwilling to undergo a martyrdom which
my best friends could scarcely refrain from laughing at. But a
summons like that of Garrison's bugle-blast could scarcely be
unheeded by one who, from birth and education, held fast the
traditions of that earlier abolitionism which, under the lead of
Benezet and Woolman, had effaced from the Society of Friends every
vestige of slaveholding. I had thrown myself, with a young man's
fervid enthusiasm, into a movement which commended itself to my
reason and conscience, to my love of country, and my sense of duty
to God and my fellow-men. My first venture in authorship was the
publication, at my own expense, in the spring of 1833, of a
pamphlet entitled 'Justice and Expediency,'[15] on the moral and
political evils of slavery, and the duty of emancipation. Under
such circumstances, I could not hesitate, but prepared at once for
my journey. It was necessary that I should start on the morrow, and
the intervening time, with a small allowance for sleep, was spent
in providing for the care of the farm and homestead during my
absence."
[Footnote 15: Mr. Whittier here made a slip of memory. His first
work was "Legends of New England," as he himself testifies, in
his own handwriting, in a memorandum sent to the New England
Historic-Genealogical Society.]
Mr. Whittier proceeds to tell of his journey to the Quaker City, and of
the organization and work of the Convention. The following pen-portraits
are too valuable to be omitted:--
"Looking over the assembly, I noticed that it was mainly composed
of comparatively young men, some in middle age, and a few beyond
that period. They were nearly all plainly dressed, with a view to
comfort rather than elegance. Many of the faces turned toward me
wore a look of expectancy and suppressed enthusiasm; all had the
earnestness which might be expected of men engaged in an enterprise
beset with difficulty, and perhaps with peril. The fine
intellectual head of Garrison, prematurely bald, was conspicuous;
the sunny-faced young man at his side, in whom all the beatitudes
seemed to find expression, was Samuel J. May, mingling in his veins
the best blood of the Sewalls and Quincys; a man so exceptionally
pure and large-hearted, so genial, tender, and loving, that he
could be faithful to truth and duty without making an enemy.
The de'il wad look into his face,
And swear he could na wrang him.'
That tall, gaunt, swarthy man, erect, eagle-faced, upon whose
somewhat martial figure the Quaker coat seemed a little out of
place, was Lindley Coates, known in all Eastern Pennsylvania as a
stern enemy of slavery; that slight, eager man, intensely alive in
every feature and gesture, was Thomas Shipley, who for thirty years
had been the protector of the free colored people of Philadelphia,
and whose name was whispered reverently in the slave cabins of
Maryland as the friend of the black man,--one of a class peculiar
to old Quakerism, who, in doing what they felt to be duty, and
walking as the Light within guided them, knew no fear and shrank
from no sacrifice. Braver men the world has not known. Beside him,
differing in creed but united with him in works of love and
charity, sat Thomas Whitson, of the Hicksite school of Friends,
fresh from his farm in Lancaster County, dressed in plainest
homespun, his tall form surmounted by a shock of unkempt hair, the
odd obliquity of his vision contrasting strongly with the clearness
and directness of his spiritual insight. Elizur Wright, the young
professor of a Western college, who had lost his place by his bold
advocacy of freedom, with a look of sharp concentration, in keeping
with an intellect keen as a Damascus blade, closely watched the
proceedings through his spectacles, opening his mouth only to speak
directly to the purpose.... In front of me, awakening pleasant
associations of the old homestead in Merrimack valley, sat my first
school-teacher, Joshua Coffin, the learned and worthy antiquarian
and historian of Newbury. A few spectators, mostly of the Hicksite
division of Friends, were present in broad-brims and plain bonnets,
among them Esther Moore and Lucretia Mott."
The year 1834 was passed by Whittier quietly on the farm at East
Haverhill. In April of this year the first anti-slavery society was
organized in Haverhill, with John G. Whittier as corresponding
secretary. Not long after a female anti-slavery society was organized in
the same town. The pro-slavery feeling in Haverhill was as bitter as in
other places.
One Sabbath afternoon in August, 1835, the Rev. Samuel J. May occupied
the pulpit of the First Parish Society in Haverhill, and in the evening
attempted to give an anti-slavery lecture in the Christian Union Chapel,
having been invited to do so by Mr. Whittier. In his "Recollections of
the Anti-Slavery Conflict" (p. 152), Mr. May says:--
"I had spoken about fifteen minutes when the most hideous outcries
and yells, from a crowd of men who had surrounded the house,
startled us, and then came heavy missiles against the doors and
blinds of the windows. I persisted in speaking for a few minutes,
hoping the blinds and doors were strong enough to stand the siege.
But presently a heavy stone broke through one of the blinds,
shattered a pane of glass, and fell upon the head of a lady sitting
near the centre of the hall. She uttered a shriek, and fell bleeding
into the arms of her sister. The panic-stricken audience rose _en
masse_, and began a rush for the doors."
Mr. May succeeded in quieting the fears of the audience, and himself
escaped through the crowd of infuriated ruffians without by walking
between two ladies, one of them the sister of Mr. Whittier and the other
the daughter of a wealthy and determined citizen of the place, who, it
was well known, would take summary vengeance for any disrespect shown to
his daughter. It was well that the audience dispersed when it did, since
a loaded cannon was being drawn to the spot by the furious mob.
This year, 1835, was a year of mobs. On the very same evening that Mr.
May was mobbed in Haverhill, Mr. Whittier and his English friend, the
orator George Thompson, were treated in a similar manner in Concord, N.
H. Whether an account of the Concord mob has been elsewhere published or
not the author cannot say, but the story given here is as he had it from
the lips of Mr. Whittier himself.
"Oh! we had a dreadful night of it," he said. The inhabitants had heard
that an Abolition meeting was to be held in the town, and that the arch
anarchist, George Thompson, was to speak. So on that Sabbath evening
they were on the alert, an angry mob some five hundred strong. Mr.
Whittier, knowing nothing of their state of mind, started down the
street with a friend: the mob surrounded them, thinking that he was
Thompson. His friend explained to them that he was Mr. Whittier. "Oh!"
they exclaimed, "so you are the one who is with Thompson, are you?" and
forthwith they began to assail the two men with sticks and stones. Mr.
Whittier said that both he and his friend were hurt, but escaped with
their lives by taking refuge in the house of a friend named Kent, who
was not an Abolitionist himself, but was a man of honor and bravery. He
barred his door, and told the mob that they should have Whittier only
over his dead body.
In the course of the evening Mr. Whittier learned that the house in
which Thompson was staying was surrounded by the mob. Becoming anxious,
he borrowed a hat, sallied out among the crowd, and succeeded in
reaching his friend. The noise and violence of the mob increased; a
cannon was brought, and at one time the little band in the house feared
they might suffer violence. "We did not much fear death," said Mr.
Whittier, "but we did dread gross personal indignities."
It was fortunately a bright moonlight night, suitable for travelling,
and about one o'clock the two friends escaped by driving off rapidly in
their horse and buggy. They did not know the road to Haverhill, but were
directed by their friends with all possible minuteness. Three miles
away, also, there was the house of an anti-slavery man, and they
obtained further directions there. Some time after sunrise they stopped
at a wayside inn to bait their horse, and get a bite of breakfast for
themselves. While they were at table the landlord said,--
"They've been having a h--l of a time down at Haverhill."
"How is that?"
"Oh, one of them d--d Abolitionists was lecturin' there; he had been
invited to the town by a young fellow named Whittier; but they made
it pretty hot for him, and I guess neither he nor Whittier will be
in a hurry to repeat the thing."
"What kind of a fellow is this Whittier?"
"Oh, he's an ignorant sort of fellow; he don't know much."
"And who is this Thompson they're talking about?"
"Why, he's a man sent over here by the British to make trouble in
our government."
As the two friends were stepping into the buggy, Mr. Whittier, with one
foot on the step, turned and said to the host, who was standing by with
several tavern loafers:--
"You've been talking about Thompson and Whittier. This is Mr.
Thompson, and I am Whittier. Good morning."
"And jumping into the buggy," said the poet, with a twinkle in his eye,
"we whipped up, and stood not on the order of our going." As for the
host he stood with open mouth, being absolutely tongue-tied with
astonishment. "And for all I know," said the narrator, "he's standing
there still with his mouth open."
Mr. Thompson was secreted at the Whittier farm-house in Haverhill for
two weeks after this affair.
* * * * *
Some two months after the disgraceful scenes just described occurred
the mobbing of William Lloyd Garrison in Boston. He had gone in the
evening to deliver a lecture before the Female Anti-Slavery Society. A
furious mob of "gentlemen of property and standing" surrounded the
building. Mr. Garrison took refuge in a carpenter's shop in the rear of
the hall, but was violently seized, let down from a window by a rope,
and dragged by the mob to the City Hall. Mr. Whittier was staying at the
house of Rev. Samuel J. May. His sister had gone to the lecture, and Mr.
