John Greenleaf Whittier Part 14

"The Double-headed Snake of Newbury" is a whimsical story, in which the poet waxes right merry as he relates how--

"Far and wide the tale was told, Like a s...o...b..ll growing while it rolled.

The nurse hushed with it the baby's cry; And it served, in the worthy minister's eye, To paint the primitive serpent by.

Cotton Mather came galloping down All the way to Newbury town, With his eyes agog and his ears set wide, And his marvellous inkhorn at his side; Stirring the while in the shallow pool Of his brains for the lore he learned at school, To garnish the story, with here a streak Of Latin, and there another of Greek: And the tales he heard and the notes he took, Behold! are they not in his Wonder-Book?"

A word about Whittier's "Prophecy of Samuel Sewall." It seems that old Judge Sewall made the prophecies of the Bible his favorite study. One of his ideas was that America was to be the site of the New Jerusalem.

Toward the end of his book ent.i.tled "Phenomena Quaedam Apocalyptica; ...

or ... a Description of the New Heaven as it makes to those who stand upon the New Earth" (1697), he gives utterance to the triumphant prophecy that forms the subject of Whittier's poem. His language is so quaint that the reader will like to see the pa.s.sage in Sewall's own words:--

"As long as Plum Island shall faithfully keep the commanded post, notwithstanding till the hectoring words and hard blows of the proud and boisterous ocean; as long as any salmon or sturgeon shall swim in the streams of Merrimac, or any perch or pickerel in Crane Pond; as long as the sea-fowl shall know the time of their coming, and not neglect seasonably to visit the places of their acquaintance; as long as any cattle shall be fed with the gra.s.s growing in the meadows, which do humbly bow down themselves before Turkey Hill; as long as any sheep shall walk upon Old-Town Hills, and shall from thence pleasantly look down upon the River Parker, and the fruitful marshes lying beneath; as long as any free and harmless doves shall find a white oak or other tree within the township, to perch, or feed, or build a careless nest upon, and shall voluntarily present themselves to perform the office of gleaners after barley-harvest; as long as Nature shall not grow old and dote, but shall constantly remember to give the rows of Indian corn their education by pairs; so long shall Christians be born there, and being first made meet, shall from thence be translated to be made partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light."

Moses Coit Tyler, in his "History of American Literature," II., p. 102 (note), says: "Whittier speaks of Newbury as Sewall's 'native town,' but Sewall was born at Horton, England. He also describes Sewall as an 'old man,' propped on his staff of age when he made this prophecy; but Sewall was then forty-five years old."

There are two or three other ballads in which Whittier is said to have made historical blunders. It really does not seem of much importance whether he did or did not get the precise facts in each case. The important point is that he made beautiful ballads. But it will be right to give, in brief, the objections that have been brought against "Skipper Ireson's Ride" and "Barbara Frietchie." "The King's Missive"

will be discussed in another place.

Apropos of Skipper Ireson, Mr. John W. Chadwick has spoken as follows in _Harper's Monthly_ for July, 1874:--

"In one of the queerest corners of the town [Marblehead], there stands a house as modest as the Lee house was magnificent. So long as he lived it was the home of 'Old Flood Oirson,' whose name and fame have gone farther and fared worse than any other fact or fancy connected with his native town. Plain, honest folk don't know about poetic license, and I have often heard the poet's conduct in the matter of Skipper Ireson's ride characterized with profane severity.

He unwittingly departed from the truth in various particulars. The wreck did not, as the ballad recites, contain any of 'his own town's-people.' Moreover, four of those it did contain _were_ saved by a whale-boat from Provincetown. It was off Cape Cod, and not in Chaleur Bay, that the wreck was deserted; and the desertion was in this wise: It was in the night that the wreck was discovered. In the darkness and the heavy sea it was impossible to give a.s.sistance.

When the skipper went below, he ordered the watch to lie by the wreck till 'dorning'; but the watch wilfully disobeyed, and afterward, to shield themselves, laid all the blame upon the skipper. Then came the tarring and feathering. The women, whose _role_ in the ballad is so striking, had nothing to do with it. The vehicle was not a cart, but a dory; and the skipper, instead of being contrite, said, 'I thank you for your ride.' I asked one of the skipper's contemporaries what the effect was on the skipper.

