Mrs. Thaxter found herself, as the years went on, the centre of a
company who rather selected themselves than were selected from the
vast number of persons who frequented her brothers' "house of
entertainment" at the islands. Her "parlor," as it was called, was a
_milieu_ quite as interesting as any of the "salons" of the past.
Her pronounced individuality forbade the intrusion even of a fancy of
comparison with anything else, and equally forbade the possibility of
rivalry. There was only one thought in the mind of the frequenters of
her parlor,--that of gratitude for the pleasure and opportunity she
gave them, and a genuine wish to please her and to become her friends.
She possessed the keen instincts of a child with regard to people. If
they were unlovable to her, if they were for any reason unsympathetic,
nothing could bring her to overcome her dislike. She was in this
particular more like some wild thing than a creature of the nineteenth
century; indeed, one of her marked traits was a curious intractability
of nature. I believe that no worldly motive ever influenced her
relation with any human creature. Of course these native qualities
made her more ardently devoted in her friendships; but it went hardly
with her to ingratiate those persons for whom she felt a natural
repulsion, or even sometimes to be gentle with them. Later in life she
learned to call no man "common or unclean;" but coming into the world,
as she did, full grown, like Minerva in the legend, with keen eyes,
and every sense alive to discern pretension, untruth, ungodliness in
guise of the church, and all the uncleanness of the earth, these
things were as much a surprise to her as it was, on the other hand, to
find the wondrous world of art and the lives of the saints. Perhaps no
large social success was ever achieved upon such unworldly conditions;
she swung as free as possible of the world of society and its
opinions, forming a centre of her own, built up on the sure
foundations of love and loyalty. She saw as much as any woman of the
time of large numbers of people, and she was able to give them the
best kind of social enjoyment: music, pictures, poetry, and
conversation; the latter sometimes poor and sometimes good, according
to the drift which swept through her beautiful room. Mrs. Thaxter was
generous in giving invitations to her parlor, but to its frequenters
she said, "If people do not enjoy what they find, they must go their
way; my work and the music will not cease." The study of nature and
art was always going forward either on or around her work-table. The
keynote of conversation was struck there for those who were able to
hear it. We were reminded of William Blake's verse:--
"I give you the end of a golden string,
Only wind it into a ball,
It will lead you in at Heaven's gate,
Built in Jerusalem wall."
Here it was that Whittier could be heard at his best, sympathetic,
stimulating, uplifting, as he alone could be, and yet as he, with his
Quaker training to silence, was so seldom moved to prove himself. Here
he would sit near her hour after hour; sometimes mending her aeolian
harp while they talked together, sometimes reading aloud to the
assembled company. Here was Rose Lamb, artist and dear friend; and
here Mrs. Mary Hemenway was a most beloved presence, with her eager
enthusiasm for reform, yet with a modesty of bearing which made young
and old press to her side. She loved Celia Thaxter, who in her turn
was deeply and reverently attached to Mrs. Hemenway.
The early affection of both Mr. Thaxter and his wife for William
Morris Hunt grew to be the love of a lifetime. Hunt's grace,
versatility, and charm, not to speak of his undoubted genius, exerted
their combined fascination over these appreciative friends in common
with the rest of his art-loving contemporaries; but to these two, each
in their several ways, Hunt felt himself equally attracted, and the
last sad summer of his life he gladly turned to Celia Thaxter in her
island home as a sure refuge in time of trouble. It was she who
watched him day by day, listening to his words, which came clothed
with a kind of inspiration. "Whatever genius may be," said Tom
Appleton, "we all feel that William Hunt had it. His going is the
extinction of a great light; a fervent hand is cold; and the warmth
which glowed through so many friends and disciples is like a trodden
ember, extinguished." It was Celia Thaxter's hurrying footsteps which
traced her friend to the spot where, in extreme weakness, he fell in
death. She wrote, "It was that pretty lake where my wild roses had
been blooming all summer, and where the birds dipped and sang at
sunrise."
Her gratitude to the men and women who brought music to her door knew
no limit; it was strong, deep, and unforgetting. "What can I ever do
for them," she would say, "when I remember the joy they bring me!"
Julius Eichberg was one of the earliest friends who ministered in this
way to her happiness. Her letters of the time overflow with the
descriptions of programmes for the day, when Mr. Paine and Mr.
