Sketches from Concord and Appledore Part 6

The whole of Matthew Arnold's essay is thoughtful and interesting, but it has one grand defect. After saying that Emerson's writings const.i.tuted the most important prose work of the nineteenth century, he fails to support the statement by sufficient arguments. If he had developed this point to such a length as its importance deserved, and then finished his discourse with a glowing tribute to Emerson as a man, his audience might have found slight cause to complain of him; but after simply stating the fact, he proceeded to a lengthy discussion of Emerson's stoical philosophy, and finally branched off on a criticism of Carlyle and the consideration of happiness as the true end of life. We will only pause here to remark that the true end of life does not seem to us to be happiness so much as development, and the evolution of such characters as Emerson and Matthew Arnold.

His condemnation of Emerson's poetry was a still severer blow. Emerson's friends had endured enough already on that score. Nothing was ever made so much fun of by parodists and other small wits. In any social company, if Emerson's poetry was mentioned somebody was sure to raise a laugh; and there was nothing that could be done about it. It was hoped that Matthew Arnold's prestige would put a final end to this nonsense, which was nothing but a fashionable habit; but he added the weight of his position as professor of literature to the other side of the scale. He praised certain portions very highly, but averred that these were exceptional, and concluded with what seems to be a "reductio ad absurdum," namely, that Longfellow's poem of "The Bridge" or Whittier's "School Days" was worth the whole body of Emerson's verse. As these were anything but the best of Longfellow and Whittier it seemed rather inconsistent in Matthew Arnold to have praised Emerson's poetry at all; and this was the more surprising after his courageous defence of Wadsworth a short time before. Those who like Emerson's poetry usually like Wordsworth's and _vice versa_.

But Emerson's poetry is a peculiar subject. Carlyle and Lowell, both eminent critics, did not condemn it, but at the same time they were slow to praise it. Dr. F. H. Hedge, who probably knew more about literature than either of them, considered it poetry of a very high order, and Rev.

William Furness of Philadelphia, when some one spoke slightingly of Emerson as a poet, exclaimed, "He is heaven high above our other poets!"

In many obituary notices at the time of his death, he was mentioned as being easily the first of American poets. Professor Tyndall has a great admiration for his poetry; and so has another professor we know of whom we will not mention, but who is an equally good chemist. Dr. O. W.

Holmes' life of Emerson was dreaded by many for fear of the position he might a.s.sume on this question, but to the general surprise of the public, he took strong grounds in favor of it; so that since that time, whenever people laugh at Emerson's poetry it is only necessary to ask them if they have read Dr. Holmes' biography of him.

Immediately after the lecture, a lively discussion began about it in the newspapers, in which leading writers, scholars and professors took an active part. How much soever they might disagree in regard to Emerson, they all united in a disapproval of the lecturer's estimate of him.

Matthew Arnold did not seem to have a partisan in the country. The discussion was renewed a year later when his book of discourses in America was published, and then David A. Wa.s.son wrote the following letter which was published in the "Christian Register":

ARNOLD ON EMERSON.

"It may be doubted whether Matthew Arnold's critical estimate of Emerson as a prose writer is well understood by most of those who take it in ill part. The judgment expressed is that Emerson is the pre-eminent prose writer of his century, not as being either a great philosopher or great in his style of workmanship, but for the reason that he is a great spiritual light, the purest, whitest, serenest, of a century now drawing toward its close. This taken together is valuable praise, and converted into disparagement by its denial to Emerson of two special distinctions; and in respect to both, the denial is taken, I think, to cover much more ground than it was intended to cover. To keep within the limits, I will here attend to but one of these, where it must be confessed, Mr. Arnold is himself to blame for the misconstruction put upon him, since he has expressed himself in a way to facilitate, if not to invite, such a mistake. Emerson, it is said, was the most important writer of this century, yet was not a great writer. How should this be, unless, indeed, the century as a whole is inferior, and prominence in it is no token of greatness? In truth, Mr. Arnold has used the term 'writer' in two widely different senses. In the one use it refers to the content of the writing, to its intellectual and moral import, its spiritual significance; in the other use it refers to the writing itself considered as showing more or less of literary power,--that is, of power in the ordering and verbal embodiment of thoughts and conceptions.

