EMERSON IN ANDOVER.--RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY RELIGIOUS TRAINING.--THE
STUDIES OF A PROFESSOR'S DAUGHTER.--THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR.
Perhaps no one has ever denied, or more definitely, has ever wished
to deny, that Andover society consisted largely of people with obvious
religious convictions; and that her visitors were chiefly of the
Orthodox Congregational turn of mind. I do not remember that we ever
saw any reason for regret in this "feature" of the Hill. It is true,
however, that a dash of the world's people made their way among us.
I remember certain appearances of Ralph Waldo Emerson. If I am correct
about it, he had been persuaded by some emancipated and daring mind to
give us several lectures.
He was my father's guest on one of these occasions, and I met him for
the first time then. Emerson was--not to speak disrespectfully--in
a much muddled state of his distinguished mind, on Andover Hill. His
blazing seer's gaze took us all in, politely; it burned straight on,
with its own philosophic fire; but it wore, at moments, a puzzled
softness.
His clear-cut, sarcastic lips sought to assume the well-bred curves of
conformity to the environment of entertainers who valued him so far
as to demand a series of his own lectures; but the cynic of his
temperamental revolt from us, or, to be exact, from the thing which he
supposed us to be, lurked in every line of his memorable face.
By the way, what a look of the eagle it had!
[Illustration: RALPH WALDO EMERSON.]
The poet--I was about to say the pagan poet--quickly recognized, to
a degree, that he was not among a group of barbarians; and I remember
the marked respect with which he observed my father's noble head and
countenance, and the attention with which he listened to the low,
perfectly modulated voice of his host. But Mr. Emerson was accustomed
to do the talking himself; this occasion proved no exception; and
here his social divination or experience failed him a little. Quite
promptly, I remember, he set adrift upon the sea of Alcott.
Now, we had heard of Mr. Alcott in Andover, it is true, but we did not
look upon him exactly through Mr. Emerson's marine-glass; and, though
the Professor did his hospitable best to sustain his end of the
conversation, it swayed off gracefully into monologue. We listened
deferentially while the philosopher pronounced Bronson Alcott the
greatest mind of our day--I think he said the greatest since Plato.
He was capable of it, in moments of his own exaltation. I thought I
detected a twinkle in my father's blue eye; but the fine curve of his
lips remained politely closed; and our distinguished guest spoke on.
There was something noble about this ardent way of appreciating his
friends, and Emerson was distinguished for it, among those who knew
him well.
Publishers understood that his literary judgment was touchingly warped
by his personal admirations. He would offer some impossible MS. as the
work of dawning genius; it would be politely received, and filed in
the rejected pigeon-holes. Who knows what the great man thought when
his friend's poem failed to see the light of the market?
On this particular occasion, the conversation changed to Browning.
Now, the Professor, although as familiar as he thought it necessary to
be with the latest poetic idol, was not a member of a Browning
class; and here, again, his attitude towards the subject was one of
well-mannered respect, rather than of abandoned enthusiasm. (Had
it only been Wordsworth!) A lady was present, young, and of the
Browningesque temperament. Mr. Emerson expressed himself finely to
the effect that there was something outside of ourselves about
Browning--that we might not always grasp him--that he seemed, at
times, to require an extra sense.
"Is it not because he touches our extra moods?" asked the lady. The
poet's face turned towards her quickly; he had not noticed her before;
a subtle change touched his expression, as if he would have liked
to say: For the first time since this subject was introduced in this
Calvinistic drawing-room, I find myself understood.
It chanced that we had a Chaucer Club in Andover at that time; a small
company, severely selected, not to flirt or to chat, but to work. We
had studied hard for a year, and most of us had gone Chaucer mad.
This present writer was the unfortunate exception to that idolatrous
enthusiasm, and--meeting Mr. Emerson at another time--took modest
occasion in answer to a remark of his to say something of the sort.
"Chaucer interests me, certainly, but I cannot make myself feel as the
others do. He does not take hold of my nature. He is too far back. I
am afraid I am too much of a modern. It is a pity, I know."
"It _is_ a pity," observed Mr. Emerson sarcastically. "What would
you read? The 'Morning Advertiser'?" The Chaucer Club glared at me in
what, I must say, I felt to be unholy triumph.
