Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis to John S. Dwight Part 9

G.W.C.

XV

CONCORD, _June 26th, 1844._

These are Tophetic times. I doubt if the st.u.r.dy faith of those heroes, Shadrack and co., would carry them through this fervor unliquefied. Their much vaunted furnace was but a cool retreat where thoughts of great-coats were possible, compared with this. And if that nether region of whose fires so much is sung by poets and other men possessed, can offer hotter heats, let them be produced. Those Purgatorial ardencies for the gentle suggestion of torment to thin shades can have little in common with these perspiration-compelling torridities. Why does not some ingenious Yankee improve such times for the purchase, at a ruinous discount, of all thick clothes? I tremble lest some one should offer me an ice-cream for my best woollens! Is it human to resist such an offer? Does it not savor something of Devildom, and a too great familiarity with that lower Torrid Zone, to entertain such a proposition cool-ly? when such a word grows suddenly obsolete in such seasons? If I venture to move, such an atmosphere of heat is created immediately around my body that all cool breezes (if the imagination is competent to such a conception) are like arid airs when they reach my mouth. Perhaps we are tending to those final, fiery days of which Miller is a prophet. We are slowly sinking, perhaps, from heat to heat, until entire rarefication and evanishment in imperceptible vapor ensues; and so the great experiment of a world may end in smoke, as many minor ones have ended. If it were not so hot, I should love to think about these things.

June 28th. So far I had proceeded on the afternoon I returned to Concord.

When I desisted I supposed I had inscribed my final ma.n.u.script, and that only a cinder would be found sitting over it when some one should enter.

Yet by the providence of G.o.d I am preserved for the experience of greater heats. I did not know before what was the capacity of endurance of the human frame. I begin to suspect we are of nearer kin to the Salamander than our pride will allow; and since Devils only are admitted to nether fire, I begin to lapse into the credence of total depravity!! Reflect upon my deplorable condition! As Sh.e.l.ley's body, when lifeless, was caused to disappear in flames and smoke, so may mine before its tenant is departed.

Was it not prophetic that on Sunday afternoon the following lines came to me while thinking of that poet?

Sh.e.l.lEY

A smoke that delicately curled to heaven, Mingling its blueness with the infinite blue, So to the air the faded form was given, So unto fame the gentle spirit grew.

And as Sh.e.l.ley and Keats are a.s.sociated always together in my mind, immediately the Muse gave me this:

KEATS

A youth did plight his troth to Poesy.

"Thee only," were the fervent words he said, Then sadly sailed across the foaming sea, And lay beneath the southern sunset dead.

I was glad that once I could express what I think about those men. These will show you, but you must write your own poem upon them before you will be satisfied. Is it not so always? We cannot speak much about poets until our thought of them sings itself.

The day I left you was very hot in Boston. Anna Shaw and Rose Russell pa.s.sed me like beautiful spirits; one like a fresh morning, the other like an Oriental night. Then I did my business, and met James Sturgis, who carried me to see his head cut in cameo by Mr. King. It is quite good, though it gives him rather a finer head than he has; but that's a good failing. I went to the Athenaeum. There I saw one or two pictures, and much paint upon canvas. Those that I liked I saw belonged to the Athenaeum, and I suppose were old objects to those who are familiar with the gallery. A face of Ophelia interested me. It was very simple and sweet. But I was so warm that I could do little more than lay upon a bench and catch dreamy glimpses of the walls. The sculpture gallery, full of white marble heads, seemed quite cool.

My dear Friend, I shall melt and be mailed in this letter as a spot if I do not surcease. May you be blest with frigidity, a blessing far removed from my hope. Of course I must be warmly, nay, _hotly_ remembered to Charles.

Yrs ever,

G.W.C.

XVI

CONCORD, _August 7th, 1844._

My regret at not seeing you was only lessened by the beautiful day I pa.s.sed with Mr. Hawthorne. His life is so harmonious with the antique repose of his house, and so redeemed into the present by his infant, that it is much better to sit an hour with him than hear the Rev. Barzillai Frost! His baby is the most serenely happy I ever saw. It is very beautiful, and lies amid such placid influences that it too may have a milk-white lamb as emblem; and Mrs. Hawthorne is so tenderly respectful towards her husband that all the romance we picture in a cottage of lovers dwells subdued and dignified with them. I see them very seldom. The people here who are worth knowing, I find, live very quietly and retired. In the country, friendship seems not to be of that consuming, absorbing character that city circ.u.mstances give it, but to be quite content to feel rather than hear or do; and that very independence which withdraws them into the privacy of their homes is the charm which draws thither.