"Declining to be misled by this ambiguity, let us inquire what is meant, when it is said that Emerson was not a great writer. To my apprehension the meaning is simply that his literary execution, taken by and for itself, was not of the highest order. A cotton fabric may be better woven than one of silk, a chain of copper be better wrought and linked than a chain of gold. He that should recognize the better workmanship where it exists would not thereby set the cheaper material above the more precious, for he would not inst.i.tute a comparison to any effect whatsoever between the two. Nor would he betray a shallow and petty mind, as making much of things trivial. Mr. Arnold says of Emerson's writings, the matter is gold, but the workmanship does not evince the highest skill. Were this last urged as determining the value of the writer we might indeed say that the critic offends by exalting a subordinate distinction to the first place. But it is not so urged, nor is there anything to indicate that Mr. Arnold makes perfection of literary execution the be-all and end-all of excellence in literature; indeed one does not see that he at all exaggerates its importance. Those whom he mentions as great writers were for the most part second-rate men--second-rate men that is as measured by the standard of the ages; and it does not appear that he thinks of them otherwise than as such.

Cicero receives the t.i.tle while it is not given to Marcus Antoninus; but it is sufficiently apparent that Mr. Arnold sets a higher value upon Marcus Antoninus than upon Cicero. Voltaire is one of the great writers; but in the world's literature he is at best but first among the lesser lights, and there is no sign that Matthew Arnold attributed to him a higher importance. Or take the case of Swift. The literary talents of this unhappy man were indeed prodigious: he performed feats to which we cannot say that any other would have been equal: he is as unique as Shakespeare,--though, of course, in a vastly lower way. But did he contribute one great thought or one grand and salutary imagination to the world's stock? Not to my knowledge. Did he shed light upon any important province of human interest, upon religion, morals, politics, art, science, history, education, manners or whatever else? I cannot report that he did so. Did he lay a n.o.ble emphasis upon any great truth or order of truths and so recommend it effectually to the attention and consideration of mankind? Or did he even write a single sentence which one treasures up as an imperishable jewel? In fine, does his work serve to enlarge the souls, enlighten the minds, direct the wills or quicken and inspire the better powers of man? Does it so much as breathe upon them a salubrious air? Alas no! To all such questions the answer, or mine own at least, will be negative. Yet he was indeed a great writer: that is, he had a great, a truly wonderful power of conception and representation. Mr. Arnold, who for aught one can discover to the contrary, distinguishes the nature of Swift's genius and prizes it only for what it is worth, does not claim that Emerson was a greater writer in the same sense, but thinks his deliverance somewhat faulty, especially as wanting that continuity which belongs to good literary tissue, as to every other.

"Suppose him quite wrong in this, still the error is not one to be warm about, since it leaves the Concord essayist in his place of pre-eminence, and is put forth only by way of determining the kind of value which shall be attributed to his writings.

"D. A. Wa.s.son."

This was forwarded to Matthew Arnold, who was then at his own home, and in due time this reply was received from him:

"COBHAM, SURREY,

"Jan. 7th., 1886.

"Dear Sir,

"I have just had, on my return to England, your letter and Mr. Wa.s.son's paper, and must thank you for them.

"Very much of what Mr. Wa.s.son says is true; yet literary style is more than he makes it--the mere dressing up of a material which may be inferior; it is itself in the material and has an extraordinary value.

No great writer is to be disposed of as Mr. Wa.s.son disposes of Addison and Swift; he says, nothing is to be learned from Swift; why, a sense for the blatant nonsense and claptrap which const.i.tutes three-fourths of our public writing and speaking, and which is a greater curse to your country that even to ours, is to be got from him. Addison has his valuable criticism of life too; I doubt whether to a Taine, a hundred years hence, he will not seem of more importance than Emerson, who was above all things of value in his own day. But I love Emerson.