'Cowed him to death,' said he, 'cowed him to death.' He went skipper again the next year, but never afterward. He had been dead only a year or two when Whittier's ballad appeared. His real name was not Floyd, as Whittier supposes, but Benjamin, 'Flood' being one of those nicknames that were not the exception, but the rule, in the old fishing-days. For many years before his death the old man earned a precarious living by dory-fishing in the bay, and selling his daily catch from a wheelbarrow. When old age and blindness overtook him, and his last trip was made, his dory was hauled up into the lane before his house, and there went to rot and ruin.... The hoa.r.s.e refrain of Whittier's ballad is the best-known example of the once famous Marblehead dialect, and it is not a bad one. To what extent this dialect was peculiar to Marblehead it might be difficult to determine. Largely, no doubt, it was inherited from English ancestors. Its princ.i.p.al delight consisted in p.r.o.nouncing _o_ for _a_, and _a_ for _o_. For example, if an old-fashioned Marbleheader wished to say he 'was born in a barn,' he would say, he 'was barn in a born.' The _e_ was also turned into _a_, and even into _o_, and the _v_ into _w_. 'That vessel's stern' became 'that 'wessel's starn,' or 'storn.' I remember a school-boy declaiming from Shakspere, 'Thou little walliant, great in willany.' There was a great deal of shortening. The fine name Crowninshield became Grounsel, and Florence became Flurry, and a Frenchman named Blancpied found himself changed into Blumpy. Endings in _une_ and _ing_ were alike changed into _in_. Misfortune was misfartin', and fishing was always fishin'. There were words peculiar to the place.

One of these was planchment for ceiling. Crim was another, meaning to shudder with cold, and there was an adjective, crimmy. Still another was _c.l.i.tch_, meaning to stick badly, surely an onomatopoetic word that should be naturalized before it is too late.

Some of the swearing, too, was neither by the throne nor footstool, such as 'Dahst my eyes!' and 'G.o.dfrey darmints.' The ancient dialect in all its purity is now seldom used. It crops out here and there sometimes where least expected, and occasionally one meets with some old veteran whose speech has lost none of the ancient savor."

Now for "Barbara Frietchie." The incident of the poem was given to Whittier by the novelist, Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, whose letter we append. The philanthropist, Dorothea Dix, investigated the case in Frederick, and she says that Barbara did wave the flag, etc. An army officer also made affidavit of the truth of the lines. A young Southern soldier has declared that he was present, and that his was one of the shots that hit the flagstaff!

On the other side are Samuel Tyler and Jacob Engelbrecht, the latter an old and greatly respected citizen of Frederick, and living directly opposite Barbara's house. Jacob wrote to the Baltimore _Sun_, saying that Stonewall Jackson's corps marched through another street, and did not approach Dame Frietchie's house at all. Lee's column did pa.s.s it, he says; but he, who stood watching at his window, saw no flag whatever at _her_ window.

He says that when ten days later General McClellan pa.s.sed through the town she did exhibit a flag.

Finally, General Jubal Early comes upon the witness stand, and testifies that as the Southern troops pa.s.sed through Frederick, there were only two cases of waving of Union flags; one of these was by a little girl, about ten years old, who stood on the platform of a house and waved incessantly a little "candy flag," and cried in a dull, monotonous voice: "Hurrah for the Stars and Stripes! Down with the Stars and Bars!"

No one molested her. The other case was that of a coa.r.s.e, slovenly-looking woman, who rushed up to the entrance of an alley and waved a dirty United States flag.

"The Pipes at Lucknow" is a poem full of martial fire and lyric rush,--the subject a capital one for a poet. A little band of English, besieged in a town in the heart of India, and full of despair, hear in the distance the sweetest sound that ever fell upon their ears, namely, the shrill pibroch of the MacGregor Clan; and--

"When the far-off dust-cloud To plaided legions grew, Full tenderly and blithesomely The pipes of rescue blew!"

Another group of ballads comprises "Cobbler Keezar's Vision," "Amy Wentworth," and "The Countess."

In the first of these, old Cobbler Keezar, of the early Puritan times, by virtue of a mystic lapstone, sees a vision of our age of religious tolerance, and wonders greatly thereat:--

"Keezar sat on the hillside Upon his cobbler's form, With a pan of coals on either hand To keep his waxed-ends warm.

And there, in the golden weather, He st.i.tched and hammered and sung; In the brook he moistened his leather, In the pewter mug his tongue."

The ballad of "Amy Wentworth" treats of the same subject as "Among The Hills," namely, a superior woman, of the white-handed caste, falling in love with and marrying a broad-shouldered, brown-handed hero, with a right manly heart and brain.

Many and many a poem of Whittier's is spoiled by its too great length,--a thing that is fatal in a lyric. The long prelude to "Amy Wentworth" should have been omitted.