Eichberg would play, together or alone, during long mornings and
afternoons. "I am lost in bliss," she wrote; "every morning,
afternoon, and evening, Beethoven! I am emerging out of all my clouds
by help of it; it is divine!"
And again, writing of Mr. Paine in his own house, she said: "I am in
the midst of the awful and thrilling music of the Oedipus Tyrannus,
and it curdles my blood; we are all steeped in it, for J. K. P. goes
on and on composing it all the time, and the tremendous chords thrill
the very timbers of the house. It is _most_ interesting!"
Of Arthur Whiting, too, and his wife, whose musical gifts she placed
among the first, she frequently wrote and spoke with loving
appreciation. These friendships were a never failing source of
gladness to her.
Later in life came Mr. William Mason, who was the chief minister to
her joy in music, her enlightener, her consoler, to the end. Those who
loved her best must always give him the tribute of their admiration
and grateful regard. Mr. Mason must have known her keen gratitude, for
who understood better than he the feeling by which she was lifted away
from the things of this world by the power of music.
"The dignity of labor" is a phrase we have often heard repeated in
modern life, but it was one unnecessary to be spoken by Celia Thaxter.
It may easily be said of her that one of the finest lessons she
unconsciously taught was not only the value of labor, but the joy of
doing things well. The necessities of her position, as I have already
indicated, demanded a great deal, but she responded to the need with a
readiness and generosity great enough to extort admiration from those
who knew her. How much she contributed to the comfort of the lives of
those she loved at the Shoals we have endeavored to show; how
beautiful her garden was there, in the summer, all the world could
see; but at one period there was also a farm at Kittery Point, to be
made beautiful and comfortable by her industry, where one of her sons
still lives; and a _pied à terre_ in Boston or in Portsmouth,
whither she came in the winter with her eldest son, who was especially
dependent upon her love and care: and all these changes demanded much
of her time and strength.
She was certainly one of the busiest women in the world. Writing from
Kittery Point September 6, 1880, she says: "It is divinely lovely
here, and the house is charming. I have brought a servant over from
the hotel, and it is a blessing to be able to make them all
comfortable; to set them down in the charming dining-room overlooking
the smooth, curved crescent of sandy beach, with the long rollers
breaking white, and the shoals looming on the far sea-line.... But oh,
how tired we all get! I shall be quite ready for my rest!"
This note gives a picture of her life. She was always seeking to make
a bright spot around her; to give of herself in some way. There is a
bit in her book which illustrates this instinct. The incident occurred
during a long, dreary storm at the Shoals. Two men had come in a boat
asking for help. "A little child had died at Star Island, and they
could not sail to the mainland, and had no means to construct a coffin
among themselves. All day I watched the making of that little
chrysalis; and at night the last nail was driven in, and it lay across
a bench, in the midst of the litter of the workshop, and a curious
stillness seemed to emanate from the senseless boards. I went back to
the house and gathered a handful of scarlet geranium, and returned
with it through the rain. The brilliant blossoms were sprinkled with
glittering drops. I laid them in the little coffin, while the wind
wailed so sorrowfully outside, and the rain poured against the
windows. Two men came through the mist and storm, and one swung the
light little shell to his shoulder, and they carried it away, and the
gathering darkness shut down and hid them as they tossed among the
waves. I never saw the little girl, but where they buried her I know;
the lighthouse shines close by, and every night the quiet, constant
ray steals to her grave and softly touches it, as if to say, with a
caress, 'Sleep well! Be thankful you are spared so much that I see
humanity endure, fixed here forever where I stand.'"
We have seen the profound love she felt for, and the companionship she
found in, nature and natural objects; but combined with these
sentiments, or developed simply by her love to speak more directly,
was a very uncommon power of observation. This power grew day by day,
and the delightful correspondence which existed between Bradford
Torrey and herself, although they had never met face to face, bears
witness to her constant mental record and memory respecting the habits
of birds and woodland manners. Every year we find her longing for
larger knowledge; books and men of science attracted her; and if her
life had been less intensely laborious, in order to make those who
belonged to her comfortable and happy, what might she not have
achieved! Her nature was replete with boundless possibilities, and we
find ourselves asking the old, old question, Must the artist forever
crush the wings by which he flies against such terrible limitations?--
a question never to be answered in this world.