"Truly yours,

"Matthew Arnold."

[Ill.u.s.tration: AUTOGRAPH LETTER FROM MATTHEW ARNOLD.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: AUTOGRAPH LETTER FROM MATTHEW ARNOLD.]

Taine, who preferred Macaulay to Carlyle, might also prefer Addison to Emerson; but it is not likely that a future Grimm or another Sainte-Beuve would do so. In his "Essays in Criticism," Matthew Arnold enters a general complaint against English prose writers for a lack of mental flexibility, and against Addison particularly for the commonplaceness of his ideas. He was a severe and exacting critic.

DAVID A. Wa.s.sON.

Bryant, Longfellow, Emerson, Hawthorne and Whittier were all nearly of the same age, and formed a literary galaxy such as has been rare enough in any country or period of history. They are distinguished, however, by one peculiarity--a slight sentimentalism which belonged to the time in which they grew up, and is most strongly marked in Longfellow and least so in Hawthorne. Fifteen or twenty years later there appeared, as usually happens, a number of talented imitators or admirers, and with them two men of equal genius who may be looked upon as the corrective and antidote for their predecessors. These were James Russell Lowell and David Atwood Wa.s.son.

They were as different as Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson. Lowell was a fine poet, a humorist and man of the world. He wrote easily and lived easily.

He was the companion of wealthy and distinguished men. He acquired prosperity, as it were, by natural inclination. Next to the King of Prussia he was the most fortunate man of his time. He knew something of sorrow, but of hardship and misfortune only by hearsay. He was the child of summer, and revelled in it; but this continual happiness brought with it certain limitations. Though he was a veracious man, he was rarely a serious one. He never became thoroughly in earnest until he was stimulated by partisan feeling. His best poems were inspired by the anti-slavery conflict, and the rendition of Mason and Slidell; and it was just on these occasions that his humor was most brilliant and pleasant flavored. His productiveness was not great, and his other writings do not make a strong impression. It is said that he often tried to write a book, but was never able to concentrate himself on one subject for a sufficient length of time. He is easily the first of American humorists. The greatest compliment ever paid Th.o.r.eau was that such a man as Lowell could not understand him.

Wa.s.son must have been born under the constellation of the Little Bear.

As the Germans say, his life was always winter. Every possible obstacle was placed in his way, and misfortune came to him at one time or another in almost every shape. The difficulties he encountered in life were too great for him, and prevented the full fruition of his genius. The wonder is that they did not crush him altogether. He never acquired the sufficient public influence nor received the recognition his merit deserved. He was by nature a thinker--a seeker after truth. There was no problem,--social, political or philosophical,--which he was not ready to grapple with. He could plunge into these subjects like a pearl-diver who means to touch bottom, and would never come out till his last breath was spent. This mental habit and his continual suffering made him only too serious, too much in earnest. Jests were not in his line, but he sometimes wrote poetry of the very highest order. He is the first and most original of American thinkers.

What these two dissimilar men had in common was good Anglo-Saxon manliness--which is after all the foundation of common-sense. They wished to live as other men had lived before them, and not in any new, unusual, or eccentric manner. They believed that virtue was to be found in the great world rather than out of it; among human habitations, and in dealing with all kinds of people rather than by an isolated life at Brook Farm or in Walden Woods. They sought not after any rare and Utopian excellencies, but contented themselves with a plain, sensible, every-day morality. They were neither vegetarians, teetotalers, non-resistants, nor socialists. They considered it no sin to love a woman or to fight a man. They may be called anti-sentimentalists.

