Personal Sketches and Tributes, Part 2, From Volume VI.,
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John Greenleaf Whittier >> Personal Sketches and Tributes, Part 2, From Volume VI.,
The incident at her burial is alluded to in a sonnet written by
William P. Andrews:--
"Freedom! she knew thy summons, and obeyed
That clarion voice as yet scarce heard of men;
Gladly she joined thy red-cross service when
Honor and wealth must at thy feet be laid
Onward with faith undaunted, undismayed
By threat or scorn, she toiled with hand and brain
To make thy cause triumphant, till the chain
Lay broken, and for her the freedmen prayed.
Nor yet she faltered; in her tender care
She took us all; and wheresoe'er she went,
Blessings, and Faith, and Beauty followed there,
E'en to the end, where she lay down content;
And with the gold light of a life more fair,
Twin bows of promise o'er her grave were blest."
The letters in this collection constitute but a small part of her large
correspondence. They have been gathered up and arranged by the hands of
dear relatives and friends as a fitting memorial of one who wrote from
the heart as well as the head, and who held her literary reputation
subordinate always to her philanthropic aim to lessen the sum of human
suffering, and to make the world better for her living. If they
sometimes show the heat and impatience of a zealous reformer, they may
well be pardoned in consideration of the circumstances under which they
were written, and of the natural indignation of a generous nature in view
of wrong and oppression. If she touched with no very reverent hand the
garment hem of dogmas, and held to the spirit of Scripture rather than
its letter, it must be remembered that she lived in a time when the Bible
was cited in defence of slavery, as it is now in Utah in support of
polygamy; and she may well be excused for some degree of impatience with
those who, in the tithing of mint and anise and cummin, neglected the
weightier matters of the law of justice and mercy.
Of the men and women directly associated with the beloved subject of this
sketch, but few are now left to recall her single-hearted devotion to
apprehended duty, her unselfish generosity, her love of all beauty and
harmony, and her trustful reverence, free from pretence and cant. It is
not unlikely that the surviving sharers of her love and friendship may
feel the inadequateness of this brief memorial, for I close it with the
consciousness of having failed to fully delineate the picture which my
memory holds of a wise and brave, but tender and loving woman, of whom it
might well have been said, in the words of the old Hebrew text, "Many,
daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all."
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
On the occasion of the seventy-fifth birthday of Dr. Holmes _The
Critic of New York_ collected personal tributes from friends and
admirers of that author. My own contribution was as follows:--
Poet, essayist, novelist, humorist, scientist, ripe scholar, and wise
philosopher, if Dr. Holmes does not, at the present time, hold in popular
estimation the first place in American literature, his rare versatility
is the cause. In view of the inimitable prose writer, we forget the
poet; in our admiration of his melodious verse, we lose sight of _Elsie
Venner_ and _The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_. We laugh over his wit
and humor, until, to use his own words,
"We suspect the azure blossom that unfolds upon a shoot,
As if Wisdom's old potato could not flourish at its root;"
and perhaps the next page melts us into tears by a pathos only equalled
by that of Sterne's sick Lieutenant. He is Montaigne and Bacon under one
hat. His varied qualities would suffice for the mental furnishing of
half a dozen literary specialists.
To those who have enjoyed the privilege of his intimate acquaintance, the
man himself is more than the author. His genial nature, entire freedom
from jealousy or envy, quick tenderness, large charity, hatred of sham,
pretence, and unreality, and his reverent sense of the eternal and
permanent have secured for him something more and dearer than literary
renown,--the love of all who know him. I might say much more: I could
not say less. May his life be long in the land.
Amesbury, Mass., 8th Month, 18, 1884.
LONGFELLOW
Written to the chairman of the committee of arrangements for
unveiling the bust of Longfellow at Portland, Maine, on the poet's
birthday, February 27, 1885.
I am sorry it is not in my power to accept the invitation of the
committee to be present at the unveiling of the bust of Longfellow on the
27th instant, or to write anything worthy of the occasion in metrical
form.
The gift of the Westminster Abbey committee cannot fail to add another
strong tie of sympathy between two great English-speaking peoples. And
never was gift more fitly bestowed. The city of Portland--the poet's
birthplace, "beautiful for situation," looking from its hills on the
scenery he loved so well, Deering's Oaks, the many-islanded bay and far
inland mountains, delectable in sunset--needed this sculptured
representation of her illustrious son, and may well testify her joy and
gratitude at its reception, and repeat in so doing the words of the
Hebrew prophet: "O man, greatly beloved! thou shalt stand in thy place."
OLD NEWBURY.
