John Greenleaf Whittier Part 7

In the autumn of 1844 was written "The Stranger in Lowell," a series of light sketches suggested by personal experiences. The style of these essays reminds one of that of "Twice Told Tales," but it is not so pure.

The thought is developed too rhetorically, and the essays betray the limitations attending the life of a recluse. But these sketches are interesting as exhibitions of the growth of the author toward this peculiar form of essay-writing, and are valuable on that account.

In 1847 James G. Birney's anti-slavery paper, _The Philanthropist_, published in Cincinnati, was merged with the _National Era_, of Washington, D. C., with Dr. Gamaliel Bailey as managing editor, and John G. Whittier as a.s.sociate or corresponding editor. Dr. Bailey had previously helped edit _The Philanthropist_. Both papers were treated to mobocratic attacks. The _Era_ became an important organ of the Abolition party in Washington. To it Mr. Whittier contributed his "Old Portraits and Modern Sketches" as well as other reform papers.

In the same year (1847) our author published his "Supernaturalism of New England." [New York and London: Wiley and Putnam.] This pleasant little volume shows a marked advance upon Whittier's previous prose work. In its nine chapters he has preserved a number of oral legends and interesting superst.i.tions of the farmer-folk of the Merrimack region.

Parts of the work have been quoted elsewhere in this volume. One of the chapters closes with the following fine pa.s.sage:--

"The witches of Father Baxter and 'the Black Man' of Cotton Mather have vanished; belief in them is no longer possible on the part of sane men. But this mysterious universe, through which, half veiled in its own shadow, our dim little planet is wheeling, with its star-worlds and thought-wearying s.p.a.ces, remains. Nature's mighty miracle is still over and around us; and hence awe, wonder, and reverence remain to be the inheritance of humanity: still are there beautiful repentances and holy death-beds, and still over the soul's darkness and confusion rises star-like the great idea of duty. By higher and better influences than the poor spectres of superst.i.tion man must henceforth be taught to reverence the Invisible, and, in the consciousness of his own weakness and sin and sorrow, to lean with childlike trust on the wisdom and mercy of an overruling Providence."

In 1849 Mr. Whittier collected and published his anti-slavery poems, under the t.i.tle "Voices of Freedom." The year 1850 marks a new era in his poetical career. He published at that time his "Songs of Labor,"--a volume which showed that his mind had become calmed by time, and was now capable of interesting itself in other than reform subjects.

There is not much of outward incident and circ.u.mstance to record of the quiet poetical years pa.s.sed since 1840 at Amesbury and Danvers. Almost every year or two a new volume of poems has been issued, each one establishing on a firmer foundation the Quaker Poet's reputation as a creator of sweet and melodious lyrical poetry.

In 1868 an inst.i.tution called "Whittier College" was opened at Salem, Henry County, Iowa. It was founded in honor of the poet, and is conducted in accordance with the principles of the Society of Friends.

In 1871 Whittier edited "Child-Life: A Collection of Poems," by various home and foreign authors. In the same year he edited, with a long introduction, the "Journal of John Woolman."

The name John Woolman is not widely known to persons of the present generation; and yet, as Whittier says, it was this humble Quaker reformer of New Jersey who did more than any one else to inspire all the great modern movements for the emanc.i.p.ation of slaves, first in the West Indies, then in the United States, and in Russia. Warner Mifflin, Jean Pierre Brissot, Thomas Clarkson, Stephen Grellet, William Allen, and Benjamin Lundy,--all these philanthropists owed much of their impulse to labor for the freedom of the slave to humble John Woolman. His journal or autobiography was highly praised by Charles Lamb, Edward Irving, Crabb Robinson, and others. "The style is that of a man unlettered, but with natural refinement and delicate sense of fitness, the purity of whose heart enters into his language."