The scene of the lovely poem ent.i.tled "The Countess" is laid in Rocks Village, a part of East Haverhill, and lying on the Merrimack, where--

"The river's steel-blue crescent curves To meet, in ebb and flow, The single broken wharf that serves For sloop and gundelow.

With salt sea-scents along its sh.o.r.es The heavy hay-boats crawl, The long antennae of their oars In lazy rise and fall.

Along the gray abutment's wall The idle shad-net dries; The toll-man in his cobbler's stall Sits smoking with closed eyes."

Whittier dedicates his poem to his father's family physician, Elias Weld, of Rocks Village. The story which forms the subject of the poem is a romantic one, and exquisitely has our poet embalmed it in verse. From a sketch by Rebecca I. Davis, of East Haverhill, the following facts relating to the personages that figure in the poem have been culled:--

The Countess was Miss Mary Ingalls, daughter of Henry and Abigail Ingalls, of Rocks Village. She was born in 1786, and is still remembered by a few old inhabitants as a young girl of remarkable beauty. She was of medium height, had long golden curls, violet eyes, fair complexion, and rosy cheeks, and was exceedingly modest and lovable. It was in the year 1806 that a little company of French exiles fled from the Island of Guadaloupe on account of a b.l.o.o.d.y rebellion or uprising of the inhabitants. Among the fugitives were Count Francis de Vipart and Joseph Rochemont de Poyen. The company reached Newburyport. The two gentlemen just mentioned settled at Rocks Village, and both married there. Mary Ingalls was only a laborer's daughter, and of course her marriage with the count created a sensation in the simple, rustic community. The count was a pleasant, stately man, and a fine violinist. The bridal dress, says Miss Davis, was of a pink satin, with an overdress of white lace; her slippers also were of white satin. The count delighted to lavish upon her the richest apparel, yet nothing spoiled the sweet modesty of her disposition. After one short year of happy married life the lovely wife died. a.s.siduous attention to a sick mother had brought on consumption. In the village G.o.d's-acre her gray tombstone is already covered with moss.

The count returned to his native island overwhelmed with grief. In after years, however, he married again. When he died he was interred in the family burial-place of the De Viparts at Bordeaux. He left several children.

Mr. Stedman, in his fine synthetic survey of American poetry, published in _The Century_, has remarked that most of our early poetry and painting is full of landscape. The loveliest season in America is the autumn, when, as Whittier beautifully says, the woods "wear their robes of praise, the south winds softly sigh,"--

"And sweet, calm days in golden haze Melt down the amber sky."

We have plenty of idyls of autumn color, like Buchanan Read's "Closing Scene," and portions of Longfellow's "Hiawatha." But American winter landscapes are as poetical as those of autumn.[27] It is probable that the scarcity of snow-idyls. .h.i.therto is due to the supposed cheerlessness of the snow. But with the rapid multiplication of winter comforts, our nature-worship is cautiously broadening so as to include even the stern beauty of winter. There are already a good many signs of this in literature. We have had, of late, lovely little snow-and-winter vignettes in prose by John Burroughs of New York, and Edith Thomas of Ohio; and there is plenty of room for further study of winter in other regions of the United States. The most delicate bit of realistic winter poetry in literature is Emerson's "Snow-Storm." Mr. Whittier is an ardent admirer of that writer--as what poet is not?--and his own productions show frequent traces of Emersonianisms. He has prefixed to "Snow-Bound" a quotation from the "Snow-Storm," and there can scarcely be a doubt that to the countless obligations we all owe Emerson must be added this: that he inspired the writing of Whittier's finest poem, and the best idyl of American rural life. It is too complex and diffusive fully to equal in artistic purity and plastic proportion the "Cotter's Sat.u.r.day Night" of Burns; but it is much richer than that poem in felicitous single epithets, which, like little wicket doors, open up to the eye of memory many a long-forgotten picture of early life.

[Footnote 27: What is the subtle fascination that lurks in such bits of winter poetry as the following, collected by the writer out of his reading?

"Yesterday the sullen year Saw the snowy whirlwind fly."--_Gray._

"All winter drives along the darkened air."--_Thomson._

"High-ridged the whirled drift has almost reached The powdered keystone of the churchyard porch; Mute hangs the hooded bell; the tombs lie buried."--_Grahame._

"Alas! alas! thou snow-smitten wood of Troy, and mountains of Ida."--_Sophocles._

"O hard, dull bitterness of cold."--_Whittier._

"And in the narrow house o' death Let winter round me rave."--_Burns._

"The mesmerizer, Snow, With his hand's first sweep Put the earth to sleep."--_Robert Browning._

"And the caked snow is shuffled From the plough-boy's heavy shoon."--_Keats._]