Whittier, on hearing of the disturbance, had fears for her safety, and
went out to seek her. He said to the writer that when he reached the
City Hall he saw before him the best dressed mob imaginable. Presently
he heard a cry, "They've got him!" After a short, sharp scuffle Garrison
was got into a carriage by the police, and taken to the Leverett Street
jail, as the only place where he could be safe that night in Boston. Mr.
Whittier and Mr. May immediately went down to the jail to see him.
Garrison said that he could not say, with Paul, that he was dwelling in
his own hired house, and so he could not ask them to stay all night
with him! His coat was not entirely gone, but was pretty badly torn. He
was at first a good deal agitated by the affair, but when they left him
he had become calm and assured. On the same evening, the mob threatened
to make an attack upon Mr. May's house. Mr. Whittier got his sister
Elizabeth safely bestowed for the night in the dwelling of another
friend. He and Mr. May passed a sleepless night, and at one time half
thought that, for safety's sake, they should have stayed in the jail
with Garrison. However, they were not molested.
It is a remarkable testimony to the esteem in which Mr. Whittier must
have been held by the citizens of Haverhill that, notwithstanding their
bitter hatred of Abolitionism, they elected him their representative to
the State Legislature in 1835, and again in 1836. In 1837 he declined
re-election. In the legislative documents for 1835 he figures as a
member of the standing committee on engrossed bills. His name does not
appear in the State records for 1836: it was undoubtedly owing to his
secretarial duties, mentioned below, that he was unable to take his
seat as a member of the Legislature in the second year of his election.
In 1836 Whittier published "Mogg Megone," a poem on an episode in Indian
life. It will be reviewed, with the rest of his poems, in the second
part of this volume. In the same year he was appointed Secretary of the
American Anti-Slavery Society, and removed to Philadelphia. In 1838-39,
while in that city, he edited a paper which he named the _Pennsylvania
Freeman_. It had formerly been edited by Benjamin Lundy, under the title
of the _National Enquirer_. The office of the _Pennsylvania Freeman_ was
in 1838 sacked and burned by a mob. It was about the same time that
Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia was burned to the ground by the
citizens, on the very day after its dedication. Mr. Whittier had read an
original poem on that occasion. The hall had been built at considerable
sacrifice by the lovers of freedom, in order that one place at least
might be open for free discussion. And it was just in order that it
might not be used thus that it was burned by the guilty-thoughted mob.
The keys had been given to the mayor, but neither he nor the police
interfered to prevent the atrocious deed.
In 1837 Mr. Whittier edited, and wrote a preface for, the "Letters of
John Quincy Adams to his Constituents." These stirring letters of Mr.
Adams were called forth by the attacks that had been made on him by
members of Congress for defending the right of negroes to petition the
Government. Mr. Whittier, in his introductory remarks, speaks of the
"Letters" as follows:--
"Their sarcasm is Junius-like, cold, keen, unsparing. In boldness,
directness, and eloquent appeal, they will bear comparison with
O'Connell's celebrated letters to the Reformers of Great
Britain.... It will be seen that, in the great struggle for and
against the Right of Petition, an account of which is given in the
following pages, their author stood in a great measure alone, and
unsupported by his northern colleagues. On 'his gray, discrowned
head' the entire fury of slaveholding arrogance and wrath was
expended. He stood alone,--beating back, with his aged and single
arm, the tide which would have borne down and overwhelmed a less
sturdy and determined spirit."
In the same year (1837) Mr. Whittier edited a pamphlet called "Views of
Slavery and Emancipation," taken from Harriet Martineau's "Society in
America." The whole subject of slavery is canvassed by Miss Martineau in
the most searching and judicial manner.
In closing this account of our author's anti-slavery labors, we may
bestow a word on the attitude assumed toward the Abolition movement by
the Quakers as a sect. Through the labors of John Woolman, Benjamin
Lundy, Anthony Benezet, and others, they had early been brought to see
the wickedness of slaveholding, and in 1780 had succeeded in entirely
ridding their denomination of the wrong. They not only emancipated their
slaves, but remunerated them for their past services. Indeed, their
record in this respect is unique for its fine ideal devotion to exact
justice. They were the first religious body in the world to remove the
pollution of slavery from their midst. But the cautious, acquisitive,
peace-loving Quakers seemed content to rest here, satisfied with having
cleared their own skirts of wrong. They could not see the good side of
the Abolition movement. They were scandalized by the violence and
fanaticism of many Abolitionists. Mr. Whittier felt aggrieved by this
attitude of the Friends, but did not on that account break with the
denomination, or abandon the religion of his fathers. In 1868 he wrote
as follows to the _New Bedford Standard_, which had spoken of him in an
article on Thomas A. Greene: "My object in referring to the article in
the paper was mainly to correct a statement regarding myself, viz.: That
in consequence of the opposition of the Society of Friends to the
anti-slavery movement, I did not for years attend their meetings. This
is not true. From my youth up, whenever my health permitted, I have been
a constant attendant of our meetings for religious worship. _This_ is
true, however, that after our meeting-houses were denied by the yearly
meeting for anti-slavery purposes, I did not feel it in my way, for some
years, to attend the annual meeting at Newport. From a feeling of duty I
protested against that decision when it was made, but was given to
understand pretty distinctly that there was no 'weight' in my words. It
was a hard day for reformers; some stifled their convictions; others,
not adding patience to their faith, allowed themselves to be worried out
of the Society. Abolitionists holding office were very generally
'dropped out,' and the ark of the church staggered on with no profane
anti-slavery hands upon it."
CHAPTER VI.
AMESBURY.
After the sacking and burning of the office of the _Pennsylvania
Freeman_, Whittier returned to Haverhill, and soon after (in 1840) he
sold the old farm and removed with his mother to Amesbury, a small town
some nine miles nearer the sea than Haverhill. It is a rural town of
over three thousand inhabitants, and contains nothing of note except the
poet Whittier. The business of the place is the manufacture of woollen
and cotton goods, and of carriages. The landscape is rugged and
picturesque. The town covers a sloping hillside that stretches down to
the Merrimack. Across this river rises a high hill, crowned with
orchards and meadows. In summer time a sweet and quiet air reigns in the
place. There are old vine-covered houses, grassy lawns, cool crofts, and
sunken orchards; bees are humming, birds singing, and here and there
through the trees slender columns of blue wood-smoke float upward in
airy evanescence. Mr. Whittier's residence is on Friend Street, and not
far beyond, on the same street, or rather in the delta formed by the
meeting of two streets, stands the Friends' Meeting-House, where the
poet has been an attendant nearly all his life:--
"For thee, the priestly rite and prayer,
And holy day, and solemn psalm;
For me, the silent reverence where
My brethren gather, slow and calm."
This old meeting-house is alluded to by the poet in "Abram Morrison," a
fine humorous poem published in "The King's Missive" (1881). We there
read how--
"On calm and fair First Days
Rattled down our one-horse chaise
Through the blossomed apple-boughs
To the old, brown meeting-house."
Whittier's house is a plain, white-painted structure, standing at the
corner of two streets, and having in front of it numerous forest trees,
chiefly maple. Since 1876 the poet has passed only a part of each year
at Amesbury, his other home being Oak Knoll in Danvers, where he resides
with distant relatives.
[Illustration: THE WHITTIER HOUSE, AMESBURY, MASS.]
* * * * *
The study at Amesbury of course possesses great interest for us as the
place where most of the poet's finest lyrics have been written. It is a
very cosey little study, and is entered by one door from within and
another from without. The upper half of the outer door is of glass. This
door is at the end of the left-hand porch shown in the view on page 125.
The two windows in the study look out upon a long strip of yard in the
rear of the house,--very pretty and quiet, and filled with pear-trees
and other trees and vines. Upon one side of the room are shelves holding
five or six hundred well-used volumes. Among them are to be noticed
Charles Reade's novels and the poems of Robert Browning. A side-shelf is
completely filled with a small blue and gold edition of the poets. On
the walls hang oil paintings of views on the Merrimack River and other
Essex County scenes, including Mr. Whittier's birthplace. In one corner
is a handsome writing-desk, littered with papers and letters. Upon the
hearth of the Franklin stove, high andirons smile a fireside welcome
from their burnished brass knobs. Indeed, everything in the room is as
neat and cosey as the wax cell of a honey-bee. And over all is shed the
genial glow of the gentlest, tenderest nature in all the land.
* * * * *
In the autumn of 1844 was written "The Stranger in Lowell," a series of
light sketches suggested by personal experiences. The style of these
essays reminds one of that of "Twice Told Tales," but it is not so pure.
The thought is developed too rhetorically, and the essays betray the
limitations attending the life of a recluse. But these sketches are
interesting as exhibitions of the growth of the author toward this
peculiar form of essay-writing, and are valuable on that account.
