Whittier-land Part 2

From the back entry at the western end of the kitchen ascends the steep staircase down which Whittier, when an infant, was rolled by his sister Mary, two years older than he. She thought if he were well wrapped in a blanket he would not be harmed, and the experiment proved quite successful, thanks to her abundant care in bundling him in many folds. He happily escaped one other peril in his infancy. His parents took him with them on a winter drive to Kingston, N. H. To protect him from the cold, he was wrapped too closely in his blankets, and he came so near asphyxiation that for a time he was thought to be dead. He was taken into a farmhouse they were pa.s.sing when the discovery was made, and after a long and anxious treatment they were delighted to find he was living.

The rooms in the upper part of the house injured by the recent fire have been perfectly restored to their original condition. At Whittier's last visit here he went into every room, and told stories of the happenings of his youth in each. At the head of the back stairs is a little doorless press, which he pointed out as a favorite play-place of his and his brother's. Here they found room for their few toys, as perhaps three generations of Whittier children had done before them.

And it is not unlikely that some of their toys had amused the youth of their grandfather. One of his earliest memories is connected with this little closet, for here he had his first severe twinge of conscience.

He had told a lie--no doubt a white one, for it did not trouble him at first--and soon after was watching the rising of a thunder-cloud that was grumbling over the great trees on the western hill near at hand. A bolt descended among the oaks, and the deafening explosion was instantaneous. He saw in it an exhibition of divine wrath over his sin, and obeyed the primal instinct to hide himself. His mother, searching for him some time after the storm had pa.s.sed, found her repentant little boy almost smothered under a quilt in this closet, and as he confessed his sin, he was tenderly shrived. Here in the open chamber the brothers often slept when visitors claimed the little western chamber they usually occupied. They would sometimes find, sifted through cracks in the old walls, a little snowdrift on their quilt. The small western room the boys called theirs was the scene of the story Trowbridge has so neatly versified. The elder proposed that as they could lift each other, by lifting in turn they could rise to the ceiling, and there was no knowing how much further if they were out of doors! The prudent lads, to make it easy in case of failure, stood upon the bed in this little room. Trowbridge says:--

"Kind Nature smiled on that wise child, Nor could her love deny him The large fulfilment of his plan; Since he who lifts his brother man In turn is lifted by him."

Boys were boys in those days, and Whittier told us of trying to annoy his younger sister by pretending to hang her cat on this railing to the attic stairs. And girls were girls too; for he told of Elizabeth's frightening two hired men who were occupying the open chamber. They had been telling each other ghost stories after they went to bed; but both a.s.serted that they could not be frightened by such things. From over the door of her room Elizabeth began throwing pins, one at a time, so that they would strike on the floor near the brave men. They were so frightened they would not stay there another night. In the open attic bunches of dried herbs hung from the rafters, and traces of corn selected for seed. On the floor the boys spread their store of nuts "from brown October's wood." Originally the northern side of the roof sloped down to the first story, as was the fashion in the days of the Stuarts. But some years before Whittier's birth this side of the roof was raised, giving much additional chamber room.

Not far from the house, at the foot of the western hill, is the small lot inclosed by a stone wall, to which reference has been made, that from the earliest settlement was the burying-place of the family. Here lie the remains of Thomas Whittier and those of his descendants who were the ancestors of the poet. A plain granite shaft in the centre of the lot is inscribed with the names of Thomas Whittier and of Ruth Green, his wife; Joseph Whittier and Mary Peaslee, his wife; Joseph Whittier, 2d, and Sarah Greenleaf, his wife. No headstones mark the several graves. Others of the family were buried here, including Mary Whittier, an aunt of the poet. His father and uncle Moses, originally buried here, were removed to the Amesbury cemetery, when his mother died, in 1857.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WHITTIER ELM]

Across the road from the house of the nearest neighbors, the Ayers, in a field of the Whittier farm, is an old, immense, and symmetrical tree, labeled "The Whittier Elm," which the poet's schoolmate, Edmund Ayer, saved from the woodman's axe by paying an annual tribute, at a time when the farm had gone out of the possession of the Whittiers, and while the new proprietors were intent upon despoiling the place of its finest trees. This is the tree referred to in these lines, written in 1862, in the alb.u.m of Lydia Amanda Ayer (now Mrs. Evans), his schoolmate Lydia's niece:--

"A dweller where my infant eyes Looked out on Nature's sweet surprise, Whose home is in the ample shade Of the old Elm Tree where I played, Asks for her book a word of mine:-- I give it in a single line: Be true to Nature and to Heaven's design!"