Her observations began with her earliest breath at the islands. "I
remember," she says, "in the spring, kneeling on the ground to seek
the first blades of grass that pricked through the soil, and bringing
them into the house to study and wonder over. Better than a shopful of
toys they were to me! Whence came their color? How did they draw their
sweet, refreshing tint from the brown earth, or the limpid air, or the
white light? Chemistry was not at hand to answer me, and all her
wisdom would not have dispelled the wonder. Later, the little scarlet
pimpernel charmed me. It seemed more than a flower; it was like a
human thing. I knew it by its homely name of 'poor man's weather
glass.' It was so much wiser than I; for when the sky was yet without
a cloud, softly it clasped its small red petals together, folding its
golden heart in safety from the shower that was sure to come. How
could it know so much?"
Whatever sorrows life brought to her, and they were many and of the
heaviest, this exquisite enjoyment of nature, the tender love and care
for every created thing within her reach, always stayed her heart. To
see her lift a flower in her fingers,--fingers which gave one a sense
of supporting everything which she touched, expressive, too, of
fineness in every fibre, although strong and worn with labor,--to see
her handle these wonderful creatures which she worshiped, was
something not to be forgotten. The lines of Keats,--
"Open afresh your rounds of starry folds,
Ye ardent marigolds!"
were probably oftener flitting through her mind or from her lips than
through the mind or from the lips of any since Keats wrote them. She
remembered that he said he thought his "intensest pleasure in life had
been to watch the growth of flowers," but she was sure he never felt
their beauty more devoutly "than the little half-savage being who
knelt, like a fire-worshiper, to watch the unfolding of those golden
disks."
The time came at last, as it comes to every human being, for asking
the reason of the faith that was in her. It was difficult for her to
reply.
Her heart had often questioned whether she believed, and what; and
yet, as she has said, she could not keep her faith out of her poems if
she would. We find the following passage in "Among the Isles of
Shoals," which throws a light beyond that of her own lantern.
"When the boat was out late," she says, "in soft, moonless summer
nights, I used to light a lantern, and going down to the water's edge
take my station between the timbers of the slip, and with the lantern
at my feet sit waiting in the darkness, quite content, knowing my
little star was watched for, and that the safety of the boat depended
in a great measure upon it.... I felt so much a part of the Lord's
universe, I was no more afraid of the dark than the waves or winds;
but I was glad to hear at last the creaking of the mast and the
rattling of the rowlocks as the boat approached."
"A part of the Lord's universe,"--that Celia Thaxter always felt
herself to be, and for many years she was impatient of other teaching
than what nature brought to her. As life went on, and the mingled
mysteries of human pain and grief were unfolded, she longed for a
closer knowledge. At first she sought it everywhere, and patiently,
save in or through the churches; with them she was long _im_patient.
At last, after ardent search through the religious books and by means
of the teachers of the Orient, the Bible was born anew for her, and
the New Testament became her stay and refreshment. At this period she
wrote to her friend, Mrs. H. M. Rogers: "K. and I read the Bhagavad
Gîtâ every day of our lives, and when we get to the end we begin again!
It is a great thing to keep one's mind full of it, permeated as it were;
and I think Mohini's own words are a great help and inspiration every-
where, all through it as well as in the beautiful introduction. I have
written out clearly on the margin of my copy every text which he has
quoted from the Scriptures, and find it most interesting. 'Truth is
one.'"
Nothing was ever "born anew" in Celia Thaxter which she did not strive
to share with others. She could keep nothing but secrets to herself.
Joys, experiences of every kind, sorrows and misfortunes, except when
they could darken the lives of others, were all brought open handed
and open hearted, to those she loved. Her generosity knew no limits.
There is a description by her of the flood which swept over her being,
and seemed to carry her away from the earth, when she once saw the
great glory of the Lord in a rainbow at the island. She hid her face
from the wonder; it was more than she could bear. "I felt then," she
said, "how I longed to speak these things which made life so sweet,
--to speak the wind, the cloud, the bird's flight, the sea's murmur,
--and ever the wish grew;" and so it was she became, growing from and
with this wish, a poet the world will remember. Dr. Holmes said once
in conversation that he thought the value of a poet to the world was
not so much the pleasure that this or that poem might give to certain
readers, or even perchance to posterity, as the fact that a poet was
known to be one who was sometimes rapt out of himself into the region
of the Divine; that the spirit had descended upon him and taught him
what he should speak.