* * * * *
In 1847 James G. Birney's anti-slavery paper, _The Philanthropist_,
published in Cincinnati, was merged with the _National Era_, of
Washington, D. C., with Dr. Gamaliel Bailey as managing editor, and
John G. Whittier as associate or corresponding editor. Dr. Bailey had
previously helped edit _The Philanthropist_. Both papers were treated to
mobocratic attacks. The _Era_ became an important organ of the Abolition
party in Washington. To it Mr. Whittier contributed his "Old Portraits
and Modern Sketches" as well as other reform papers.
* * * * *
In the same year (1847) our author published his "Supernaturalism of New
England." [New York and London: Wiley and Putnam.] This pleasant little
volume shows a marked advance upon Whittier's previous prose work. In
its nine chapters he has preserved a number of oral legends and
interesting superstitions of the farmer-folk of the Merrimack region.
Parts of the work have been quoted elsewhere in this volume. One of the
chapters closes with the following fine passage:--
"The witches of Father Baxter and 'the Black Man' of Cotton Mather
have vanished; belief in them is no longer possible on the part of
sane men. But this mysterious universe, through which, half veiled
in its own shadow, our dim little planet is wheeling, with its
star-worlds and thought-wearying spaces, remains. Nature's mighty
miracle is still over and around us; and hence awe, wonder, and
reverence remain to be the inheritance of humanity: still are there
beautiful repentances and holy death-beds, and still over the
soul's darkness and confusion rises star-like the great idea of
duty. By higher and better influences than the poor spectres of
superstition man must henceforth be taught to reverence the
Invisible, and, in the consciousness of his own weakness and sin
and sorrow, to lean with childlike trust on the wisdom and mercy of
an overruling Providence."
In 1849 Mr. Whittier collected and published his anti-slavery poems,
under the title "Voices of Freedom." The year 1850 marks a new era in
his poetical career. He published at that time his "Songs of Labor,"--a
volume which showed that his mind had become calmed by time, and was now
capable of interesting itself in other than reform subjects.
There is not much of outward incident and circumstance to record of the
quiet poetical years passed since 1840 at Amesbury and Danvers. Almost
every year or two a new volume of poems has been issued, each one
establishing on a firmer foundation the Quaker Poet's reputation as a
creator of sweet and melodious lyrical poetry.
In 1868 an institution called "Whittier College" was opened at Salem,
Henry County, Iowa. It was founded in honor of the poet, and is
conducted in accordance with the principles of the Society of Friends.
In 1871 Whittier edited "Child-Life: A Collection of Poems," by various
home and foreign authors. In the same year he edited, with a long
introduction, the "Journal of John Woolman."
The name John Woolman is not widely known to persons of the present
generation; and yet, as Whittier says, it was this humble Quaker
reformer of New Jersey who did more than any one else to inspire all the
great modern movements for the emancipation of slaves, first in the West
Indies, then in the United States, and in Russia. Warner Mifflin, Jean
Pierre Brissot, Thomas Clarkson, Stephen Grellet, William Allen, and
Benjamin Lundy,--all these philanthropists owed much of their impulse to
labor for the freedom of the slave to humble John Woolman. His journal
or autobiography was highly praised by Charles Lamb, Edward Irving,
Crabb Robinson, and others. "The style is that of a man unlettered, but
with natural refinement and delicate sense of fitness, the purity of
whose heart enters into his language."
Woolman was born in Northampton, West Jersey, in 1720. One day, in the
year 1742, while clerk in a store in the village of Mount Holly,
township of Northampton, N. J., he was asked by his employer to make out
the bill of sale of a negro. He drew up the instrument, but his
conscience was awakened, and some years after he began his life-work as
a pedestrian anti-slavery preacher. He refused to ride in, or have
letters sent him by, the stage-coaches, because of the cruelty exercised
toward the horses by the drivers. Neither would he accept hospitality
from those who kept slaves, always paying either the owners or the
slaves for his entertainment. Woolman was most gentle and kind in his
appeals to slave-owners, and rarely met with any violent remonstrance.
Much of his work was within the limits of his own sect, and Mr.
Whittier's introduction gives a valuable and succinct historical
_resume_ of the steps taken by the Friends to rid their sect of the
stigma of slaveholding.
Mount Holly, in Woolman's day, says Whittier, "was almost entirely a
settlement of Friends. A very few of the old houses with their quaint
stoops or porches are left. That occupied by John Woolman was a small,
plain, two-story structure, with two windows in each story in front, a
four-barred fence enclosing the grounds, with the trees he planted and
loved to cultivate. The house was not painted, but whitewashed. The name
of the place is derived from the highest hill in the county, rising two
hundred feet above the sea, and commanding a view of a rich and level
country of cleared farms and woodlands."
Very amusing is the picture given by Mr. Whittier of the eccentric
Benjamin Lay, once a member of the Society of Friends in England, and
afterward an inhabitant for some time of the West Indies, whence he was
driven away on account of the violence and extravagance of his
denunciations of slavery. He was a contemporary of Woolman. He lived in
a cave near Philadelphia, as a sort of Jonah or Elijah, prophesying woe
against the city on account of its participation in the crime of
slavery. He wore clothes made of vegetable fibre, and ate only vegetable
food. "Issuing from his cave, on his mission of preaching 'deliverance
to the captive,' he was in the habit of visiting the various meetings
for worship and bearing his testimony against slaveholders, greatly to
their disgust and indignation. On one occasion he entered the Market
Street Meeting, and a leading Friend requested some one to take him out.
A burly blacksmith volunteered to do it, leading him to the gate and
thrusting him out with such force that he fell into the gutter of the
street. There he lay until the meeting closed, telling the bystanders
that he did not feel free to rise himself. 'Let those who cast me here
raise me up. It is their business, not mine.'
"His personal appearance was in remarkable keeping with his eccentric
life. A figure only four and a half feet high, hunch-backed, with
projecting chest, legs small and uneven, arms longer than his legs; a
huge head, showing only beneath the enormous white hat large, solemn
eyes and a prominent nose; the rest of his face covered with a snowy
semicircle of beard falling low on his breast,--a figure to recall the
old legends of troll, brownie, and kobold. Such was the irrepressible
prophet who troubled the Israel of slaveholding Quakerism, clinging like
a rough chestnut-burr to the skirts of its respectability, and settling
like a pertinacious gad-fly on the sore places of its conscience.
"On one occasion, while the annual meeting was in session at Burlington,
N. J., in the midst of the solemn silence of the great assembly, the
unwelcome figure of Benjamin Lay, wrapped in his long white overcoat,
was seen passing up the aisle. Stopping midway, he exclaimed, 'You
slaveholders! Why don't you throw off your Quaker coats as I do mine,
and show yourselves as you are?' Casting off as he spoke his outer
garment, he disclosed to the astonished assembly a military coat
underneath, and a sword dangling at his heels. Holding in one hand a
large book, he drew his sword with the other. 'In the sight of God,' he
cried, 'you are as guilty as if you stabbed your slaves to the heart, as
I do this book!' suiting the action to the word, and piercing a small
bladder filled with the juice of poke-weed (_phytolacca decandra_),
which he had concealed between the covers, and sprinkling as with fresh
blood those who sat near him."
There is something overwhelmingly ludicrous about this bladder of
poke-weed juice! And what a subject for a painter!--the portentous,
white-bearded dwarf standing there in the midst of the church, in act to
plunge his gigantic sword tragically into the innermost bowels of the
crimson poke-juice bladder, and from all parts of the house the
converging looks of the broad-brimmed and shovel-bonneted Quakers!
Mr. Whittier further says that "Lay was well acquainted with Dr.
Franklin, who sometimes visited him. Among other schemes of reform he
entertained the idea of converting all mankind to Christianity. This was
to be done by three witnesses,--himself, Michael Lovell, and Abel Noble,
assisted by Dr. Franklin. But, on their first meeting at the doctor's
house, the three 'chosen vessels' got into a violent controversy on
points of doctrine, and separated in ill-humor. The philosopher, who had
been an amused listener, advised the three sages to give up the project
of converting the world until they had learned to tolerate each other."
* * * * *
In 1873 Mr. Whittier edited "Child-Life in Prose." It is a collection of
pretty stories, chiefly about the childhood of various eminent persons.
One of the stories is by the editor, and is about "A Fish that I Didn't
Catch."
In 1875 appeared "Songs of Three Centuries." The poet's design in this
work was (to use his own words) "to gather up in a comparatively small
volume, easily accessible to all classes of readers, the wisest
thoughts, rarest fancies, and devoutest hymns of the metrical authors of
the last three centuries." He says, "The selections I have made
indicate, in a general way, my preferences." It is a choice collection,
rich in lyrical masterpieces.
CHAPTER VII.
LATER DAYS.