Neither were they blind followers of custom and tradition. They wished to be in the vanguard of civilization, and they were conscious that to do this they must not only accept the results of others, but add something of their own. They endeavored to become acquainted with the best that was thought and known in their time, both in literature and in other matters. They thus became excellent critics, as well as versatile and many-sided men. They were among the most cultivated men of the century, and are the most cosmopolitan of American writers. That they should not have possessed greater influence was largely owing to the tendencies of their time. The current of the age was too strong for them, and in their later years they both expressed gloomy forebodings of the future, both for their own country and the rest of the civilized world.

Wa.s.son went to Concord in 1859 intending to make it his permanent abode, but the offer of a philanthropic gentleman who wished to take him into his own house for a year and care for him, as Mr. Badams of Manchester entertained Carlyle, induced him to emigrate again. He continued however in friendly communication with the literary people there, often visited them, and now lies buried in Sleepy Hollow cemetery, so that he deserves to be cla.s.sed among them, rather than with any other group of literary men.

He was born in Brooksville, Maine, on the fourteenth of May, 1823. He was named David for his father, and Atwood for Miss Harriet Atwood, a female preacher and missionary who was at that time his mother's devoted friend,--and it has been said that Wa.s.son attributed his unusual mental activity largely to her influence. His mother died while he was still too young to recollect her, but her place was fortunately supplied by a kindly and sensible stepmother; not such a rare phenomenon as some people think. His father belonged to a cla.s.s of men only to be found on the coast of Maine, who are at once fishermen, farmers and navigators; a much more intelligent and cultivated cla.s.s than the agricultural people of the interior. It is a beautiful sail among the islands from Rockland to Mount Desert, and the pleasantest part of it, to me at least, is the sight of the well kept farms with their handsome cattle and clean-shaven hay-fields, which line the coast. Our best ship-builders have originated among these people.

Brooksville is a thinly scattered settlement on the westerly side of a rocky and even mountainous peninsula. A deep and narrow strait separates it from Castine, which has to be crossed in a ferry-boat. The house of David Wa.s.son, Senior, is something more than half-a-mile from the ferry landing; a large, commodious, two-story house, much better than the average of farm-houses, with two large barns and numerous out-buildings.

Between it and the street is an orchard, and on one side a latticed porch or piazza. West of it there is a trout-brook and beyond that a hemlock grove, and the blue hills of Camden in the distance. On the south side the sea comes up to the edge of the farm, and the road to Sedgwick winds about the ridge on the East. It was a fitting birthplace for a poet or a painter.

He has left us a valuable and quite unique sketch of his early boyhood, [Footnote: Essays, Religious, Social, Political. D. A. Wa.s.son. Boston: Lee and Shepard.] in which he confesses to having been a sensitive, excitable and pa.s.sionate little fellow such as the more cool-headed and phlegmatic sort could tease and worry at pleasure. Since he was also very high-spirited, this resulted inevitably in a good many fights, and from being naturally peaceable and tender-hearted he became at last the most noted pugilist in that community. It is said that at seventeen he could smash a door-panel with his fist. That he disliked work on the farm is not surprising. Manual labor is injurious to boys physically and mentally; and they should be saved from it, except perhaps in the haying or harvesting seasons, as much as possible. Otherwise he was modest, orderly, truthful, and the finest scholar that had ever been known about Castine. His father recognized his superior abilities, and made an effort to send him to Bowdoin College.

There were many obstacles in the way, however, and he did not enter until 1845. He never told me much about his college life. He was older than his companions and more serious. The light spirit that makes it a joyous festival to many was not in him. Of the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty he knew nothing. He distinguished himself in mathematics (especially in geometry, which is the most logical of studies) and in the students' debating-societies. He was also an excellent gymnast.

