Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D Part 7

O. DEWEY.

[See p. 86.]

[160] To the Same.

NEW YORK, Dec. 1, 1836.

MY DEAR SIR WILLIAM,--For a prince you are in letter-writing, and you can call me Lord Orville, for I have a birthright claim to that t.i.tle.'

Excuse this capricole of my pen; it has been drawing hard enough at a sermon all the morning, and can't help cutting a caper when it is let out. You won't get the due return for your good long letter this time, nor ever, I think. I am taking comfort in the good long letters that are going with mine, and of whose sending by this conveyance I am the cause.

This conveyance is Miss Searle; and if you and Mrs. Ware don't cultivate her, or let her cultivate you, your folly will be inconceivable.

Mrs. Jameson I have missed two or three chances of seeing,--very bright sometimes, and very foolish others; but who shall resist such intoxicating draughts as have for some years been offered to her! She set off for Canada yesterday, going for her husband, since he could n't or would n't come for her.

Ingham has just finished one of the most exquisite portraits of Miss Sedgwick that eye ever saw. Did you see anything of it before you went?

Furness ['s book] is selling much, and I hear nothing but admiration, save the usual quaver in the song about the part on miracles. Apropos, . . . I think that the explication of the miracles must be a moot and not a test point, and I would not break with the [161] "Christian Examiner"

upon it; and yet I think the heterodox opinions of Ripley should have come into it in the shape of a letter, and not of a review. It is rather absurd to say "We" with such confidence, and that for opinions in conflict with the whole course of the "Examiner" and the known opinions of almost all its supporters. . . .

[FN He was named after Lord Orville, the hero of Miss Burney's "Evelina," which his mother had read with delight shortly before his birth.]

Yours forever and a day,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To the Same.

NEW YORK, May. 2, 1837.

. . . A WEEK ago to-day I sat down at my desk, spread before me a sheet of paper, grasped my pen energetically, and had almost committed myself for a letter to you, when suddenly it occurred to me that Mrs. Schuyler was in Boston, and would have told you just what it was my special design to write; that is, all about the congregation of the faithful in Chambers Street. Well, I suppose she has; but I shall have my say.

The congregation has certainly not improved, as you seem, in your preposterous modesty, to suppose, but suffered by your leaving it. The attendance, I should think, is about the same. . . . But I am afraid that the society is gradually losing strength.

I have been preaching some Sunday-evening sermons to the merchants.

Have n't you heard of them? And if you have n't, do you pretend that Brookline is a place? Take my word, Sir, that it is not to be found on the map of the world,--not known either to the ancients or the moderns.

You are not in existence, Sir, take my word [162] for it, if you have not heard of these crowded, listening, etc. a.s.semblies at the Mercer Street Church. Well, really, I have seen a packed audience there, and even the galleries pretty well filled. I have thoughts of publishing the discourses (only three, more than an hour long, however), and if I could only write three more, I would; but my brain got into a pretty bad condition by the third week, and I don't know whether I can go On at present.

To the Same.

NEW YORK, March 27, 1837.

MY DEAR WARE,--I should like to know what you mean by not letting me hear from you these three months. Do you not know that you are in my debt for a letter at least twenty lines long, which it took me three minutes to write? And three minutes and twenty lines, in this Babel, are equal to one hour and two sheets in Brookline. Do you not know that everybody is saying, "When have you heard from Mr. Ware?" Do you not know that ugly and choking weeds will spring up on the desolation you have made here if you do not scatter some flower-seeds upon it? Consider and tremble. Or, respect this and repent, as the Chinese say.

Well, Dr. Follen is to be here for a twelvemonth, and we shall not get you back again,--oh me!

Dr. Follen has quite filled the church at some evening lectures on Unitarianism. Good! and everything about him is good, but that he comes after you. [163]

To the Same.

NEW YORK, July 10, 1837.

MY DEAR WARE,--I can scarcely moderate my expressions to the tone of wisdom in telling you how much pleasure I have had in reading your book,--how much I am delighted with you and for you. There is no person to whom I would more gladly have had the honor fall of writing the "Letters from Palmyra." And it is a distinction that places your name among the highest in our--good-for-nothing--literature, as the Martineau considers it. By the bye, you need n't think you are a-going to stand at the head of everything, as she will have it. Have not I written a book too, to say nothing of the names less known of Channing, Irving, Bryant, etc.? And, by the bye, again, speaking of the Martineau, she is a woman of one idea,--takes one view, that is, and knows nothing of qualification,--and hence is opinionated and confident to a degree that I think I never saw equalled. Julia, Fausta, nay, Zen.o.bia, for me, rather. How beautifully have you shown them up! And Gracchus and Longinus as n.o.bly. What things is literature doing to gratify ambition,--things beyond its proudest hope! How little thought Zen.o.bia that her character, two thousand years after she lived, would be ill.u.s.trated by the genius of a clime that she dreamed not of!

