Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D Part 14

SHEFFIELD, July 24, 1852.

MY DEAR BELLOWS,--Amidst all this lovely quiet, and the beautiful outlooks on every side to the horizon, my thoughts seem ever to mingle with the universe; they bear me beyond the horizon of life, and your reflections, therefore, fall as a touching strain upon the tenor of mine. Experience, life, man, seem to me ever higher and more awful; and though there is constantly intervening the crushing thought of what a poor thing I am, and my life is, and I am sometimes disheartened and tempted to be reckless, and to say, "It's no matter what this ephemeral being, this pa.s.sing dust and wind, shall come to,"--yet ever, like the little eddying whirlwinds that I see in the street before me, this dusty breath of life struggles upward. I am very sad and glorious by turns; and sometimes, when mortality is heavy and hope is weak, I take refuge in simple resignation, and say: "Thou Infinite Goodness! I can desire nothing better than that thy will be done. But oh! give me to live forever!--eternal rises that prayer. Give me to look upon thy glory and thy glorious creatures forever!" What an awful anomaly in our being were it, if that prayer were to be denied! And what would the memory of friends be, so sweet and solemn now,--what would it be, but as the taper which the angel of death extinguishes in this earthly quagmire?

After you went away, I read more carefully the splendid article on the "Ethics of Christendom;" [FN: From the "Westminster Review," vol. lvii.

p. 182, or, in the American edition, p. 98.] and I confess that my whole moral being shrinks from the position [230] of the writer (which brings down the majesty of the Gospel almost to the level of Millerism), that Jesus supposed the end of the world to be at hand, and that he should come in the clouds of heaven, and be seated with his disciples on airy thrones, to judge the nations. No; the false double ethics of the pulpit, which I have labored, though less successfully, all my life to expose, has its origin, I believe, in later superst.i.tion, and not in the teachings of Christ.

The pa.s.sages referred to by the writer, I conceive to be more imaginative, and less formalistic and logical, than he supposes.

To the Same.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 28, 1852.

MY DEAR BELLOWS,--I will wish you all a happy New York, (ahem! you see how naturally and affectionately my pen turns out the old beloved name)--a happy New Year. After all, it isn't so bad; a happy New Year and a happy New York must be very near neighbors with you. I sometimes wish they could have continued to be so with me, for those I have learnt to live with most easily and happily are generally in New York. Our beloved artists, the goodly Club, were a host to me by themselves. I wish I could be a host to them sometimes.

Well, heigho! (pretty e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n to come into a New Year's greeting--but they come everywhere!) Heigho! I say submissively --things meet and match us, perhaps, better than we mean. I am not a clergyman--perhaps was never meant for one. I question our position more and more. We are not fairly thrown into the field of life. We do not fairly take the free and [231] un.o.bstructed pressure of all surrounding society. We are hedged around with artificial barriers, built up by superst.i.tious reverence and false respect. We are cased in peculiarity.

We meet and mingle with trouble and sorrow,--enough of them, too much,--but our treatment of them gets hackneyed, worn, weary, and reluctant. They grapple with the world's strife and trial, but it is an armor. Our excision from the world's pleasure and intercourse, I doubt, is not good for us. We are a sort of moral eunuchs.

To his Daughter Mary.

WASHINGTON, June 19, 1853.

THOUGH it is very hot,

Though bladed corn faint in the noontide ray, And thermometers stand at ninety-three, And fingers feel like sticks of sealing-wax, Yet I will write thee.

This evening I saw Professor Henry, who said he saw you at the Century Club last Wednesday evening; that le did not speak to you, but that you seemed to be enjoying yourself. I felt like shaking hands with him on the occasion, but restrained myself. But where are you, child, this blessed minute? . . . I would have you to know that it is a merit to write to somebody who is nowhere. Why in thunder don't you write to me?

If I were n.o.body, I am somewhere. I hope you are enjoying yourself, but I can't think you can, conscientiously, without telling me of it.

My love to the Bryants. I hope it may greet the Grand Panjandrum himself. Tell Mrs. C. I should write to her, but I have too much regard for her to think of [232] such a thing with the thermometer at 93 degrees, and that it is as much as I can do to keep cool at any time, when I think of her.

To Mrs. David Lane.

SHEFFIELD, Sept. 2, 1853.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--Do you remember when we were walking once in Weston, that we saw the carpenter putting sheets of tarred paper under the clapboarding of a house? I want you to ask your father if he thinks that a good plan; if he knows of any ill effect, as, for instance, there being a smell of tar about the house, or the tar's running down between the clapboards. If he thinks well of it (that is question first); question second is, What kind of paper is used? and question third, Is it simply boiled tar into which the paper is dipped? I state precis.e.m.e.nt, and number the queries, because n.o.body ever yet answered all the questions of a letter. I hope in your reply you will achieve a distinction that will send down your name to future times. . . .

To the Same.

Sept. 9, 1853.

You have achieved immortal honor; the answers, Numbers 1, 2, and 3, are most satisfactory. I have thoughts of sending your letter to the Crystal Palace. I am much obliged to your father, and I will avail my-self of his kindness, if I should find it necessary, next rear, when I may be building an addition here.

I am sorry things don't go smoothly with-; but I guess nothing ever did go on without some hitches, that s, on this earth. It is curious, by the bye, how we go in blindly, imagining that things go smoothly with many [233] people around us,--with some at least,--with some Wellington, or Webster, or Astor, when the truth is, they never do with anybody. To take our inevitable part with imperfection, in ourselves, in others, in things,--to take our part, I say, in this discipline of imperfection, without surprise or impatience or discouragement, as a part of the fixed order of things, and no more to be wondered at or quarrelled with than drought or frost or flood,--this is a wisdom beyond the most of us, farther off from us, I believe, than any other. Ahem! when you told me of those rocks in the foundation of the house, you did not expect this "sermon in stones.". . .