Whittier took us that October day to neighbor Ayer's house, where the brother of little Lydia was still living, who also was a schoolmate of the poet, and they talked of the old times with the greatest relish.

The Ayer house occupies the site of a garrison house, built of strong oaken timbers, and used as a house of refuge in the time of the Indian wars. The Whittiers, though close at hand, never availed themselves of its protection, even when Indian faces covered with war-paint peered through the kitchen windows upon the peaceful Quaker family. We were soon joined by another aged schoolmate, Aaron Chase, and with him we went to Corliss Hill, where Whittier showed us the two houses in which he first went to school. They are both now standing, and are dwelling-houses in each of which a room was given up for the district school--one before the house described in "In School Days" was built, and the other while it was being repaired. He had not yet arrived at school age when his sister Mary took him to his first school, kept by his life-long friend, Joshua Coffin, to whom he addressed the poem, "To My Old Schoolmaster." As I happened to be a nephew of Coffin, he told me stories of his first school. It was kept in an unfinished ell of a farmhouse; but the room had been transformed into a neatly furnished kitchen when we visited it. In the poem referred to he alludes to the quarrels of the good man and his tipsy wife heard through "the cracked and crazy wall." He told this story of the tipsy wife: She sent her son for brush to heat her oven. He brought such a nice load that she thought it too bad to waste it in the oven. So she sent her son with it to the grocery, and he brought back the liquor he received in payment.

But this made her short of oven wood, and to eke out her supply of fuel she burned a loose board of the cellar stairs. The next time she had occasion to go to the cellar, she forgot the hiatus she had made and broke her leg. After Mr. Chase left us, Whittier told me that his old schoolmate was a nephew of the last person usually accounted a witch in this neighborhood. She was the wife of Moses Chase of Rocks Village.

Her relatives believed her a witch, and one of her nieces knocked her down in the shape of a persistent bug that troubled her. At that moment it happened that the old woman fell and hurt her head. The old lady on one occasion went before Squire Ladd, the blacksmith and Justice of the Peace at the Rocks, and took her oath that she was not a witch.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOSHUA COFFIN

"Olden teacher, present friend, Wise with antiquarian search, In the scrolls of State and Church; Named on history's t.i.tle-page, Parish-clerk and justice sage."

TO MY OLD SCHOOLMASTER]

We next visited the scene of "In School Days," and found some traces of the schoolhouse that have since been obliterated, although a tablet now marks its site. The door-stone over which the scholars "went storming out to playing" was still there, and some of the foundation stones were in place. "Around it still the sumachs" were growing, and blackberry vines were creeping. Mr. Whittier gathered a handful of the red sumach, and took it to Amesbury with him. It remained many days in a vase in his "garden room." Speaking of his boyhood, he said he was always glad when it came his turn to stay at home on First Day. The chaise, driven to Amesbury--nine miles--every First and Fifth Day, fortunately was not of a capacity to take the whole family at once. This gave him an occasional opportunity, much enjoyed, to spend the day musing by the brook, or in the shade of the oaks and hemlocks on the breezy hilltops, which commanded a view unsurpa.s.sed for beauty. These hills, which so closely encompa.s.s the ancient homestead at the west and south, are among the highest in the county. From them one gets glimpses of the ocean in Ipswich Bay, the undulating hills of Newbury, cultivated to their tops, on the further side of the Merrimac, the southern ranges of the New Hampshire mountains, and the heights of Wachusett and Monadnock in Ma.s.sachusetts. Po Hill, in Amesbury, under which stands the Quaker meeting-house where his parents worshiped, shows its great round dome in the east. He never tired of these views, and celebrated them in many of his poems. He especially dreaded the winter drives to meeting. Buffalo robes were not so plenty in those days as they became a few years later, and our fathers did not dress so warmly as do we. He was so stiffened by cold on some of these drives to Amesbury that he told me "his teeth could not chatter until thawed out." Winter had its compensations, as he has so well shown in "Snow-Bound." But it is noticeable that he does not refer in that poem to the winter drives to meeting. On one occasion he improved the absence of his parents on a First Day to go nutting. He climbed a tall walnut, and had a fall of about twenty feet which came near being fatal. The Friends did not theoretically hold one day more sacred than another, and yet theirs was the habit of the Puritan community, to abstain from all play as well as from work on the Sabbath, and this fall gave a smart fillip to the young poet's conscience.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SCENE OF "IN SCHOOL DAYS"]

This story ill.u.s.trating Whittier's popularity when a child I did not get from him, but is a legend of the neighborhood. One of their nearest neighbors, a Miss Chase, had a cherry-tree she guarded with the utmost jealousy. No bird could alight on it in cherry time, and no boy approach it, without bringing her to the rescue with a promptness that frightened them. One day she saw a boy in the branches of this precious tree, and issued upon the scene with dire threats. She caught sight of the culprit's face, and instantly changed her tone: "Oh, is it you, Greenleaf? Take all the cherries you want!"