About a mile westward from the village of Danvers, Mass., a grassy road,
named Summer Street, branches off to the right and north. It is a
pleasant, winding road, bordered by picturesque old stone fences and
lined with barberry and raspberry bushes and gnarled old apple-trees. On
either side are cultivated fields. Oak Knoll, the winter residence of
Whittier, is the second house on the left, some half a mile up the road.
This fine old estate had been occupied for half a century by a man of
wealth and taste. About the year 1875 it passed into the hands of Col.
Edmund Johnson, of Boston, whose wife was Whittier's cousin.
It was planned that the poet should be a member of the household; rooms
were set apart and arranged for him, and he gave the estate its present
name.
It is a spot full of traditions, and well suited to any poet's
residence, most of all for one so versed in New England legends. It is
the very spot once occupied by the Rev. George Burroughs, a clergyman
who was hung for witchcraft in 1692, on the charge, among other things,
of "having performed feats of extraordinary physical strength." He could
hold out a gun seven feet long, tradition says, by putting his finger in
the muzzle, and could lift a barrel of molasses in the same way by the
bung-hole. For acts like these--deemed unclerical, at least, if not
unnatural--he was convicted and hanged; and a well on the premises of
Oak Knoll is still known as the "witch well."
Here, in the home of relatives, the poet has lived since 1876. A
lovelier and more poetical place it would be difficult to imagine. The
extensive, carefully kept grounds, and the antique elegance of the
house, give to the estate the air of an old English manor, or
gentleman's country hall. The house is approached by a long,
upward-sweeping lawn, diversified with stately forest trees, clumps of
evergreens and shrubs and flowers. Down across the road stands a large
and handsome barn, which is as neat as paint and care can make it. In
front of the house the eye ranges downward over an extensive landscape,
as far as to the town of Peabody, in the direction of Salem. Indeed, on
every side of the estate there are broad and distant views of the blue
hills of Essex and Middlesex.
[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE PORCH AT OAK KNOLL, DANVERS, MASS.]
In the summer, as you ascend the carriage-road that winds through the
grounds, your eye is captured by the rare beauty of the scene. Yonder is
a tall living wall of verdure, with an archway cut through it. To the
left the grounds sweep gently down to a deep ravine, where a little
rivulet, named Beaver Brook, creeps leisurely out and winds seaward
through green and marish meadows. It is in this portion of the grounds
that the fine oak-trees grow which give to the place its name. Here,
too, is a large grove of pines, with numerous seats within it. There are
trees and trees at Oak Knoll,--smooth and shapely hickories, glistering
chestnuts with cool foliage, maples, birches, and the purple beech. Add
to the picture the rural accessories of bee-haunted clover-fields, apple
and pear orchards, and beds of tempting strawberries. The house is of
wood, salmon-colored, with tall porches on each side, up-propped by
stately Doric columns. In front, with wide sweep of closely cropped
grass intervening, is the magnificent Norway spruce that Oliver Wendell
Holmes, a year or two before Mr. Whittier's death, on one of those
periodical visits to his brother poet that so delighted their two souls,
named "The Poets' Pagoda." A luxuriant vine clusters about the eaves of
the house. On the long porch a mocking-bird and a canary-bird fill the
green silence with gushes of melody, and near at hand, in his study in
the wing of the building, sits one with a singing pen and listens to
their song. To their song and to the murmur of the tall pines by his
window he listens, then looks into his heart and writes,--this
sweet-souled magician,--and craftily imprisons between the covers of his
books, echoes of bird and tree music, bits of blue sky, glimpses of
green landscape, winding rivers, and idyls of the snow,--all suffused
and interfused with a glowing atmosphere of human and divine love, such
as the poet found in this home of his choosing at Oak Knoll. It will not
perhaps be intruding upon the privacies of home to say that the members
of the cultured household at Oak Knoll ever, found in their happy
circle, their highest pleasure in ministering to all needs, social or
otherwise, of their loved cousin the poet. Three sisters dispense the
hospitalities of the house, and a young daughter of Mrs. Woodman's adds
the charm of girlhood to the family life.
* * * * *
Readers of Whittier, who know how deeply his writings are tinged with
the scenery, legendary lore and folk-life of his native Merrimack
Valley, will not wonder that a certain _Heimweh_, or home-sickness,
draws him northward, when
"Flows amain
The surge of summer's beauty."
and
"Pours the deluge of the heat
Broad northward o'er the land."
It is but one hour's ride by cars from Danvers to Amesbury; and part of
the time in the latter place, and part of the time at the Isles of
Shoals, and in the beautiful lake and mountain region of New Hampshire,
Mr. Whittier passes the warm season. For many years it was his custom to
spend a portion of each summer at the Bearcamp River House, in West
Ossipee, N. H., some thirty miles north of Lake Winnipiseogee. The hotel
was situated on a slight eminence, commanding a view of towering "Mount
Israel" and of "Whittier Mountain," named after the poet. It is a region
full of noble prospects, being just in the out-skirts of the White
Mountain group. Several of the poems of Whittier were inspired by this
scenery, notably "Among the Hills," "Sunset on the Bearcamp," and "The
Seeking of the Waterfall." In the first of these we read how--
"Through Sandwich notch the west-wind sang,"
and--
"Above his broad lake Ossipee,
Once more the sunshine wearing,
Stooped, tracing on that silver shield
His grim armorial bearing."
"Sunset on the Bearcamp" contains a stanza considered by some to be one
of the poet's finest:--
"Touched by a light that hath no name,
A glory never sung,
Aloft on sky and mountain wall
Are God's great pictures hung.
How changed the summits vast and old!
No longer granite-browed,
They melt in rosy mist; the rock
Is softer than the cloud;
The valley holds its breath; no leaf
Of all its elms is twirled:
The silence of eternity
Seems falling on the world."
The Bearcamp River House (now no more) was a hostelry whose site,
antique hospitality, and eminent guests were every whit as worthy to be
embalmed in lasting verse as were those of the Wayside Inn of Sudbury.
Before the red, crackling flames of its huge fireplace such literary
characters as Whittier, Gail Hamilton, Lucy Larcom, and Hiram Rich used
to gather on chill summer evenings for the kind of talks that only a
wood fire can inspire. The Quaker poet is a charming conversationalist,
and can _tell_ a story as capitally as he can write one. He has a
goodly _repertoire_ of ghost tales and legends of the marvellous. One of
his best stories is about a scene that took place in Independence Hall
in Philadelphia, when the court remanded a negro to slavery. The poet
says that an old sailor who was present became so infuriated by the
spectacle that he made the air blue with oaths uttered in seven
different languages.[16]
[Footnote 16: For these details about days on the Bearcamp, the writer
is indebted to Dr. Robert R. Andrews, an acquaintance of the poet.]
* * * * *
December 17, 1877, was the poet's seventieth birthday, and the occasion
was celebrated in a twofold manner, namely, by a Whittier Tribute in the
_Literary World_, and by a Whittier Banquet given at the Hotel
Brunswick, in Boston, by Messrs. H. O. Houghton and Co., the publishers
of Whittier's works. The _Literary World_ tribute contained poems by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Bayard Taylor, E. C. Stedman, O. W. Holmes,
William Lloyd Garrison, and others. Mr. Longfellow's poem, "The Three
Silences," is one of unusual beauty.
THE THREE SILENCES OF MOLINOS.
"Three Silences there are: the first of speech,
The second of desire, the third of thought;
This is the lore a Spanish monk, distraught
With dreams and visions, was the first to teach.
These Silences, commingling each with each
Made up the perfect Silence, that he sought
And prayed for, and wherein at times he caught
Mysterious sounds from realms beyond our reach.
O thou, whose daily life anticipates
The life to come, and in whose thought and word
The spiritual world preponderates,
Hermit of Amesbury! thou too hast heard
Voices and melodies from beyond the gates,
And speakest only when thy soul is stirred!"
There were letters from the poet Bryant, the historian George Bancroft,
Colonel T. W. Higginson, and Mrs. H. B. Stowe; and there was a pleasant
description of the Danvers home by Charles B. Rice. Mr. Whittier's
"Response" was published in the January number of the paper:--
"Beside that milestone where the level sun,
Nigh unto setting, sheds his last, low rays
On word and work irrevocably done,
Life's blending threads of good and ill outspun,
I hear, O friends! your words of cheer and praise,
Half doubtful if myself or otherwise.
Like him who, in the old Arabian joke,
A beggar slept and crowned Caliph woke."
The anniversary of the founding of the _Atlantic Monthly_ happening to
be synchronous with Whittier's birthday, the publishers determined to
make a double festival of the occasion. The gathering at the Hotel
Brunswick was a brilliant one, and the invitations were not limited by
any clique or any sectional lines.
In this same month the admirers of Mr. Whittier in Haverhill,
Newburyport, and neighboring towns, formed a Whittier Club, its annual
meetings to be held on December 17.