This is especially true of Celia Thaxter, whose life was divorced from
worldliness, while it was instinct with the keenest enjoyment of life
and of God's world. She liked to read her poems aloud when people
asked for them; and if there was ever a genuine reputation from doing
a thing well, such a reputation was hers. From the first person who
heard her the wish began to spread, until, summer after summer, in her
parlor, listeners would gather if she would promise to read to them.
Night after night she has held her sway, with tears and smiles from
her responsive little audiences, which seemed to gain new courage and
light from what she gave them. Her unspeakably interesting nature was
always betraying itself and shining out between the lines.
Occasionally she yielded to the urgent claims brought to bear upon her
by her friend Mrs. Johnson, of the Woman's Prison, and would go to
read to the sad-eyed audience at Sherborn. Even those hearts dulled by
wrong and misery awakened at the sound of her voice. It was not
altogether this or that verse or ballad that made the tears flow, or
brought a laugh from her hearers; it was the deep sympathy which she
carried in her heart and which poured out in her voice; a hope, too,
for them, and for what they might yet become. She could not go
frequently,--she was too deeply laden with responsibilities nearer
home; but it was always a holiday when she was known to be coming, and
a season of light-heartedness to Mrs. Johnson as well as to the
prisoners.
It is a strange fallacy that a poet may not read his own verses well.
Who besides the writer should comprehend every shade of meaning which
made the cloud or sunshine of his poem? Mrs. Thaxter certainly read
her own verse with a fullness of suggestion which no other reader
could have given it; and her voice was sufficient, too, although not
loud or striking, to fill and satisfy the ear of the listener. But at
the risk of repetition we recall that it was her own generous,
beautiful nature, unlike that of any other, which made her reading
helpful to all who heard her. She speaks somewhere of the birds on her
island as "so tame, knowing how well they are beloved, that they
gather on the window-sills, twittering and fluttering gay and
graceful, turning their heads this way and that, eying you askance
without a trace of fear." And so it was with the human beings who came
to know her. They were attracted, they came near, they flew under her
protection, and were not disappointed of their rest.
Four years before Mrs. Thaxter left this world, when she was still
only fifty-five years old, she was stricken with a shaft of death. Her
overworked body was prostrated in sudden agony, and she, well, young,
vigorous beyond the ordinary lot of mortals, found herself weak and
unable to rise. "I do so hate figuring as an interesting invalid," she
wrote. "Perhaps I have been doing too much, getting settled. But oh, I
used to be able to do _any_thing! Where is my old energy and vigor and
power gone! It should not ebb away quite so soon!" She recovered her
wonted tone and sufficient strength for every-day needs, and still
found "life so interesting." But her keen observation had been brought
to bear upon her own condition, and she suspected that she might flit
away from us quickly some day.
Except for one who was especially dependent upon her she was quite
ready. The surprises of this life were so wonderful, it was easy for
her to believe in the surprises of the unseen; but her letters were
full as usual of the things which feed the springs of joy around us in
this world. One summer it was the first volume of poems of Richard
Watson Gilder which gave her great happiness. She talked of them,
recited them, sent them to her friends, and finally wrote to Mr.
Gilder himself. Since her death he has said, "I never saw Mrs. Thaxter
but once, and that lately; but her immediate and surprising and
continuous appreciation and encouragement I can never forget." How
many other contemporaneous writers and artists could say the same!
The transparent simplicity of her character and manners, her love and
capacity for labor, were combined with equal capacities for enjoying
the complex in others and a pure appetite for pleasure. It would be
impossible to find a more childlike power of enjoyment.
A perfect happiness came to her, during the last eight years of her
life, with the birth of her grandchildren. The little boy who
surprised her into bliss one day by crying out "I 'dore you, I 'dore
you, granna! I love you every breff!" was the creature perhaps dearest
to her heart; but she loved them all, and talked and wrote of them
with abandonment of rejoicing. Writing to her friend Mrs. Rogers, she
says: "Little E. stayed with his 'granna,' who worships the ground he
walks on, and counted every beat of his quick-fluttering little heart.