In almost every college cla.s.s there are a number of over-grown boys who had better have been sent to the reform-school. On the occasion of a cla.s.s supper, or some such celebration, young Wa.s.son saved half-a-dozen of these roaring blades from disgrace and suspension, by his timely interference. It was already far into the night, and being fairly intoxicated, they took it into their minds to return and attend morning prayers in the college chapel. In order to prevent this catastrophe, Wa.s.son arranged a bowling match for a fict.i.tious sum of money with the most sober man he could find, and in that way delayed the party until the dangerous hour had pa.s.sed. It was supposed to have been some of the same set who the following autumn set fire to and consumed the college wood-pile--a severe loss, and a dangerous precedent. No trace of the incendiaries could be discovered and the college faculty suspended on suspicion right and left. Among those whom the lightning struck were several that Wa.s.son knew or felt sure could have had nothing to do with it; and he accordingly went to the president and argued the case with him. This resulted in his being summoned before the next faculty meeting. When asked whether he knew who the perpetrators of the outrage were, he declined to answer, not because he had positive knowledge but because he felt morally certain in regard to them. A few weeks later, after he had gone into the country to teach school for the winter, he received word that he had been suspended. Indignant at what he considered an injustice to his character and scholarship, he left Bowdoin forever: nor did he perhaps lose much by this. The philosophical studies of the senior year could be mastered as easily by a mind like Wa.s.son's without an instructor as with one. He never studied for rank and cared little or nothing for college honors or degrees.

There is no good art without a sense of delicacy; and this mental delicacy is usually matched by some kind of physical sensitiveness.

Artists are, according to the vulgar phrase, more thin-skinned than other people. Both at Bowdoin College, and afterwards while at the divinity-school, Wa.s.son worked hard in summer and taught school in winter so as to help in defraying the expense of his education. In this mode of life he encountered many hardships that were too severe for him.

I notice among my own cla.s.smates that very few of those who lived in this manner reached the age of thirty-five. The food which Wa.s.son encountered during his winter peregrinations was anything but what human beings are intended to eat. On one occasion he returned from his school to dine as usual in a cold room, and found himself provided there with the skeleton of a chicken, two large beets, a pie made of preserved barberries, and biscuits which pulled out when separated, like a telescope. The meat, unless fried, was always cooked too much; bread and vegetables insufficiently. Like many another young hero he believed in facing these obstacles, and overcoming them by main force. A strain which he received in a wrestling match during the celebrated Tippecanoe campaign may have done him harm; but a more serious injury was incurred while on a trip to Bangor in one of his father's schooners the summer after he was suspended from college. The captain of the schooner appears to have been a sea-faring brute who had a secret grudge, a sort of town-and-gown feeling, against the scholar, and was ready to do him any mischief he could. They were to take on a cargo of lumber at Bangor and the captain requested Wa.s.son, who was not actually under his orders, to stow it away in the hold while two men on deck handed the boards to him as fast as possible. Wa.s.son felt that something was wrong and might have protested against it, but his youthful pride, and perhaps a feeling of indifference in regard to his fate, prevented him. I believe he finally fainted from over-exertion and the close air, and was never a well man again. The trouble was not very bad at first, and might easily have been cured by suitable treatment, and a quiet, methodical life: but there was no doctor in that part of Maine who could prescribe properly for him. He tried some short sea-voyages, but these did him little good. So Prescott injured his eyesight through the same proud spirit; but it was this pride which made him afterwards what he was.

His ill-health however did not prevent him from studying and writing.

The following autumn he went into the office of a lawyer and member of Congress in Castine and read "Blackstone," "Chitty on Bills," and some other law-books. The study of law is in itself an excellent nerve tonic, balancing the mind and strengthening the character. Nothing could have been better for him at this juncture, and it is an unlimited pity that he did not continue it longer. But the law could never have satisfied the aspirations of his nature any more than Columbus might have been satisfied with sailing a packet in the Mediterranean. He liked the study of it, and once spoke with great respect of "Chitty on Bills" wishing he could find a work on theology or politics that contains so much good sense; but he longed for something beyond it. The congressman had a good opinion of his abilities and held out the prospect of a partnership to him, but personal ambition was not an ingredient in Wa.s.son's nature. He was discontented and ready for a change.