Mr. Emerson read an address before the anti-slavery "friends" last Thursday. It was very fine. Not of that cold, clear, intellectual character which so many dislike, but ardent and strong. His recent reading of the history of the cause has given him new light and warmed a fine enthusiasm. It commenced with allusions to the day "which gives the immense fortification of a fact to a great principle," and then drew in strong, bold outline the progress of British emanc.i.p.ation. Thence to slavery in its influence upon the holders, to the remark that this event hushed the old slander about inferior natures in the negro, thence to the philosophy of slavery, and so through many detached thoughts to the end.

It was nearly two hours long, but was very commanding. He looked genial and benevolent, as who should smilingly defy the world, the flesh, and the devil to ensnare him. The address will be published by the society; and he will probably write it more fully, and chisel it into fitter grace for the public criticism. He spoke of your unfortunate call, but said you bore the sulkiness very well. George Bradford was also very sorry; and it was bad that you should come so far, with the faces of friends for a hospitable city before you, and find a mirage only, or (begging Burrill's pardon) one house.

For the last six weeks I have been learning what hard work is. Afternoon leisure is now remembered with the holiday which Sat.u.r.day brought to the school-boy. During the haying we have devoted all our time and faculty to the making of hay, leaving the body at night fit only to be devoted to sheets and pillows, and not to grave or even friendly epistolary intercourse. Oh friends! live upon faith, say I, as I pitch into bed with the ghosts of Sunday morning resolutions of letters tickling my sides or thumping my back, and then sink into dreams where every day seems a day in the valley of Ajalon, and innumerable Joshuas command the sun and moon to stay, and universal leisure spreads over the universe like a great wind.

Then comes morning and wakefulness and boots and breakfast and scythes and heat and fatigue, and all my venerable Joshuas endeavor in vain to make oxen stand still, and I heartily wish them and I back in our valley ruling the heavens and not bending scythes over unseen ha.s.socks which do sometimes bend the words of our mouths into shapes resembling oaths! those most crooked of all speech, but therefore best and fittest for the occasional crooks of life, particularly mowing. Yet I mow and sweat and get tired very heartily, for I want to drink this cup of farming to the bottom and taste not only the morning froth but the afternoon and evening strength of dregs and bitterness, if there be any. When haying is over, which event will take place on Sat.u.r.day night of this week, fair weather being vouchsafed, I shall return to my moderation. Towards the latter part of the month I shall stray away towards Providence and Newport and sit down by the sea, and in it, too, probably. So I shall pa.s.s until harvest.

Where the snows will fall upon me I cannot yet say.

Say to Charles that I was sorry not to have seen him; but if persons of consequence will travel without previous annunciation, they may chance to find even the humblest of their servants not at home. I know you will write when the time comes, so I say nothing but that I am your friend ever.

G.W.C.

XVII

CONCORD, _Sept. 23, 1844._

Shall we not see you on the day of the cattle-show? Certainly Brook Farm will be represented; and I think you may, by this time, be farmer enough to enjoy the cattle and the ploughing. Besides, as I remember a similar excursion last year at which I a.s.sisted, the splendor of the early morning, which was not yet awake when we came away from the Farm, will amply repay any extraordinary effort. And still another besides; I do not want the winter to build its white, impenetrable walls between us before I have heard your voice once more. I should hope to come and look at you for one day, at least, in West Roxbury; but our Captain has work, autumnal work, the end whereof is not comprehended by the una.s.sisted human vision.

Potato-digging, apple-picking, thrashing, the gathering of innumerable seeds, must be done before winter; and yet to-day is like a despatch from December to announce that snow and ice and wind are to be just as cold this winter as they were the last.

And I have had a long vacation, too. I think, on the very day after I wrote my last letter to you, as I was whetting my scythe for the last swath of the season, my hat half fell off, and suddenly raising my hand to catch it, I thrust it against the scythe and cut my thumb just upon the joint. It has healed, but I shall never find it quite as agile as formerly. I could not use the hand--my right hand--for more than a fortnight. It was like losing a sense to lose its use. After a week of inaction in Concord, I went to Rhode Island and remained three weeks, and am now at home a fortnight. I came back more charmed than ever with Concord, which hides under a quiet surface most precious scenes. I suppose we see more deeply into the spirit of a landscape where we have been happy. Then we behold the summer bloom. It is spring or autumn or winter to men generally.