Oh, I never meant, in my old age, to become subject to the thrall of a
love like this; it is almost dreadful, so absorbing, so stirring down
to the deeps. For the tiny creature is so old and wise and sweet, and
so fascinating in his sturdy common sense and clear intelligence; and
his affection for me is a wonderful, exquisite thing, the sweetest
flower that has bloomed for me in all my life through."
Her enjoyment of art could not fade nor lose its keenness. Her life
had been shut, as we have seen, into very narrow limits. She never had
seen the city of New York, and life outside the circle we have
described was an unknown world to her. She went to Europe once with
her eldest brother, when he was ill, for three months, and she has
left in her letters some striking descriptions of what she saw there;
but her days were closely bounded by the necessities we have
suggested. Nevertheless the great world of art was more to Celia
Thaxter than to others; perhaps for the very reason that her mind was
open and unjaded. Her rapture over the great players from England; her
absolute agony, after seeing "The Cup" played by them in London, lest
she could never, never tell the happiness it was to her, with
Tennyson's words on her own tongue, as it were, to follow Miss Terry's
perfect enunciation of the lines,--these enjoyments, true pleasures as
indeed they are, did not lose their power over her.
Gilbert and Sullivan, too, could not have found a more amused admirer.
"Pinafore" never grew stale for her, and her brothers yielded to her
fancy, or pleased it, by naming their little steamer Pinafore. She
went to the theatre again and again to see this, and all the
succeeding comedies by the same hands. She never seemed to weary of
their fun.
But the poets were her great fountain of refreshment; "Siloa's brook"
was her chief resort. Tennyson was her chosen master, and there were
few of his lines she did not know by heart. Her feeling for nature was
satisfied by the incomparable verses in which he portrays the divine
light shining behind the life of natural things. How often have we
heard her murmuring to herself,--
"The wind sounds like a silver wire,"
or,
"To watch the emerald-colored water falling,"
or,
"Black as ash-buds on the front of March."
Whatever it might be she was observing, there was some line of this
great interpreter of nature ready to make the moment melodious.
Shakespeare's sonnets were also her close companions; indeed, she
seized and retained a cloud of beautiful things in her trustworthy
memory. They fed and cheered her on her singing way.
In the quiet loveliness of early summer, and before the tide of
humanity swept down upon Appledore, she went for the last time, in
June, 1894, with a small company of intimate friends, to revisit the
different islands and the well-known haunts most dear to her. The days
were still and sweet, and she lingered lovingly over the old places,
telling the local incidents which occurred to her, and touching the
whole with a fresh light. Perhaps she knew that it was a farewell; but
if it had been revealed to her, she could not have been more tender
and loving in her spirit to the life around her.
How suddenly it seemed at last that her days with us were ended! She
had been listening to music, had been reading to her little company,
had been delighting in one of Appleton Brown's new pictures, and then
she laid her down to sleep for the last time, and flitted away from
her mortality.
The burial was at her island, on a quiet afternoon in the late summer.
Her parlor, in which the body lay, was again made radiant, after her
own custom, with the flowers from her garden, and a bed of sweet bay
was prepared by her friends Appleton Brown and Childe Hassam, on which
her form was laid.
William Mason once more played the music from Schumann which she
chiefly loved, and an old friend, James De Normandie, paid a brief
tribute of affection, spoken for all those who surrounded her. She was
borne by her brothers and those nearest to her up to the silent spot
where her body was left.
The day was still and soft, and the veiled sun was declining as the
solemn procession, bearing flowers, followed to the sacred place. At a
respectful distance above stood a wide ring of interested observers,
but only those who knew her and loved her best drew near. After all
was done, and the body was at rest upon the fragrant bed prepared for
it, the young flower-bearers brought their burdens to cover her. The
bright, tear-stained faces of those who held up their arms full of
flowers to be heaped upon the spot until it became a mound of
blossoms, allied the scene, in beauty and simplicity, to the solemn
rites of antiquity.
It was indeed a poet's burial, but it was far more than that: it was
the celebration of the passing of a large and beneficent soul.