To William Cullen Bryant.

SHEFFIELD, May 13, 1854.

DEAR EDITOR,--Are we to have fastened upon us this nuisance that is spreading itself among all the newspapers,--I mean the abominable smell caused by the sizing or something else in the manufacture? For a long time it was the "Christian Register" alone that had it, and I used to throw it out of the window to air. Now I perceive the same thing in other papers, and at length it has reached the "Post." Somebody is manufacturing a villanous article for the paper-makers (I state the fact with an awful and portentous generality.) But do you not perceive what the nuisance is? It is a stink, sir. I am obliged to sit on the windward side of the paper while I read its interesting contents, and to wash my hands afterwards--immediately.

But, to change the subject,--yes, toto aelo,-for I turn to something as fragrant as a bed of roses,--will [234] not you and Mrs. Bryant come to see us in June? Do. It is a long time since I have sat on a green bank with you, or anywhere else. I want some of your company, and talk, and wisdom. The first Lowell Lecture I wrote was after a talk with you here, three or four years ago. Come, I pray, and give me an impulse for another course. Bring Julia, too. I will give her my little green room.

I shall be down in New York on business a fortnight hence, and shall see you, and see if we can't fix upon a time.

With all our loves to you all,

Yours as ever,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

Mr. Dewey's father died at the very beginning of his son's career, in 1821, and early in 1855 he lost also his mother from her honored place at his fireside. He was, nevertheless, obliged to leave home in March, to fulfil an engagement made the previous autumn to lecture in Charleston, S. C.

To his Daughter Mary.

CHARLESTON, March 16, 1855.

I HAVE been trying four hours to sleep. No dervish ever turned round more times at a bout, than I have turned over in these four hours.

I dined out to-day, at Judge King's, and afterwards we went to the celebrated Club 3 and, whether it is that I was seven consecutive hours in company, or that I drank a cup of coffee,

The reason why, I cannot tell, But this I know full well, [235] that here I am, at three o'clock in the morning, venting my rage on you.

It would do your heart good to see the generous and delighted interest which the G.'s and D.'s, and indeed many more, take in the phenomenon of the lectures. The truth is, that their attention to the matter, and the intelligence of the people, and the merits of the lecturer, must be combined to account for such an unprecedented and beautiful audience,-larger, and much more select, they say, than even Thackeray's.

I'll send you a newspaper slip or two, if I can lay my hand upon them, upon the last lecture, which, a.s.sembled (the audience, I mean), under a clouded sky, and in face of a threatening thunder-gust, was a greater wonder, some one said, than any I undertook to explain.

Bah! what stuff to write I But all this is such an agreeable surprise to me, and will, I think, give me so much better a reward for this weary journey and absence than I expected, that you must sympathize what you can with my dotage.

As to the "Corruptions of Christianity," dear, if you don't find enough of them about you,--and you may not, as you live with your mother mostly,--you will find them in the library somewhere. There were, I think, two editions, one in one volume, and another in two. There are a hundred in the world.

The Club mentioned in this letter was that of which my father wrote in his Reminiscences: "This Charleston Club, then, I think, forty years old, was one of the most remarkable, and in some respects [236] the most improving, that I have ever known. An essay was read at every meeting, and made the subject of discussion. One evening at Dr. Gilman's was read for the essay a eulogy upon Napoleon III. It was written con amore, and was really quite sentimental in its admiration,--going back to his very boyhood, his love of his mother, and what not. I could not help touching the elbow of the gentleman sitting next me and saying, Are n't we a pretty set of fellows to be listening to such stuff as this? He showed that he thought as I did. When the reading was finished, Judge King, who presided, turned to me and asked for my opinion of the essay. I was considerably struck up,' to be the first person asked, and confessed to some embarra.s.sment. I was a stranger among them, I said, and did not know but my views might differ entirely from theirs. I was not accustomed to think myself illiberal, or behind the progress of opinion, and I knew that this man, Louis Napoleon, had his admirers, and perhaps an increasing number of them; but if I must speak,--and then I blurted it out,--I must say that it was with inward wrath and indignation that I had listened to the essay, from beginning to end. There was a marked sensation all round the circle; but I defended my opinion, and, to my astonishment, all but two agreed with me."

The following winter he was invited to repeat his lectures in Charleston, and pa.s.sed some time there, accompanied by his family. In March, 1856, he went with Mrs. Dewey to New Orleans, and, returning to Charleston at the end of April, went home in June.

[237] To his Daughters.

ON BOARD THE "HENRY KING," ON THE

ALABAMA RIVER, March 18, 1856.

. . . Sum charming things cars are! No dirt,--no sp-tt-g, oh! no,--and such nice places for sleeping! Not a long, monotonous, merely animal sleep, but intellectual, a kind of perpetual solving of geometric problems, as, for instance,--given, a human body; how many angles is it capable of forming in fifteen minutes? or how many more than a crab in the same time? And then, no crying children,--not a bit of that,--singing cherubs, innocently piping,--cheering the dull hours with dulcet sounds.

I write in the saloon, on this jarring boat, that shakes my hand and wits alike. We are getting on very prosperously. Your mother bears the journey well. This boat is very comfortable-for a boat; a good large state-room, and positively the neatest public table I have seen in all the South.

There! that'll do,--or must do. I thought wife would do the writing, but I have "got my leg over the harrow," and Mause would be as hard to stop.

To Mrs. David Lane.

NEW ORLEANS, March 29, 1856.