We shall remain with Capt. Barrett through the winter. The spring will bring its own arrangements, or rather the conclusion of those which are formed during the winter. I suspect that our affections, like our bodies, have been transplanted to Ma.s.sachusetts, and that our lives will grow in the new soil. Not at all ambitious of settling and becoming a citizen, I am very well content with the nomadic life until obedience to the law of things shall plant me in some home.

And are you still at home in the Farm? Rumors, whose faces I cannot fairly see, pa.s.s by me sometimes, breathing your name and others. But I have long ago turned rumor out-of-doors as an impostor and impertinent person, who apes the manners and appearance of its betters. I shall receive none as from you, however loudly they may shout your name, except they show your hand and seal.

Autumn has already begun to leave the traces of her golden fingers upon the brakes, and occasionally upon some tall nut-trees. It seems as if she were trying her skill before she comes like a wind over the landscape. She warbles a few glittering notes before the mournful, majestic Death-song.

Dear friend, why should I send you this chip of ore out of the mine of regard which is yours in my heart? Come and dig in it.

Your friend,

G.W. CURTIS.

XVIII

CONCORD, _January 12, '45._

My dear Friend,--I have written Burrill to look at the Custom-house, and inquire about the method of warming by water. He replies that he has been there, but defers writing to you until he learns more about the matter.

Through him I received a message from Isaac to tell you that he (I) can procure an edition of the Beethoven Sonatas (26, I believe) for about $10.

I think it highly probable that I shall pa.s.s some weeks in Providence next month, and so will defer my day with you at Brook Farm until that time, of which I will inform you.

Burrill has not yet returned, and leaves me still a hermit. I am well pleased with my solitude, nor do I care much to go out of the country during the winter; but domestic circ.u.mstances make it advisable to go to Providence. There I shall have a good library at hand, which I miss a good deal here. Indeed, I think it likely that every year while my home is in the country I may perform a pilgrimage to the city for two or three months for purposes of art and literature and affection, for, as there seems in the minds of divines to be some doubt of personal ident.i.ty when this mortal coil is shuffled off, I am fain to embrace my friends' coils while they are yet palpable. This idea of city visits implies a very free life; but there seems now to be no hinderance to it. When the band of Phalanxes, proceeding into desert and free air, no more allow art to rendezvous in cities, I can take one of the nearest radiating railroads and rush from my solitude into the healthily-peopled and cityish-countrified Phalanx.

I am loath to forgive Fourier the unmitigated slander upon the moon. I began to suspect that was the only influence alive since the sun lights men to cheating and deviltry; and the moon recalls the sweetest remembrance and best hope. After our evening at Almira's it lighted me home with such forgiving splendor that I could have fallen on my knees in the snow and have prayed its pardon if it would not have chilled those members.

Almira I have not seen since Wednesday. She was then well, and went with me to hear Dr. Francis lecture upon Bishop Berkeley. He told the life, which is the most poetical and beautiful of any of his contemporary philosophers, and then suggested that the "limits of a lecture" did not permit an extended notice of his philosophy, and so gave none.

Among my holiday gifts was Miss Barrett's poems. She is a woman of vigorous thought, but not very poetical thought, and throwing herself into verse involuntarily becomes honied and ornate, so that her verse cloys. It is not natural, quite. Tennyson's world is purple, and all his thoughts.

Therefore his poetry is so, and so naturally. Wordsworth lives in a clear atmosphere of thought, and his poetry is simple and natural, but no more than Tennyson's. Pardon these critical distinctions. I make them to have them expressed, for Burrill did not see why I called Miss Barrett purple.

It was because her highly colored robe was not harmonious with her native style of thought. Ben Jonson, too, I have been reading. After him and Beaumont and Fletcher (who are imitators, rather, of Shakespeare), I feel that Shakespeare differed not in degree only but in kind from all others, his contemporaries and successors. In his peculiar path Jonson was unequalled, but Shakespeare includes that and so much more! He seems to be the only one to whom poets are content to be inferior.

Remember me to Charles Dana and my other compeers at Brook Farm, especially Charles Newcomb.

Yours sincerely,

G.W.C.