The ladies of Amesbury presented to the poet on his birthday a richly
finished Russia-leather portfolio, containing fourteen beautiful
sketches in water-colors of scenes in and about Amesbury, by a talented
Amesbury artist. The subjects of the sketches are those scenes which he
has immortalized in his poems, and include his home, birthplace, the old
school-house, old Quaker Meeting-House, Rivermouth Rocks, etc. The
portfolio was presented to him at Oak Knoll, accompanied by a basket of
exquisite flowers.
Since taking up his residence in Danvers, the poet has published "The
Vision of Echard, and Other Poems,"--including the beautiful ballad,
"The Witch of Wenham,"--and "The King's Missive, and Other Poems."
CHAPTER VIII.
PERSONAL.
As a boy, Whittier grew up slender, delicate, and shy, with dark hair
and dark eyes; his nature silent and brooding, gentle, compassionate,
religious, and sensitive to the beauty of the external world. He is of
the nervous temperament, and his health has never been robust. Indeed,
in later life the state of his health has often been precarious, and his
plans for work have been at the mercy of his nerves. As a young man, and
crowned Laureate of Freedom, Whittier must have presented a striking
appearance, with his raven hair, and glittering black eyes flashing with
the inspiration of a great cause. Mr. J. Miller McKim, a member with
Whittier of the famous Anti-Slavery Convention held in Philadelphia in
1833, thus describes the poet:--
"He wore a dark frock-coat with standing collar, which, with his
thin hair, dark and sometimes flashing eyes, and black
whiskers,--not large, but noticeable in those unhirsute days,--gave
him, to my then unpractised eye, quite as much of a military as a
Quaker aspect. His broad, square forehead and well-cut features,
aided by his incipient reputation as a poet, made him quite a
noticeable feature in the convention."
Frederika Bremer, in her "Sketches of American Homes," gives an outline
portrait of Whittier as he appeared when forty years of age:--
"He has a good exterior, a figure slender and tall, a beautiful head
with refined features, black eyes full of fire, dark complexion, a
fine smile, and lively but very nervous manner. Both soul and spirit
have overstrained the nervous cords and wasted the body. He belongs
to those natures who would advance with firmness and joy to
martyrdom in a good cause, and yet who are never comfortable in
society, and who look as if they would run out of the door every
moment. He lives with his mother and sister in a country-house to
which I have promised to go. I feel that I should enjoy myself with
Whittier, and could make him feel at ease with me. I know from my
own experience what this nervous bashfulness, caused by the
over-exertion of the brain, requires, and how persons who suffer
therefrom ought to be met and treated."
* * * * *
George W. Bungay, in his "Crayon Sketches" of distinguished Americans,
published in 1852, gives the following picture of Whittier: "His
temperament is nervous-bilious; [he] is tall, slender and straight
as an Indian; has a superb head; his brow looks like a white cloud
under his raven hair; eyes large, black as sloes, and glowing with
expression,-- ... those star-like eyes dashing under such a magnificent
forehead."
* * * * *
A writer in the _Democratic Review_ for August, 1845, speaks of "the
fine intellectual beauty of his expression, the blending brightness and
softness of the clear dark eye, the union of manly firmness and courage
with womanly sweetness and tenderness alike in countenance and
character."
* * * * *
Mr. David A. Wasson says that Whittier is of the Saracenic or Hebrew
prophet type: "The high cranium, so lofty, especially in the dome,--the
slight and symmetrical backward slope of the _whole_ head,--the powerful
level brows, and beneath these the dark, deep eyes, so full of shadowed
fire,--the Arabian complexion,--the sharp-cut, intense lines of the
face,--the light, tall, erect stature,--the quick, axial poise of the
movement,"--all these traits reveal the fiery Semitic prophet.
* * * * *
The long backward and upward slope of the head, alluded to by Mr.
Wasson, is very striking. It is the head of Walter Scott or of Emerson.
Whittier is now an old man, somewhat hard of hearing, and with the fixed
sadness of time upon his pleasant face. But ever and anon, as you
converse with him, his countenance is irradiated by a sudden smile,
sweet and strange and full of benignity,--like a waft of perfume from a
bed of white violets, or a glint of rich sunlight on an April day. His
is one of those Emersonian natures that everybody loves at first sight.
The very mole under the right eye seems somehow the birth-mark or
sign-manual of kindliness. The quaint grammatical solecisms of the
Quaker and the New England farmer--the "thee's" and the omission of the
_g_'s from present participles and other words ending in
"ing"--give to the poet's conversation a certain slight piquancy and
picturesqueness.[17] About half-past nine every morning, when at
Amesbury, Mr. Whittier walks down for the mail and the news, and perhaps
has a chat with some neighbor on the street, or with the country editor
who is setting up in type his own editorials while he grimly rolls his
quid of tobacco in his cheek. In the spring and early summer the poet's
dress will be after this fashion: black coat and vest, gray pantaloons,
cinnamon-colored overcoat, drab tile hat, and perhaps a small gray
tippet around his neck. As he walks, he salutes those whom he meets with
a little jerky bow. A forty years' residence in Amesbury has made him
acquainted with almost everybody, and he might, therefore, very properly
be somewhat economical of exertion in his salutations. But his abrupt
bow is really the expression of that unbending rectitude and noble pride
in individual freedom that made him the reformer and the poet of
liberty. As a single instance of Whittier's kind-heartedness, take the
following incident, narrated by an anonymous writer in the _Literary
World_ for December, 1877: "When I was a young man trying to get an
education, I went about the country peddling sewing-silk to help myself
through college; and one Saturday night found me at Amesbury, a stranger
and without a lodging-place. It happened that the first house at which I
called was Whittier's, and he himself came to the door. On hearing my
request he said he was very sorry that he could not keep me, but it was
quarterly meeting and his house was full. He, however, took the trouble
to show me to a neighbor's, where he left me; but that did not seem to
wholly suit his idea of hospitality, for in the course of the evening he
made his appearance, saying that it had occurred to him that he could
sleep on a lounge, and give up his own bed to me,--which it is, perhaps,
needless to say, was not allowed. But this was not all. The next morning
he came again, with the suggestion that I might perhaps like to attend
meeting, inviting me to go with him; and he gave me a seat next to
himself. The meeting lasted an hour, during which there was not a word
spoken by any one. We all sat in silence that length of time, then all
arose, shook hands and dispersed; and I remember it as one of the best
meetings I ever attended."
[Footnote 17: The writer remembers once speaking with a laborer whom Mr.
Whittier had employed. The good fellow could not conceal his admiration
for the poet, "Why," he said, "you wouldn't think it, would you, but he
talks just like common folks. We was talkin' about the apples one day,
and he said, 'Some years they ain't wuth pickin','--just like anybody,
you know; ain't stuck up at all, and yet he's a great man, you know. He
likes to talk with farmers and common folks; he don't go much with the
bigbugs;--one of the nicest men, and liberal with his money, too."]
* * * * *
Dom Pedro II., Emperor of Brazil, is a reader of Mr. Whittier's poems,
and an ardent admirer of his genius. He has exchanged letters with him,
both in regard to poetry and to the emancipation of slaves.[18] When
his Majesty was in this country, in 1876, he expressed a wish to meet
Mr. Whittier, and on Wednesday evening, June 14, a little reception was
arranged by Mrs. John T. Sargent at her Chestnut Street home, a few
prominent persons having been invited to be present. "When the Emperor
arrived, the other guests had already assembled. Sending up his card,
his Majesty followed it with the quickness of an enthusiastic
school-boy; and his first question, after somewhat hastily paying his
greetings, was for Mr. Whittier. The poet stepped forward to meet his
imperial admirer, who would fain have caught him in his arms and
embraced him warmly, with all the enthusiasm of the Latin race. The
diffident Friend seemed somewhat abashed at so demonstrative a greeting,
but with a cordial grasp of the hand drew Dom Pedro to the sofa, where
the two chatted easily and with the familiarity of old friends.
[Footnote 18: The Emperor has translated Whittier's "Cry of a Lost Soul"
into Portuguese, and has sent to the poet several specimens of the
Amazonian bird whose peculiar note suggested the poem.]
"The rest of the company allowed them to enjoy their _tete-a-tete_ for
some half hour, when they ventured to interrupt it, and the Emperor
joined very heartily in a general conversation."
As the Emperor was driving away, he was seen standing erect in his open
barouche, and "waving his hat, with a seeming hurrah, at the house which
held his venerable friend."[19]
[Footnote 19: Mrs. Sargent's "Sketches and Reminiscences of the Radical
Club," pp. 301, 302.]
* * * * *
As a specimen of Mr. Whittier's genial and winning epistolary style, it
is permissible to quote here a letter of his, addressed to Mrs. John T.
Sargent, and included by her in her sketches of the Radical Club:--
"AMESBURY, Wednesday Eve.