The old homestead was an object of interest as far back as 1842, as is shown by a letter before me, written by Elizabeth Nicholson of Philadelphia, who asks her friend, Elizabeth Whittier, for a picture of it: "When thee come to Philadelphia if thee will bring ever so rough a sketch of the house where Greenleaf was born, for Elizabeth Lloyd to copy for my book, why--we'll be glad to see thee! I hope for the sake of the picturesque it is a ruin--indeed it must be, for Griswold says it has been in the family a hundred years!" It had then been in the family for over one hundred and fifty years. The book referred to by Miss Nicholson was a ma.n.u.script collection of all the verses, published and unpublished, that Whittier had written at that time--a notable collection, now in existence. She had obtained from the poet a preface in verse for this alb.u.m, which as it has autobiographical material, refers to the scenery of his birthplace, and was never in print, is here given in a version he prepared for another similar alb.u.m. For this version I am indebted to the collection made by Mary Pillsbury of Newbury, which contains other original poems of Whittier never published:--

A RETROSPECT

O visions of my boyhood! shades of rhymes!

Vain dreams and longings of my early times!

The work of intervals, a ploughboy's lore, Oft conned by hearthlight when day's toil was o'er; Or when through roof-cracks could at night behold Bright stars in circle with pattens of gold; Or stretched at noon while oaken branches cast A restful shade, where rippling waters pa.s.sed; The ox unconscious panted at my side, The good dog fondly his young master eyed, And on the boughs above the forest bird Alone rude s.n.a.t.c.hes of the measure heard; The measure that had sounded to me long, And vain I sought to weave it in a song, Or trace it, when the world's enchantment first To longing eye, as kindling dawn's light, burst.

Then flattery's voice, in woman's gentlest tone, Woke thoughts and feelings heretofore unknown, And homes of wealth and beauty, wit and mirth, By taste refined, by eloquence and worth, Taught and diffused the intellect's high joy, And gladly welcomed e'en a rustic boy; Or when ambition's lip of flame and fear Burned like the tempter's to my listening ear, And a proud spirit, hidden deep and long, Rose up for strife, stern, resolute, and strong, Eager for toil, and proudly looking up To higher levels for the world, with hope.

In these lines Whittier has told in brief the whole story of his life, from his early dreaming by this brookside and at this hearthstone, to the waking of his political ambitions, and later to his earnest strife to bring up the world "to higher levels."

It happened that the day on which Whittier visited his birthplace for the last time was toward the close of a spirited political campaign in which Whittier took much interest, as General Butler was a candidate he was opposing. Speaking of Butler reminded him of the pet ox of his boyhood, which had the odd name of "Old Butler," between whose horns he would sit as the animal chewed his cud under the hillside oaks. This was the same ox that, in rushing down one of these steep hills for salt, could not stop because of his momentum, but saved his young master's life by leaping over his head. No doubt this ox was in mind when he wrote the line just quoted, "The ox unconscious panted at my side." One story reminded him of another, and he said this ox was named for another that had its day in a former generation on a neighboring farm.

This is the story he told of the original "Old Butler:" A family named Morse lived not far from here, and included several boys fond of practical joking. The older brothers one day bound the youngest upon the back of the ox, Butler. Frightened by the unusual burden, the animal dashed away to the woods on Job's Hill. The lad was fearfully bruised before he was rescued. Indignant at the treatment he had received, he left home the next morning, and was not heard from until in his old age he returned to the Haverhill farm, and found his brothers still living. They killed for him the fatted calf, and after the supper, as they sat before the great wood fire, they talked over the events of their boyhood. One of the brothers referred to the subject all had hitherto avoided, and said, "Don't you remember your ride upon Old Butler?" "Yes, I _do_ remember it," was the answer, "and I don't thank you for bringing it up at this time." The next morning he left the place, and was never again heard from. Mr. Whittier told this story to explain the odd name he had given his ox.