Woolman was born in Northampton, West Jersey, in 1720. One day, in the year 1742, while clerk in a store in the village of Mount Holly, township of Northampton, N. J., he was asked by his employer to make out the bill of sale of a negro. He drew up the instrument, but his conscience was awakened, and some years after he began his life-work as a pedestrian anti-slavery preacher. He refused to ride in, or have letters sent him by, the stage-coaches, because of the cruelty exercised toward the horses by the drivers. Neither would he accept hospitality from those who kept slaves, always paying either the owners or the slaves for his entertainment. Woolman was most gentle and kind in his appeals to slave-owners, and rarely met with any violent remonstrance.

Much of his work was within the limits of his own sect, and Mr.

Whittier's introduction gives a valuable and succinct historical _resume_ of the steps taken by the Friends to rid their sect of the stigma of slaveholding.

Mount Holly, in Woolman's day, says Whittier, "was almost entirely a settlement of Friends. A very few of the old houses with their quaint stoops or porches are left. That occupied by John Woolman was a small, plain, two-story structure, with two windows in each story in front, a four-barred fence enclosing the grounds, with the trees he planted and loved to cultivate. The house was not painted, but whitewashed. The name of the place is derived from the highest hill in the county, rising two hundred feet above the sea, and commanding a view of a rich and level country of cleared farms and woodlands."

Very amusing is the picture given by Mr. Whittier of the eccentric Benjamin Lay, once a member of the Society of Friends in England, and afterward an inhabitant for some time of the West Indies, whence he was driven away on account of the violence and extravagance of his denunciations of slavery. He was a contemporary of Woolman. He lived in a cave near Philadelphia, as a sort of Jonah or Elijah, prophesying woe against the city on account of its partic.i.p.ation in the crime of slavery. He wore clothes made of vegetable fibre, and ate only vegetable food. "Issuing from his cave, on his mission of preaching 'deliverance to the captive,' he was in the habit of visiting the various meetings for worship and bearing his testimony against slaveholders, greatly to their disgust and indignation. On one occasion he entered the Market Street Meeting, and a leading Friend requested some one to take him out.

A burly blacksmith volunteered to do it, leading him to the gate and thrusting him out with such force that he fell into the gutter of the street. There he lay until the meeting closed, telling the bystanders that he did not feel free to rise himself. 'Let those who cast me here raise me up. It is their business, not mine.'

"His personal appearance was in remarkable keeping with his eccentric life. A figure only four and a half feet high, hunch-backed, with projecting chest, legs small and uneven, arms longer than his legs; a huge head, showing only beneath the enormous white hat large, solemn eyes and a prominent nose; the rest of his face covered with a snowy semicircle of beard falling low on his breast,--a figure to recall the old legends of troll, brownie, and kobold. Such was the irrepressible prophet who troubled the Israel of slaveholding Quakerism, clinging like a rough chestnut-burr to the skirts of its respectability, and settling like a pertinacious gad-fly on the sore places of its conscience.

"On one occasion, while the annual meeting was in session at Burlington, N. J., in the midst of the solemn silence of the great a.s.sembly, the unwelcome figure of Benjamin Lay, wrapped in his long white overcoat, was seen pa.s.sing up the aisle. Stopping midway, he exclaimed, 'You slaveholders! Why don't you throw off your Quaker coats as I do mine, and show yourselves as you are?' Casting off as he spoke his outer garment, he disclosed to the astonished a.s.sembly a military coat underneath, and a sword dangling at his heels. Holding in one hand a large book, he drew his sword with the other. 'In the sight of G.o.d,' he cried, 'you are as guilty as if you stabbed your slaves to the heart, as I do this book!' suiting the action to the word, and piercing a small bladder filled with the juice of poke-weed (_phytolacca decandra_), which he had concealed between the covers, and sprinkling as with fresh blood those who sat near him."

There is something overwhelmingly ludicrous about this bladder of poke-weed juice! And what a subject for a painter!--the portentous, white-bearded dwarf standing there in the midst of the church, in act to plunge his gigantic sword tragically into the innermost bowels of the crimson poke-juice bladder, and from all parts of the house the converging looks of the broad-brimmed and shovel-bonneted Quakers!