"MY DEAR MRS. SARGENT,--Few stronger inducements could be held out
to me than that in thy invitation to meet Lucretia Mott and Mary
Carpenter. But I do not see that I can possibly go to Boston this
week. None the less do I thank thee, my dear friend, in thinking of
me in connection with their visit.
"My love to Lucretia Mott, and tell her I have never forgotten the
kind welcome and generous sympathy she gave the young abolitionist
at a time when he found small favor with his 'orthodox' brethren.
What a change she and I have lived to see! I hope to meet Miss
Carpenter before she leaves us. For this, and for all thy kindness
in times past, believe me gratefully thy friend,
"JOHN G. WHITTIER."
The modesty and shyness of the poet have already been more than once
alluded to. They form his most distinctive personal or constitutional
peculiarity. It is unnecessary to quote from his writings to illustrate
what is patent to everybody who reads his books, or knows anything about
him.
The poet's personal friends know well that he has a good deal of genial,
mellow humorousness in his nature. To get an idea of it, read his
charming prose sketches of home and rural life, and such poems as the
whimsical, enigmatical "Demon of the Study," as well as "The Pumpkin,"
"To My Old Schoolmaster," and the "Double-Headed Snake of Newbury."
These poems almost equal Holmes's for rich and _riant_ humor.
It is not so well known as it ought to be that the author of
"Snow-Bound" has as deep a love of children as had Longfellow. Before
the Bearcamp House was burned to the ground in 1880, Mr. Whittier used
sometimes to come up from Amesbury with a whole bevy of little misses
about him, and at the hotel the wee folk hailed him as one of those dear
old fellows whom they always love at sight. It is said that Edward
Lear--the friend of Tennyson, and author of "Nonsense Verses" for
children--used to make a hobby-horse of himself in the castles of
Europe, and treat his little friends to a gallop over the carpet on his
back. If Mr. Whittier never got quite so far as this in juvenile
equestrianism, he has at least equally endeared himself to the children
who have had the good fortune to look into his loving eyes and enjoy the
sunshine of his smile. When sitting by the fireside, or stretched at
ease on the fragrant hay in the barn or field, or walking among the
hills, nothing pleases him better than to have an audience of young
folks eagerly listening to one of his stories. If they are engaged in a
game of archery, he will take a hand in the sport, and no one is better
pleased than he to hit the white. His unfailing kindness in answering
the many letters addressed to him by young literary aspirants, or by
others who desire his advice and help, is something admirable: no one
knows how to win hearts better than he.
* * * * *
To these notes of personal traits it only remains to add a list of the
offices of dignity and honor which have been held by Mr. Whittier.
Besides his various editorial, secretarial, and legislative positions,
he served as Overseer of Harvard College from 1858 to 1863. He was a
member of the Electoral College in 1860 and in 1864. The degree of
Master of Arts was bestowed upon him by Harvard College in 1860, and the
same degree by Haverford College in the same year. He was elected a
resident member of the American Philosophical Society in 1864, but never
accepted the honor, notwithstanding the fact that his name appeared for
two or three years on the Society's roll. In 1871 he was made a Fellow
of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
PART II.
ANALYSIS OF HIS GENIUS AND WRITINGS.
CHAPTER I.
THE MAN.
_"Not by the page word-painted
Let life be banned or sainted:
Deeper than written scroll
The colors of the soul."_
MY TRIUMPH.
To analyze and describe the _poetry_ of Whittier is a comparatively easy
task, for it is all essentially lyrical or descriptive, and is
resolvable into a few simple elements. His poetry is not profound; but
it is sweet and melodious,--now flashing with the fire of freedom and
choked with passionate indignation, and now purling and rippling through
the tranquil meadows of legend and song. Such a poem as Emerson's
"Sphinx," groaning with its weight of mystical meaning, Whittier never
wrote, nor could write. Neither is he dramatic, nor skilled in the
subtile harmonies of rhythm and metre. As an artist he is easily
comprehensible. But to fathom the _man_,--to drop one's plummet into
the infinite depths of the human mind, to peer about with one's little
candle among the dusty phantoms and spent forces of the past, and
through the endlessly crossing and interblending meshes trace
confidently up all the greater and the finer hereditary influences that
have moulded a human character,--and then discover and weigh the
post-natal forces that have acted upon that character through a long and
varied life,--this is a very difficult task, and demands in him who
would undertake it a union of historic imagination with caution and
modesty.
* * * * *
The moral in Whittier predominates over the aesthetic, the reformer over
the artist. "I am a man, and I feel that I am above all else a man."
What is the great central element in our poet's character, if it is not
that deep, never-smouldering moral fervor, that unquenchable love of
freedom, that--
"Hate of tyranny intense,
And hearty in its vehemence,"
which, mixed with the beauty and melody of his soul, gives to his pages
a delicate glow as of gold-hot iron; which crowns him the Laureate of
Freedom in his day, and imparts to his utterances the manly ring of the
prose of Milton and Hugo and the poetry of Byron, Swinburne, and
Whitman,--all poets of freedom like himself?
[Illustration: Handwriting: John G. Whittier]
And what is love of freedom but the mainspring of Democracy? And what is
Democracy but the rallying-cry of the age, the one word of the present,
the one word of the future, the word of all words, and the white,
electric beacon-light of modern life?
At the apex of modern Democracy stands Jesus of Nazareth; at its base
stand the poets and heroes of freedom of the past hundred years.
Christian Democracy has had its revolutions, its religious ferments and
revolts, and its emancipations of slaves. Quakerism is one of its
outcomes. Democracy produced George Fox; George Fox produced Quakerism;
Quakerism produced Whittier; Whittier helped destroy slavery. He could
not help doing so, for with slavery both Democracy and Quakerism are
incompatible. Whittier fought slavery as a Quaker, he has lived as a
Quaker, and written as a Quaker; he has never fully emancipated himself
from the shackles of the sect. To understand him, therefore, we must
understand his religion.
* * * * *
The principles of the sect are all summed up in the phrases _Freedom_
and the _Inner Light_. Historically considered, Quakerism is a product
of the ferment that followed the civil war in England two centuries ago.
Considered abstractly, or as a congeries of principles, it has a
sociological and a philosophical root, both of these running back into
the great tap-root, love of freedom, whose iron-tough, writhen fibres
enwrap the dark foundation rocks of human nature itself.
Sociologically speaking, Quakerism is pure democracy, an exaltation of
the majesty of the individual and of the mass of the people. It is the
pure precipitate of Christianity. It is a protest against the hypocrisy,
formalism, tyranny, of priestcraft, king-craft, and aristocracy.
Philosophically, its theory of the Inner Light is identical with the
doctrine of idealism or innate ideas, held by Descartes, Fichte,
Schelling, Cousin. It means individualism, a return to the primal
sanities of the soul. "I think, therefore I am." My thinking soul is the
ultimate source of ideas and truth. In that serene holy of holies
full-grown ideas leap into being,--subjective, _a priori_, needing no
sense-perception for their genesis.
But Transcendentalism differed from Quakerism in this: the former held
that the illumination of the mind was a natural process; but Quakerism
maintains that it is a supernatural process, the work of the "Holy
Ghost." And herein Quakerism is inferior to Transcendentalism. But it is
superior to it in that it does not believe in the infallibility of
individual intuitions, but considers the true criterion of truth to be
the universal reason, the "consensus of the competent." Yet the great
danger that pertains to all moonshiny, or subjective, systems of
philosophy is that their individualism will spindle out into wild
extravagances of theory, and foolish eccentricities of manner and dress;
and we shall find that, practically, Quakerism has as Quixotic a record
as Transcendentalism. To say that both systems have performed noble and
indispensable service in the development of mind is but to utter a
truism.
* * * * *
We may now consider a little more closely the peculiarities of doctrine
and life which characterize the Friends. The doctrine of the Inner
Light, or pure spirituality, resulted in such tenets as these: the
freedom of conscience; the soul the fountain of all truth, worthlessness
of tradition and unsanctified learning; the conscience or voice within
the judge of the Bible or Written Word; disbelief in witchcraft, ghosts,
and other superstitions; love of friends and enemies, the potency of
moral suasion, moral ideas, and as a consequence the wickedness of war,
and a belief in human progress as the result of peaceable industry;
universal enfranchisement, every man and woman may be enlightened by the
Inner Light,--hence equality of privilege, no distinction between clergy
or laity or between sex and sex,--the right of woman to develop her
entire nature as she sees fit. In the principles which define the
attitude of the Quaker toward social conventions, we find a queer jumble
of the doctrines of primitive Christianity with the ideas of individual
independence innate in the Germanic mind, and especially in the popular
mind.[20] The Christian gospel of love forbids the Quakers to
countenance war, capital punishment, imprisonment for debt, slavery,
suppressment of the right of free speech and the right of petition.