One day in June 1849 he was sent to a distant town on what was to his sensitive moral nature a most disgusting expedition; namely, to help a lucrative client take the poor debtor's oath, and so avoid a partially unjust debt. On his return home he stopped at a country store to make a small purchase, and there at the end of the shelf he saw a cheap dingy copy of Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus." He purchased it, and read it in his wagon by the evening light. He had tried to read it before, but failed to make his way in it. It was the first clear message and sure token of a spiritual life that had yet reached him. He had lived through the "everlasting no," and here was the "everlasting yea" set plainly before him. Years afterward M. D. Conway told Carlyle of walking in the woods at Groveland with Wa.s.son, and how his face became radiant with internal light when he spoke of "Sartor Resartus."

This new-birth from above seized upon him like a fever. He now felt that he had a mission in life; a message to mankind. And in what way could he deliver this message? How could he make known to others what was in his full heart, except from the pulpit? For the first time he conceived the ministry as a high-minded and enn.o.bling profession. He decided accordingly to go into the church. His family were Calvinists, and Calvinism was the only mode of faith of which he knew very much. That such a step should have been inspired by the writings of a heretic like Carlyle was in itself a contradiction which foreboded an ultimate collision. Yet no man perhaps ever lived who had a clearer sense of a Divine Presence in the universe than Thomas Carlyle, and it was this which Wa.s.son recognized in him. Poets and philosophers are naturally heretical, because they take the short road of genius which others find it difficult to follow. But all believers finally arrive at the same destination.

He entered the theological seminary at Bangor in 1849 and graduated in 1851. It may be he went there with a youthful idea of reforming the church. At any rate his boldness of thought and free utterance brought him into suspicion with his fellow students, and at one time reports were in circulation that he was to be expelled for heresy. With his customary directness he went to the president, Dr. Pond, and inquired if there was any truth in this. The doctor, who really liked Wa.s.son, received him with a kindly, patriarchal manner and said: "Do not be troubled, my young friend, we all have our seasons of doubt. I have had mine; but take my word for it that it is all right. For look at those saints up there in glory. How did they get there?" Such an argument was not likely to relieve the fermentation in his mind. Walking the streets of Bangor at this time was Dr. Frederick Henry Hedge, the man of all others who might have solved Wa.s.son's doubts in a satisfactory manner, and with whom Wa.s.son afterwards found himself in more complete moral and intellectual sympathy than with any other of his friends. Wa.s.son saw him frequently, but had no opportunity of making his acquaintance. So nearly do we either hit it, or miss it, all through life!

The only person who sympathized with him in his progressive views of religion was Miss Abbie Smith, the daughter of an apothecary in Newburyport, Ma.s.sachusetts. She was visiting at the house of her brother who was one of the instructors at the Seminary. That he should have fallen in love with her, and soon become engaged to her is therefore not surprising. They were married the year after his graduation, and she continued a faithful, industrious and uncomplaining wife; his mainstay in ill-health and misfortune till the end. They were not always happy together; but it is a rare marriage where that is the case. Wa.s.son's struggle with the world was often reflected in his own family, disturbing the harmony and comfort of it. His wife once said quite gravely, that there were others from whom her husband would probably have made a selection if he had not offered himself to her. He was always a favorite with the other s.e.x, and equally fond of their society.

As he never troubled himself much as to what people said of him, this gave rise to a good deal of talk which his opponents took advantage of to disparage his character. He was once a witness in a divorce case, and a rather tricky lawyer who had a remarkable faculty for what Bacon calls "turning the cat in the pan," succeeded in making him appear at a disadvantage; but Mrs. Wa.s.son told me that he was in the right. If his wife had no suspicion of him we need have none.

He went directly from Bangor to Groveland, a pleasant village beautifully situated on the Merrimack, which from Haverhill to the sea is one of the finest American rivers. His _fiancee_ had numerous relatives in the place, and it was owing to her influence that he received a call there. At first all the signs were favorable; the young minister was well liked, and his parishioners were only afraid that a man of such rare ability would soon gravitate to a larger congregation.