Mr. Whittier further says that "Lay was well acquainted with Dr.

Franklin, who sometimes visited him. Among other schemes of reform he entertained the idea of converting all mankind to Christianity. This was to be done by three witnesses,--himself, Michael Lovell, and Abel n.o.ble, a.s.sisted by Dr. Franklin. But, on their first meeting at the doctor's house, the three 'chosen vessels' got into a violent controversy on points of doctrine, and separated in ill-humor. The philosopher, who had been an amused listener, advised the three sages to give up the project of converting the world until they had learned to tolerate each other."

In 1873 Mr. Whittier edited "Child-Life in Prose." It is a collection of pretty stories, chiefly about the childhood of various eminent persons.

One of the stories is by the editor, and is about "A Fish that I Didn't Catch."

In 1875 appeared "Songs of Three Centuries." The poet's design in this work was (to use his own words) "to gather up in a comparatively small volume, easily accessible to all cla.s.ses of readers, the wisest thoughts, rarest fancies, and devoutest hymns of the metrical authors of the last three centuries." He says, "The selections I have made indicate, in a general way, my preferences." It is a choice collection, rich in lyrical masterpieces.

CHAPTER VII.

LATER DAYS.

About a mile westward from the village of Danvers, Ma.s.s., a gra.s.sy road, named Summer Street, branches off to the right and north. It is a pleasant, winding road, bordered by picturesque old stone fences and lined with barberry and raspberry bushes and gnarled old apple-trees. On either side are cultivated fields. Oak Knoll, the winter residence of Whittier, is the second house on the left, some half a mile up the road.

This fine old estate had been occupied for half a century by a man of wealth and taste. About the year 1875 it pa.s.sed into the hands of Col.

Edmund Johnson, of Boston, whose wife was Whittier's cousin.

It was planned that the poet should be a member of the household; rooms were set apart and arranged for him, and he gave the estate its present name.

It is a spot full of traditions, and well suited to any poet's residence, most of all for one so versed in New England legends. It is the very spot once occupied by the Rev. George Burroughs, a clergyman who was hung for witchcraft in 1692, on the charge, among other things, of "having performed feats of extraordinary physical strength." He could hold out a gun seven feet long, tradition says, by putting his finger in the muzzle, and could lift a barrel of mola.s.ses in the same way by the bung-hole. For acts like these--deemed unclerical, at least, if not unnatural--he was convicted and hanged; and a well on the premises of Oak Knoll is still known as the "witch well."

Here, in the home of relatives, the poet has lived since 1876. A lovelier and more poetical place it would be difficult to imagine. The extensive, carefully kept grounds, and the antique elegance of the house, give to the estate the air of an old English manor, or gentleman's country hall. The house is approached by a long, upward-sweeping lawn, diversified with stately forest trees, clumps of evergreens and shrubs and flowers. Down across the road stands a large and handsome barn, which is as neat as paint and care can make it. In front of the house the eye ranges downward over an extensive landscape, as far as to the town of Peabody, in the direction of Salem. Indeed, on every side of the estate there are broad and distant views of the blue hills of Ess.e.x and Middles.e.x.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VIEW FROM THE PORCH AT OAK KNOLL, DANVERS, Ma.s.s.]