Their doctrine of equality in virtue of spiritual illumination forbids
them to remove their hats in presence of any human being, even a king;
leads them to avoid the use of the plural "you," as savoring of
man-worship, and to refuse to employ a hired priesthood. Their doctrine
of pure spirituality is inconsistent with sacerdotal rites and
mummeries, such as baptism, the eucharist, forms of common prayer, etc.
Music, poetry, painting, and dancing also have a worldly savor and tend
to distract the mind from its spiritual life. So do rich and gaudy
robes: we must therefore have simplicity of dress. Hear William Penn on
this subject:[21]--
"I say, if sin brought the first coat, poor Adam's offspring have
little reason to be proud or curious in their clothes.... It is all
one as if a man who had lost his nose by a scandalous distemper,
should take pains to set out a false one, in such shape and splendor
as should give the greater occasion for all to gaze upon him; as if
he would tell them he had lost his nose, for fear they would think
he had not. But would a wise man be in love with a false nose,
though ever so rich, and however finely made?"
[Footnote 20: The same sterling material that went to the making of the
Quaker went also to the making of the Puritan farmer-and-artisan victors
of Naseby, and Worcester, and Marston Moor. The same faults
characterized each class. In stiff-backed independence and scorn of the
gilt-edged poetry of conventional manners, and in the absurd extreme to
which they carried that independence and scorn, the Quaker and the
Puritan were alike. Only the Quaker out-puritaned the Puritan,--was much
more consistent in his fanatical purism, scrawny asceticism, and
contempt for distinguished manners and the noble imaginative arts.]
[Footnote 21: In his work "No Cross, No Crown."]
* * * * *
A natural corollary of the Friends' doctrine of inward supernatural
illumination is their habit of silent worship, or silent waiting.[22]
It is probable that this feature of their religious gatherings has done
much to cultivate that peculiar tranquillity of demeanor which
distinguishes them.[23] They meet the burdens, bereavements, and
disappointments of life with a placid equanimity in strong antithesis to
the often passionate grief and rebellion of other classes of religious
people. Finally, we may add to the list of their characteristics their
great moral sincerity. "With calm resoluteness they tell you your faults
face to face, and without exciting your ill-will."
[Footnote 22: Their ideas on this subject are very well stated in the
following words taken from a Quaker pamphlet by Mary Brook: "Solomon
saith, 'The preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the
tongue, are from the Lord.' If the Lord alone can prepare the heart,
stir it up, or incline it towards unfeigned holiness, how can any man
approach him acceptably, till his heart be prepared by him?--and how can
he know this preparation except he wait in silence to feel it?"]
[Footnote 23: See Appendix I.]
The objections to the Quakerism of our day are that it is retractile,
stationary, negative; it is selfish, narrow, ascetic, tame; it has no
iron in its blood; it rarely adds anything to the world's thought. The
Quakers are a hopelessly antiquated sect, a dying branch almost wholly
severed from connection with the living forces of the tree of modern
society. There are, it is true, a goodly number of liberal Quakers, who,
in discarding the peculiar costume of the time of Charles II., which
many of them even yet wear, have also thrown off the intellectual
mummy-robes of the sect. Many adopt the tenets of Unitarianism, or make
that religious body the stepping-stone to complete emancipation from an
obsolete system of thought. But the mass of them are immovable. They
have been characterized substantially in the following words by Mr. A.
M. Powell, himself a Quaker by birth, and an unwilling witness to the
faults of a system of doctrines in which he sees much to admire:--
"In its merely sectarian aspect, Quakerism is as uninteresting,
narrow, timid, selfish, and conservative as is mere sectarianism
under any other name. The Quakers have little comprehension of the
meaning of Quakerism beyond a blind observance of the peculiarities
of dress and speech and the formality of the Meeting. They cling to
the now meaningless protests of the past. They are inaccessible to
new conceptions of truth. They have dishonored the important
fundamental principle [of the Inner Light] and tarnished the
Society's good name by subordinating it to narrow views of religion,
to commercial selfishness, and to the prevalent palsying
conservatism of the outside world."[24]
[Footnote 24: Mrs. John T. Sargent's "Sketches and Reminiscences of the
Radical Club."]
* * * * *
In all that is said in these pages by way of criticism of the Quakers,
reference is had solely to their doctrines as a system of thought. Of
their sweet and beautiful _lives_ it is hardly necessary to speak at
length. Volumes might be filled with instances of their large-hearted
benevolence and personal self-sacrifice in care for others. The
loveliness of their lives is like a beautiful perfume in the society in
which they move. As you see the Quaker women of Philadelphia, with their
pure, tranquil faces, and plain, immaculate dress, moving about among
the greedy and vile-mannered non-Quaker _canaille_ of that democratic
city, they seem like Christian and Faithful amid the crowds of Vanity
Fair. Their faces are like a benediction, and you thank heaven for them.
The liberal Friends in America have many great and noble names on their
roll of honor. And surely a sect that has produced such characters as
Lucretia Mott, John Bright, and John G. Whittier, must win our
intellectual respect. But it is only because these persons, like Milton,
were in most respects above their sect that we admire them. There are
proofs manifold, however, throughout the prose and poetry of Whittier
that he has nominally remained within the pale of Quakerism all his
days. Doubtless such a course was essential to the very existence in him
of poetic inspiration. His genius is wholly lyrical. A song or lyric is
the outgushing of pure emotion. Especially in the case of the religious
and ethical lyrist is faith life, and doubt death. Doubt, in Whittier's
case, would have meant the cessation of his songs. To break away
entirely from the faith of his fathers would have chilled his
inspiration. He has not, it is true, escaped the conflict with doubt. As
we shall see, no man has had a severer struggle to reconcile his faith
with the terror and mystery of life. But, although his religious views
have been liberalized by science, yet he has never ceased to retain a
hearty sympathy with, and belief in, the Quaker principles of the Inner
Light, silent waiting, etc.
That he has remained within the pale of Quakerism has been an injury to
him as well as a help. It makes him obtrude his sectarianism too
frequently, especially in his prose writings. By the very nature of the
creed, he must either be blind to its faults, or constantly put on the
defensive against the least assault, from whatever quarter it may come.
When he dons the garb of the sectary, he naturally becomes weakened, and
loses his chief charm. We see then that he is a man hampered by a creed
which forbids a catholic sympathy with human nature. He is shut up in
the narrow field of sectarian morals and religion. He cannot, for
example, enter, by historical imagination, into poetical sympathy with
the gorgeous ritual and dreamy beauty of a European cathedral service.
And yet so pure, gentle, and sweet is his nature that it is hard to
censure him for this peculiarity. It is regret rather than censure that
we feel, regret that he has been so bound by circumstances that
prevented his breaking wholly away from hampering limitations, and to be
always, what he so often is, the strong and sweet-voiced spokesman of
the heart of humanity.
Let us hear his gentle confessions of faith. In the autobiographical
poem, "My Namesake," we read:--
"He worshipped as his fathers did,
And kept the faith of childish days,
And, howsoe'er he strayed or slid,
He loved the good old ways.
The simple tastes, the kindly traits,
The tranquil air, and gentle speech,
The silence of the soul that waits
For more than man to teach."
In "The Meeting" he has given us an "Apologia pro Vita Sua,"--a defence
of his religious habits. He says he is accustomed to meet with the
Friends twice a week in the little "Meeting" at Amesbury, chiefly for
two reasons: first, because in the silent, unadorned house, with
"pine-laid floor," his religious communings are not distracted by
outward things as they would be if he worshipped always amid the
solitudes of nature; and, secondly, he finds in "The Meeting" a
heart-solace in the memories of dear ones passed away, who once sat by
his side there. He says, in reference to the Quaker service:--
"I ask no organ's soulless breath
To drone the themes of life and death,
No altar candle-lit by day,
No ornate wordsman's rhetoric-play,
No cool philosophy to teach
Its bland audacities of speech,
* * * * *
No pulpit hammered by the fist
Of loud-asserting dogmatist."
In "Memories" he says:--
"Thine the Genevan's sternest creed,
While answers to my spirit's need
The Derby dalesman's simple truth.
For thee, the priestly rite and prayer,
And holy day and solemn psalm;
For me, the silent reverence where
My brethren gather slow and calm."
There are two epochs in the religious or philosophical development of
Whittier. The first--that of simple piety unclouded by doubt, the epoch
of unhesitating acceptance of the popular mythology--seems to have
lasted until about 1850, or the period of early Darwinism and
Spencerianism,--the most momentous epoch in the religious history of
the world. This pivotal point is very well marked by the publication, in
1853, of "The Chapel of the Hermits" and "Questions of Life." It is now
that harrowing doubt begins, and restless striving to retain the faith
amid new conditions and a vastly widened mental horizon.
Transcendentalism, too, had just passed the noon meridian of its
splendor. Emerson had written many of his exquisite philosophical poems,
and Parker had blown his clear bugle-call to a higher religious life. It
is evident that Whittier was--as, indeed, he could not help
being--profoundly moved by the new spirit of the times.