Letter to Samuel J. Spalding, D. D., on the occasion of the
celebration of the 250th anniversary of the settlement of Newbury.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I am sorry that I cannot hope to be with you on the
250th anniversary of the settlement of old Newbury. Although I can
hardly call myself a son of the ancient town, my grandmother, Sarah
Greenleaf, of blessed memory, was its daughter, and I may therefore claim
to be its grandson. Its genial and learned historian, Joshua Coffin, was
my first school-teacher, and all my life I have lived in sight of its
green hills and in hearing of its Sabbath bells. Its wealth of natural
beauty has not been left unsung by its own poets, Hannah Gould, Mrs.
Hopkins, George Lunt, and Edward A. Washburn, while Harriet Prescott
Spofford's Plum Island Sound is as sweet and musical as Tennyson's Brook.
Its history and legends are familiar to me. I seem to have known all its
old worthies, whose descendants have helped to people a continent, and
who have carried the name and memories of their birthplace to the Mexican
gulf and across the Rocky Mountains to the shores of the Pacific. They
were the best and selectest of Puritanism, brave, honest, God-fearing men
and women; and if their creed in the lapse of time has lost something of
its vigor, the influence of their ethical righteousness still endures.
The prophecy of Samuel Sewall that Christians should be found in Newbury
so long as pigeons shall roost on its oaks and Indian corn grows in
Oldtown fields remains still true, and we trust will always remain so.
Yet, as of old, the evil personage sometimes intrudes himself into
company too good for him. It was said in the witchcraft trials of 1692
that Satan baptized his converts at Newbury Falls, the scene, probably,
of one of Hawthorne's weird _Twice Told Tales_; and there is a tradition
that, in the midst of a heated controversy between one of Newbury's
painful ministers and his deacon, who (anticipating Garrison by a
century) ventured to doubt the propriety of clerical slaveholding, the
Adversary made his appearance in the shape of a black giant stalking
through Byfield. It was never, I believe, definitely settled whether he
was drawn there by the minister's zeal in defence of slavery or the
deacon's irreverent denial of the minister's right and duty to curse
Canaan in the person of his negro.
Old Newbury has sometimes been spoken of as ultra-conservative and
hostile to new ideas and progress, but this is not warranted by its
history. More than two centuries ago, when Major Pike, just across the
river, stood up and denounced in open town meeting the law against
freedom of conscience and worship, and was in consequence fined and
outlawed, some of Newbury's best citizens stood bravely by him. The town
took no part in the witchcraft horror, and got none of its old women and
town charges hanged for witches, "Goody" Morse had the spirit rappings in
her house two hundred years earlier than the Fox girls did, and somewhat
later a Newbury minister, in wig and knee-buckles, rode, Bible in hand,
over to Hampton to lay a ghost who had materialized himself and was
stamping up and down stairs in his military boots.
Newbury's ingenious citizen, Jacob Perkins, in drawing out diseases with
his metallic tractors, was quite as successful as modern "faith and mind"
doctors. The Quakers, whipped at Hampton on one hand and at Salem on the
other, went back and forth unmolested in Newbury, for they could make no
impression on its iron-clad orthodoxy. Whitefield set the example, since
followed by the Salvation Army, of preaching in its streets, and now lies
buried under one of its churches with almost the honors of sainthood.
William Lloyd Garrison was born in Newbury. The town must be regarded as
the Alpha and Omega of anti-slavery agitation, beginning with its
abolition deacon and ending with Garrison. Puritanism, here as
elsewhere, had a flavor of radicalism; it had its humorous side, and its
ministers did not hesitate to use wit and sarcasm, like Elijah before the
priests of Baal. As, for instance, the wise and learned clergyman,
Puritan of the Puritans, beloved and reverenced by all, who has just laid
down the burden of his nearly one hundred years, startled and shamed his
brother ministers who were zealously for the enforcement of the Fugitive
Slave Law, by preparing for them a form of prayer for use while engaged
in catching runaway slaves.
I have, I fear, dwelt too long upon the story and tradition of the old
town, which will doubtless be better told by the orator of the day. The
theme is to me full of interest. Among the blessings which I would
gratefully own is the fact that my lot has been cast in the beautiful
valley of the Merrimac, within sight of Newbury steeples, Plum Island,
and Crane Neck and Pipe Stave hills.
Let me, in closing, pay something of the debt I have owed from boyhood,
by expressing a sentiment in which I trust every son of the ancient town
will unite: Joshua Coffin, historian of Newbury, teacher, scholar, and
antiquarian, and one of the earliest advocates of slave emancipation. May
his memory be kept green, to use the words of Judge Sewall, "so long as
Plum island keeps its post and a sturgeon leaps in Merrimac River."