The story has been often told of Garrison's coming out to East Haverhill to find a contributor who had interested him; and it has been stated that the Quaker lad was called in from work in the field to see the dapper young editor and his lady friend. He once told me that the situation was a bit more awkward for him. It happened that on this eventful morning the young poet had discovered that a hen had stolen her nest under the barn, and he was crawling on his hands and knees, digging his dusty way towards the hen, when his sister Mary came out to summon him to receive city visitors. It was only by her urgent persuasion that he was induced to give up burrowing for the eggs. By making a wide detour, he entered the house without being seen, and in haste effected a change of raiment. In telling the story, he said he put on in his haste a pair of trousers that came scarcely to his ankles, and he must have been a laughable spectacle. He would have felt much more at ease if he had come in just as he was when he emerged from under the barn. Garrison, with the social tact that ever distinguished him, put the shy boy at his ease at once.

After the death of their father, Greenleaf and his brother Franklin for a time worked the farm together, and when in later life they indulged in reminiscences of this agricultural experience, this is a story with which the poet liked to tease his brother: Franklin was sent to swap cows with a venerable Quaker living at considerable distance from their homestead. He came back with a beautiful animal, warranted as he supposed to be a good cow, and he depended upon a verbal warrant from a member of a Society which was justly proud of its reliability in all business transactions. It was soon found that she was worthless as a milker, and Franklin took her back, demanding a cancellation of the bargain because the cow was not as represented. But the old Quaker was ready for him: "What did I tell thee? Did I say she was a _good_ cow?

No, I told thee she was a _harnsome_ cow--and thee cannot deny she _is_ harnsome!"

One of Whittier's ancestors was fined for cutting oaks on the common.

When this fact was discovered, he was asked if he would wish this circ.u.mstance to be omitted in his biography. "By no means," he said, "tell the whole story. It shows we had some enterprising ancestors, even if a bit unscrupulous."

When Whittier last visited his birthplace, ten years before his death, he was saddened by many evidences he saw that the estate was not being thriftily managed, and expressed the wish to buy and restore the place to something like its condition when it remained in his family. Not one of his near relatives was then so situated as to be able to take charge of it, and his idea of again making it Whittier homestead was reluctantly given up. When he learned, towards the close of his life, that Mr. Ordway, Mayor Burnham, and other public-spirited citizens of Haverhill, proposed to buy and care for the place, already become a shrine for many visitors, he asked permission to pay whatever might be needed for its purchase. He died before negotiations could be completed, and Hon. James H. Carleton generously bought the homestead, and transferred the proprietorship to a self-perpetuating board of nine trustees, viz.: Alfred A. Ordway, George C. How, Charles b.u.t.ters, Dudley Porter, Thomas E. Burnham, Clarence E. Kelley, Susan B. Sanders, Sarah M. F. Duncan, and Annie W. Frankle. In the deed of gift the trustees were enjoined "to preserve as nearly as may be the natural features of the landscape; preserve and restore the buildings thereon as nearly as may be in the same condition as when occupied by Whittier; and to afford all persons, at such suitable times and under such proper restrictions as said trustees may prescribe, the right and privilege of access to the same, that thereby the memory and love for the poet and the man may be cherished and perpetuated." Mr. Ordway was made president of the board, and in his hands the office has been no sinecure. His unflagging zeal and his unerring good taste have resulted not only in putting the ancient house into the perfect order of the olden time, but in fertilizing the wornout fields, and preserving for future ages one of the finest specimens in the country of the colonial farmhouse of New England. Mr. Whittier's niece, to whom he left his house in Amesbury, returned to the birthplace many of the household treasures that were carried from there in 1836. The articles in the house purporting to be Whittier heirlooms may be depended on as genuine.

I do not think that Whittier was ever aware that Harriet Livermore, the "not unfeared, half-welcome guest," of whom he gave such a vivid portrait in "Snow-Bound," returned to America from her travels in the Holy Land at about the time that poem was published, and died the next year, 1867. I have from good authority this curious story of her first reading of those lines which meant so much in a peculiar way to the immortality of her name. She was ill, and called with a prescription at a drugstore in Burlington, N. J. It happened that the druggist was a personal friend of Whittier's--Mr. Allinson, father of the lad for whom the poem "My Namesake" was written. This was in March, 1866, and Whittier had just sent his friend an early copy of his now famous poem.