With Transcendentalism he must have had large sympathy, owing to the
similarity of its principles to those of Quakerism. And that he was
profoundly agitated by the revelations of science his poetry shows. In
"My Soul and I" (a poem remarkable for its searching subjective
analysis), and in the poem "Follen," he had given expression to
religious doubt, over which, as always in his case, faith was
triumphant. But it is in "The Chapel of the Hermits" and succeeding
poems that he first gave free and full utterance to the doubt and
struggle of soul that was not his alone, but which was felt by all
around him. In respect of doubt "My Soul and I" and "Questions of Life"
resemble "Faust," as well as Tennyson's "Two Voices" and the "In
Memoriam."
"Life's mystery wrapped him like a cloud;
He heard far voices mock his own,
The sweep of wings unseen, the loud,
Long roll of waves unknown.
The arrows of his straining sight
Fell quenched in darkness; priest and sage
Like lost guides calling left and right,
Perplexed his doubtful age.
Like childhood, listening for the sound
Of its dropped pebbles in the well,
All vainly down the dark profound
His brief-lined plummet fell."
_My Namesake_
The "Questions of Life" are such as these:--
"I am: but little more I know!
Whence came I? Whither do I go?
A centred self, which feels and is;
A cry between the silences."
* * * * *
"This conscious life,--is it the same
Which thrills the universal frame?"
* * * * *
"Do bird and blossom feel, like me,
Life's many-folded mystery,--
The wonder which it is _To Be_?
Or stand I severed and distinct,
From Nature's chain of life unlinked?"
Such questions as these he confesses himself unable to answer. He
shrinks back terrified from the task. He will not dare to trifle with
their bitter logic. He will take refuge in faith; he will trust the
Unseen; let us cease foolish questioning, and live wisely and well our
present lives. He comes out of the struggle purified and chastened,
still holding by his faith in God and virtue. A good deal of the old
Quakerism is gone,--the belief in hell, in the Messianic and atonement
machinery, in local and special avatars, etc. Again and again, in his
later poems, he asserts the humanity of Christ and the co-equal divinity
of all men: see "Miriam," for example. His opinion about hell he
embodies in the sweet little poem, "The Minister's Daughter," published
in "The King's Missive." In short, his religion is a simple and
trustful theism. But there is no evidence that he has ever incorporated
into his mind the principles of the development-science,--the evolution
of man, the correlation of forces, the development of the universe
through its own inner divine potency; or, in fine, any of the
unteleological, unanthropomorphic explanations of things which are
necessitated by science, and admitted by advanced thinkers, both in and
out of the Churches.
As witnesses to his trustful attitude, we may select such a cluster of
stanzas as this:--
"Yet, sometimes glimpses on my sight,
Through present wrong, the eternal right;
And, step by step, since time began,
I see the steady gain of man;
That all of good the past hath had
Remains to make our own time glad,--
Our common daily life divine,
And every land a Palestine.
* * * * *
Through the harsh noises of our day
A low, sweet prelude finds its way;
Through clouds of doubt, and creeds of fear,
A light is breaking calm and clear."
_Chapel of the Hermits_
"Yet, in the maddening maze of things,
And tossed by storm and flood,
To one fixed stake my spirit clings;
I know that God is good!
* * * * *
"I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care."
_The Eternal Goodness._
"When on my day of life the night is falling,
And in the winds from unsunned spaces blown,
I hear far voices out of darkness calling
My feet to paths unknown,
Thou who hast made my home of life so pleasant,
Leave not its tenant when its walls decay;
O love divine, O Helper ever present,
Be Thou my strength and stay!"
_At Last._
"Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways!
Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise."
_The Brewing of Soma._
But Whittier is as remarkable for his faith in man as for his faith in
God. He is in the highest degree patriotic, American. He loves America
because it is the land of freedom. It has been charged against him that
he is no true American poet, but a Quaker poet. The American, it is
said, is eager, aggressive, high-spirited, combative; the Quaker,
subdued and phlegmatic. The American is loud and boastful and daring and
reckless; the Quaker, cautious, timid, secretive, and frugal. This is
undoubtedly true of the classes as types, but it is far from being true
of Whittier personally. He has blood militant in him. He comes of
Puritan as well as Quaker stock. The Greenleafs and the Batchelders were
not Quakers. The reader will perhaps remember the Lieutenant Greenleaf,
already mentioned, who fought through the entire Civil War in
England.[25] But his writings alone furnish ample proof of his martial
spirit. The man and the Quaker struggle within him for the mastery; and
the man is, on the whole, triumphant. Whenever his Quakerism permits, he
stands out a normal man and a genuine American. As Lowell says:--
"There is Whittier, whose swelling and vehement heart
Strains the strait-breasted drab of the Quaker apart,
And reveals the live Man still supreme and erect
Underneath the bemummying wrappers of sect."
[Footnote 25: Hear Whittier himself on the subject:--
"Without intending any disparagement of my peaceable ancestry for many
generations, I have still strong suspicions that somewhat of the old
Norman blood, something of the grim Berserker spirit, has been
bequeathed to me. How else can I account for the intense childish
eagerness with which I listened to the stories of old campaigners who
sometimes fought their battles over again in my hearing? Why did I, in
my young fancy, go up with Jonathan, the son of Saul, to smite the
garrisoned Philistines of Michmash, or with the fierce son of Nun
against the cities of Canaan? Why was Mr. Greatheart, in Pilgrim's
Progress, my favorite character? What gave such fascination to the grand
Homeric encounter between Christian and Apollyon in the valley? Why did
I follow Ossian over Morven's battle-fields, exulting in the
vulture-screams of the blind scald over his fallen enemies? Still,
later, why did the newspapers furnish me with subjects for hero-worship
in the half-demented Sir Gregor McGregor, and Ypsilanti at the head of
his knavish Greeks? I can account for it only on the supposition that
the mischief was inherited,--an heirloom from the old sea-kings of the
ninth century."--_Prose Works, II._, 390, 391.]
If anybody will take the trouble to glance over the complete works of
Whittier, he or she will find that one of the predominant
characteristics of his writings is their indigenous quality, their
national spirit. Indeed, this is almost too notorious to need mention.
He, if any one, merits the proud title of "A Representative American
Poet." His whole soul is on fire with love of country. As in the case
of Whitman, his country is his bride, and upon it he has showered all
the affectional wealth of his nature. The Quaker may be too obtrusive in
his prose writings, but it is not so in the greater and better portion
of his poetry. When the rush and glow of genuine poetical inspiration
seize him, he invariably rises in spirit far above the weltering and
eddying dust-clouds of faction and sect into the serene atmosphere of
genuine patriotism. Read his "Last Walk in Autumn," where he says:--
"Home of my heart! to me more fair
Than gay Versailles or Windsor's halls,
The painted, shingly town-house where
The freeman's vote for Freedom falls!"
Read his "Eve of Election":--
"Not lightly fall
Beyond recall
The written scrolls a breath can float;
The crowning fact,
The kingliest act
Of Freedom is the freeman's vote!"
Or take "After Election," a poem that cannot be read without a thrill of
the nerves and a leaping of the heart. You have concentrated in that
wild lyric burst the purest essence of democratic patriotism,--the
trembling anxiety and yearning of a mother-heart. It is a poem
celebrating a victory of peace with all the fiery energy of a war-ode (a
significant fact that the advocates of gory war, as a source of poetic
inspiration, would do well to ponder):--
"The day's sharp strife is ended now,
Our work is done, God knoweth how!
As on the thronged, unrestful town
The patience of the moon looks down,
I wait to hear, beside the wire,
The voices of its tongues of fire.
Slow, doubtful, faint, they seem at first:
Be strong, my heart, to know the worst!
Hark!--there the Alleghanies spoke;
That sound from lake and prairie broke,
That sunset gun of triumph rent
The silence of a continent!
That signal from Nebraska sprung,
This, from Nevada's mountain tongue!
Is that thy answer, strong and free,
O loyal heart of Tennessee?
What strange, glad voice is that which calls
From Wagner's grave and Sumter's walls?
From Mississippi's fountain-head
A sound as of the bison's tread!
There rustled freedom's Charter Oak!
In that wild burst the Ozarks spoke!
Cheer answers cheer from rise to set
Of sun. We have a country yet!"
To sum up now our analysis of the poet's character. We have seen that
the central trait of his mind is love of freedom. (Even his religion,
which is so profound an element in his nature, and so all-pervasive in
his writings, will be found, on a deep analysis, to be a yearning for
freedom from the trappings of sense and time, in order to attain to a
spiritual union with the Infinite.) This love of freedom, this hatred of
oppression, intensified by persecution, both ancestral and personal,
stimulated by contact with Puritan democracy, as well as
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