My love and congratulations to your wife; my love and envy to you.

O. DEWEY.

[164] To the Same.

NEW YORK, May 13, 1838.

MY DEAR WARE,--Brother Pierpont has preached finely for me this morning, and is to do so again this evening; and for this I find myself indirectly indebted to you. But you are one of those to whom I can't feel much obligation--for the love I bear you.

I wrote to you three weeks ago. I hope Mrs. Ware is patient and sustained. Of you I expect it. But, O heaven! what a world of thought does it take even to look on calamity!

Your name is abroad in the world as it should be. I rejoice. Pierpont is now sitting by me, reading the London and Westminster article on "Zen.o.bia, or the Fall of Palmyra." I am glad you have altered the t.i.tle.

We are looking for the sequel.

The next letter describes some of the difficulties of a journey from Berkshire to New York forty years ago. The route by Hartford was probably chosen instead of the ordinary one by Hudson, to take advantage of the new railroad between that city and New Haven.

To his W.

NEW YORK, February 5, 1841.

I PRAY you to admire my style of writing February. Began to write July, but the truth is, I nearly lost my wits on my journey. Twelve or thirteen mortal hours in getting to Hartford [FN: Fifty miles]. After two or three hours, called [165] up, just when the sleep had become so profound that on being waked I could not, for some seconds, settle it on what hemisphere, continent, country, or spot of the creation I was, nor why I was there at all. Then whisked away in the dark to the science-lighted domes of New Haven, but did n't see them--for why? I was asleep as I went through to the wharf. From the wharf, pitched into the steamboat, not having the points of compa.s.s, nor the time of day, nor the zenith and nadir of my own person. After two previous months of quiet, the whirl-about made me feel very "like an ocean weed uptorn And loose along the world of waters borne." If not a foundered weed, a very dumfoundered one at least.

To Rev. William Ware.

SHEFFIELD, Feb. 15, 1841.

How glad I am you wrote to me, my dear W. Is n't that a queer beginning?

But there are people who say that everything natural is beautiful, and I am sure that first line was as natural as the gushing out of a fountain; for the very sight of your handwriting was as a sunbeam in a winter's day. By the bye, speaking of sunbeams, they certainly do wonders in winter weather. Have you ever seen such blue depths, or depths of blue, in the mountains, that it seemed as if the very azure of the sky had fallen and lodged in their clefts and leafless trees? Yesterday I was looking towards our barn roofs covered with snow,--and you know they are but six rods off,--and so deep was the color that I thought for the moment it was the blue of the distant horizon. [166] Our friend Catherine Sedgwick, writing to me a day or two ago, speaks in raptures of it. She says it is like the haze over Soracte or Capri.

So you see my paragraph has led me from winter to summer. Summer is gone to New York a week since. No doubt it will produce beautiful flowers in due time, many of them culled from far distant lands, but most of them native, I ween. Foreign seeds, you know, can do nothing without a good soil. In truth, I am looking with great interest for Catherine Sedgwick's book.

"Hard work to write." Yes, terribly hard it has been for me these two years past; but when I am vigorous, I like it. However, the pen is ever, doubtless, a manacle to the thought; draws it out, if you please, but makes a dragging business of it. By the bye, is your laziness making an apology for not finishing "Scenes in Judea "? Hear a compliment of my mother's for your encouragement. "I should think the man that could write the Letters from Palmyra,'--anything so beautiful and so powerful too" (her very words),--"could write anything."

I am delighted to hear of Mr. Farrar's being better. Give my love to them, and tell him I know of nothing in the world I could near with more pleasure than of his improvement. What a beautiful, gentle, precious spirit he is!

Yes, I grant you all about Cambridge; and if I don't go abroad, perhaps we will come and live with you a year or two. Something I must do; I get no better.

I can't guess your plaguy charade. I never thought of one a minute before, and I have ruminated upon yours an hour. [167] Oh that you were my colleague, or I yours, as you please!

With our love to your wife and children,

I am as ever,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To Dr. Channing.