Amesbury, 6th Month, 1885.
SCHOOLDAY REMEMBRANCES.
To Rev. Charles Wingate, Hon. James H. Carleton, Thomas B. Garland,
Esq., Committee of Students of Haverhill Academy:
DEAR FRIENDS,--I was most agreeably surprised last evening by receiving
your carefully prepared and beautiful Haverhill Academy Album, containing
the photographs of a large number of my old friends and schoolmates. I
know of nothing which could have given me more pleasure. If the faces
represented are not so unlined and ruddy as those which greeted each
other at the old academy, on the pleasant summer mornings so long ago,
when life was before us, with its boundless horizon of possibilities,
yet, as I look over them, I see that, on the whole, Time has not been
hard with us, but has touched us gently. The hieroglyphics he has traced
upon us may, indeed, reveal something of the cares, trials, and sorrows
incident to humanity, but they also tell of generous endeavor, beneficent
labor, developed character, and the slow, sure victories of patience and
fortitude. I turn to them with the proud satisfaction of feeling that I
have been highly favored in my early companions, and that I have not been
disappointed in my school friendships. The two years spent at the
academy I have always reckoned among the happiest of my life, though I
have abundant reason for gratitude that, in the long, intervening years,
I have been blessed beyond my deserving.
It has been our privilege to live in an eventful period, and to witness
wonderful changes since we conned our lessons together. How little we
then dreamed of the steam car, electric telegraph, and telephone! We
studied the history and geography of a world only half explored. Our
country was an unsolved mystery. "The Great American Desert" was an
awful blank on our school maps. We have since passed through the
terrible ordeal of civil war, which has liberated enslaved millions, and
made the union of the States an established fact, and no longer a
doubtful theory. If life is to be measured not so much by years as by
thoughts, emotion, knowledge, action, and its opportunity of a free
exercise of all our powers and faculties, we may congratulate ourselves
upon really outliving the venerable patriarchs. For myself, I would not
exchange a decade of my own life for a century of the Middle Ages, or a
"cycle of Cathay."
Let me, gentlemen, return my heartiest thanks to you, and to all who have
interested themselves in the preparation of the Academy Album, and assure
you of my sincere wishes for your health and happiness.
OAK KNOLL, DANVERS, 12th Month, 25, 1885.
EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE.
I have been pained to learn of the decease of nay friend of many years,
Edwin P. Whipple. Death, however expected, is always something of a
surprise, and in his case I was not prepared for it by knowing of any
serious failure of his health. With the possible exception of Lowell and
Matthew Arnold, he was the ablest critical essayist of his time, and the
place he has left will not be readily filled.
Scarcely inferior to Macaulay in brilliance of diction and graphic
portraiture, he was freer from prejudice and passion, and more loyal to
the truth of fact and history. He was a thoroughly honest man. He wrote
with conscience always at his elbow, and never sacrificed his real
convictions for the sake of epigram and antithesis. He instinctively
took the right side of the questions that came before him for decision,
even when by so doing he ranked himself with the unpopular minority. He
had the manliest hatred of hypocrisy and meanness; but if his language
had at times the severity of justice, it was never merciless. He "set
down naught in malice."
Never blind to faults, he had a quick and sympathetic eye for any real
excellence or evidence of reserved strength in the author under
discussion.
He was a modest man, sinking his own personality out of sight, and he
always seemed to me more interested in the success of others than in his
own. Many of his literary contemporaries have had reason to thank him
not only for his cordial recognition and generous praise, but for the
firm and yet kindly hand which pointed out deficiencies and errors of
taste and judgment. As one of those who have found pleasure and profit
in his writings in the past, I would gratefully commend them to the
generation which survives him. His _Literature of the Age of Elizabeth_
is deservedly popular, but there are none of his Essays which will not
repay a careful study. "What works of Mr. Baxter shall I read?" asked
Boswell of Dr. Johnson. "Read any of them," was the answer, "for they
are all good."
He will have an honored place in the history of American literature. But
I cannot now dwell upon his authorship while thinking of him as the
beloved member of a literary circle now, alas sadly broken. I recall the
wise, genial companion and faithful friend of nearly half a century, the
memory of whose words and acts of kindness moistens my eyes as I write.
It is the inevitable sorrow of age that one's companions must drop away
on the right hand and the left with increasing frequency, until we are
compelled to ask with Wordsworth,--
"Who next shall fall and disappear?"
But in the case of him who has just passed from us, we have the
satisfaction of knowing that his life-work has been well and faithfully
done, and that he leaves behind him only friends.
DANVERS, 6th Month, 18, 1886.