In the summer, as you ascend the carriage-road that winds through the grounds, your eye is captured by the rare beauty of the scene. Yonder is a tall living wall of verdure, with an archway cut through it. To the left the grounds sweep gently down to a deep ravine, where a little rivulet, named Beaver Brook, creeps leisurely out and winds seaward through green and marish meadows. It is in this portion of the grounds that the fine oak-trees grow which give to the place its name. Here, too, is a large grove of pines, with numerous seats within it. There are trees and trees at Oak Knoll,--smooth and shapely hickories, glistering chestnuts with cool foliage, maples, birches, and the purple beech. Add to the picture the rural accessories of bee-haunted clover-fields, apple and pear orchards, and beds of tempting strawberries. The house is of wood, salmon-colored, with tall porches on each side, up-propped by stately Doric columns. In front, with wide sweep of closely cropped gra.s.s intervening, is the magnificent Norway spruce that Oliver Wendell Holmes, a year or two before Mr. Whittier's death, on one of those periodical visits to his brother poet that so delighted their two souls, named "The Poets' PaG.o.da." A luxuriant vine cl.u.s.ters about the eaves of the house. On the long porch a mocking-bird and a canary-bird fill the green silence with gushes of melody, and near at hand, in his study in the wing of the building, sits one with a singing pen and listens to their song. To their song and to the murmur of the tall pines by his window he listens, then looks into his heart and writes,--this sweet-souled magician,--and craftily imprisons between the covers of his books, echoes of bird and tree music, bits of blue sky, glimpses of green landscape, winding rivers, and idyls of the snow,--all suffused and interfused with a glowing atmosphere of human and divine love, such as the poet found in this home of his choosing at Oak Knoll. It will not perhaps be intruding upon the privacies of home to say that the members of the cultured household at Oak Knoll ever, found in their happy circle, their highest pleasure in ministering to all needs, social or otherwise, of their loved cousin the poet. Three sisters dispense the hospitalities of the house, and a young daughter of Mrs. Woodman's adds the charm of girlhood to the family life.

Readers of Whittier, who know how deeply his writings are tinged with the scenery, legendary lore and folk-life of his native Merrimack Valley, will not wonder that a certain _Heimweh_, or home-sickness, draws him northward, when

"Flows amain The surge of summer's beauty."

and

"Pours the deluge of the heat Broad northward o'er the land."

It is but one hour's ride by cars from Danvers to Amesbury; and part of the time in the latter place, and part of the time at the Isles of Shoals, and in the beautiful lake and mountain region of New Hampshire, Mr. Whittier pa.s.ses the warm season. For many years it was his custom to spend a portion of each summer at the Bearcamp River House, in West Ossipee, N. H., some thirty miles north of Lake Winnipiseogee. The hotel was situated on a slight eminence, commanding a view of towering "Mount Israel" and of "Whittier Mountain," named after the poet. It is a region full of n.o.ble prospects, being just in the out-skirts of the White Mountain group. Several of the poems of Whittier were inspired by this scenery, notably "Among the Hills," "Sunset on the Bearcamp," and "The Seeking of the Waterfall." In the first of these we read how--

"Through Sandwich notch the west-wind sang,"

and--

"Above his broad lake Ossipee, Once more the sunshine wearing, Stooped, tracing on that silver shield His grim armorial bearing."

"Sunset on the Bearcamp" contains a stanza considered by some to be one of the poet's finest:--

"Touched by a light that hath no name, A glory never sung, Aloft on sky and mountain wall Are G.o.d's great pictures hung.

How changed the summits vast and old!

No longer granite-browed, They melt in rosy mist; the rock Is softer than the cloud; The valley holds its breath; no leaf Of all its elms is twirled: The silence of eternity Seems falling on the world."

The Bearcamp River House (now no more) was a hostelry whose site, antique hospitality, and eminent guests were every whit as worthy to be embalmed in lasting verse as were those of the Wayside Inn of Sudbury.

Before the red, crackling flames of its huge fireplace such literary characters as Whittier, Gail Hamilton, Lucy Larcom, and Hiram Rich used to gather on chill summer evenings for the kind of talks that only a wood fire can inspire. The Quaker poet is a charming conversationalist, and can _tell_ a story as capitally as he can write one. He has a goodly _repertoire_ of ghost tales and legends of the marvellous. One of his best stories is about a scene that took place in Independence Hall in Philadelphia, when the court remanded a negro to slavery. The poet says that an old sailor who was present became so infuriated by the spectacle that he made the air blue with oaths uttered in seven different languages.[16]