He had not had time to open the book when the prescription was handed him. As it would take considerable time to compound the medicine, he asked the aged lady to take a seat, and handed her the book he had just received to read while waiting. When he gave her the medicine and she returned the book, he noticed she was much perturbed, and was mystified by her exclamation: "This book tells a pack of lies about me!" He naturally supposed she was crazy, both from her remark and from her appearance. It was not until some time later that he learned that his customer was Harriet Livermore herself!

In another New Jersey town was living at the same time another of the "Snow-Bound" characters,--the teacher of the district school, whose name even the poet had forgotten when this sketch of him was written.

In the last year of his life Whittier recalled that his name was Haskell, but could tell me no more, except that he was from Maine, and was a Dartmouth student. His story is told in "Life and Letters," and is now referred to only to note the curious fact that although he lived until 1876, and was a cultivated man who no doubt was familiar with Whittier's work, yet he was never aware that he had the poet for a pupil, and died without knowing that his own portrait had been drawn by the East Haverhill lad with whom he had played in this old kitchen. I have this from my friend, John Townsend Trowbridge, who was personally acquainted with Haskell in the last years of his life.

It was in 1698, ten years after this house was built, that the Indians in a foray upon Haverhill burned many houses and killed or captured forty persons, including the heroic Hannah Dustin, in whom they caught a veritable tartar. Her statue with uplifted tomahawk stands in front of the City Hall. It is possible that on her return to Haverhill she brought her ten Indian scalps into this kitchen.

Whittier used to tell many amusing stories of his boyhood days. Here is one he heard in the old kitchen of the Whittier homestead at Haverhill, as told by the aged pastor of the Congregational church in the neighborhood, who used to call upon the Quaker family as if they belonged to his parish. These extra-official visits were much prized, especially by the boys, for he told them many a tale of his own boyhood in Revolutionary times. This story of "the power of figures" I can give almost in Whittier's words, as I made notes while he was telling it:

The old clergyman sat by the kitchen fire with his mug of cider and told of his college life. He was a poor student, and when he went home at vacation time, he tramped the long journey on foot, stopping at hospitable farmhouses on the way for refreshment. One evening an old farmer invited him in, and as they sat by the fire, after a good supper, they talked of the things the student was learning at college.

At length the farmer suggested:--

"No doubt you know the power of figures?"

The student modestly allowed he had learned something of algebra and some branches of the higher mathematics.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HARRIET LIVERMORE[2]]

"I know it! I know it! You are just the man I want to see. You know the power of figures! I have lost a cow; now use your power of figures and find her for me."

The student disclaimed such power, but it was of no use. The farmer insisted that one who knew the power of figures must be able to locate his cow. Else, of what use to go to college; why not stay at home and find the cows after the manner of the unlearned? So the student decided to quiz a little. He took a piece of chalk and drew crazy diagrams on the floor. The farmer thought he recognized in the lines the roads and fences of the vicinity, rubbed his hands, and exclaimed:--

"You are coming to it! Don't tell me you don't know the power of figures!"

At last, when the poor student had exhausted the power of his invention, he threw down the chalk, and pointing to the spot where it fell, said:--

"Your cow is there!"

He had a good bed, but could not rest easy on it for the thought of how he was to get out of the sc.r.a.pe in the morning, when it would be surely known that his figures had lied. He decided that he would steal off before any of the family had arisen. In the early dawn he was congratulating himself upon having got out of the house un.o.bserved, when he was met at the gate by the old farmer himself, who was leading the cow home in triumph. He had found her exactly where the figures had foretold. Of course the mathematician must go back to breakfast--what was he running off for, after doing such a service by his learning?

They stood again by the cabalistic diagram on the floor of the kitchen.

"You needn't tell me you don't know the power of figures," exclaimed the good man, "for the cow was just there!"

For once, the clergyman said, Satan had done him a good turn.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SCENE ON COUNTRY BROOK]

Nearly all the early letters and poems of Whittier, written before he gave up every selfish ambition and devoted his life to philanthropic work, show how great was the change that came over his spirit when about twenty-five years of age. Before that time he imagined that the world was treating him harshly, and he was bracing himself for a contest with it, with a feeling that he was surrounded by enemies. His tone was almost invariably pessimistic. After the change referred to, he habitually saw friends on every side, gave up selfish ambitions, and a cheerful optimism pervaded his outlook upon life. The following extract from a letter written in April, 1831, while editing the "New England Review," to a literary lady in New Haven, is in the prevailing tone of what he wrote in the earlier period. This letter has only lately come into my possession, and is now first quoted:--