Not a glance of sympathy reached me, where I sat, demolished before
the rebuke of the great man. I distinctly heard a chuckle from a
feminine member. Yet, what had the dissenter done, or tried to do? To
be quite honest, only, in a little matter where affectation would
have been the flowery way; and I must say that I have never loved the
Father of English Poetry any better for this episode.
The point, however, at which I am coming is the effect wrought upon
Mr. Emerson's mind by the history of that club. It seemed to us
disproportionate to the occasion that he should feel and manifest so
much surprise at our existence. This he did, more than once, and with
a genuineness not to be mistaken.
That an organization for the study of Chaucer could subsist on Andover
Hill, he could not understand. What he thought us, or thought about
us, who can say? He seemed as much taken aback as if he had found a
tribe of Cherokees studying onomatopoeia in English verse.
"A _Chaucer_ club! In _Andover_?" he repeated. The seer was perplexed.
Of course, whenever we found ourselves in forms of society not in
harmony with our religious views, we were accustomed, in various ways,
to meet with a similar predisposition. As a psychological study this
has always interested me, just as one is interested in the attitude of
mind exhibited by the Old School physician towards the Homoeopathist
with whom he graduated at the Harvard Medical School. Possibly that
graduate may have distinguished himself with the honors of the school;
but as soon as he prescribes on the principles of Hahnemann, he is
not to be adjudged capable of setting a collar-bone. By virtue of
his therapeutic views he has become disqualified for professional
recognition. So, by virtue of one's religious views, the man or
woman of orthodox convictions, whatever one's proportion of personal
culture, is regarded with a gentle superiority, as being of a class
still enslaved in superstition, and therefore _per se_ barbaric.
Put in undecorated language, this is about the sum and substance of
a state of feeling which all intelligent evangelical Christians
recognize perfectly in those who have preempted for themselves the
claims belonging to what are called the liberal faiths.
On the other hand, one who is regarded as a little of a heretic from
the sterner sects, may make the warmest friendships of a lifetime
among "the world's people"--whom far be it from me to seem to
dispossess of any of their manifold charms.
This brings me closely to a question which I am so often asked, either
directly or indirectly, that I cannot easily pass this Andover chapter
by without some recognition of it.
What was, in very truth, the effect of such a religious training as
Andover gave her children?
Curious impressions used to be afloat about us among people of easier
faiths; often, I think, we were supposed to spend our youth paddling
about in a lake of blue fire, or in committing the genealogies to
memory, or in gasping beneath the agonies of religious revivals.
To be quite honest, I should say that I have not retained _all_
the beliefs which I was taught--who does? But I have retained the
profoundest respect for the way in which I was taught them; and I
would rather have been taught what I was, _as_ I was, and run whatever
risks were involved in the process, than to have been taught much
less, little, or nothing.
An excess of religious education may have its unfortunate aspects. But
a deficiency of it has worse.
It is true that, for little people, our little souls were a good deal
agitated on the question of eternal salvation. We were taught that
heaven and hell followed life and death; that the one place was "a
desirable location," and the other too dreadful to be mentioned in
ears polite; and that what Matthew Arnold calls "conduct" was the
deciding thing. Not that we heard much, until we grew old enough to
read for ourselves, about Matthew Arnold; but we did hear a great
deal about plain behaviour--unselfishness, integrity, honor, sweet
temper--the simple good morals of childhood.
We were taught, too, to respect prayer and the Christian Bible. In
this last particular we never had at all an oppressive education.
My Sunday-school reminiscences are few and comfortable, and left me,
chiefly, with the impression that Sunday-schools always studied Acts;
for I do not recall any lessons given me by strolling theologues in
any other--certainly none in any severer--portions of the Bible.
It was all very easy and pleasant, if not feverishly stimulating; and
I am quite willing to match my Andover Sunday-school experiences with
that of a Boston free-thinker's little daughter who came home and
complained to her mother:
"There is a dreadful girl put into our Sunday-school. I think, mamma,
she is bad society for me. She says the Bible is exaggerated, and then
she tickles my legs!"
I have said that we were taught to think something about our own
"salvation;" and so we were, but not in a manner calculated to burden
the good spirits of any but a very sensitive or introspective child.
Personally, I may have dwelt on the idea, at times, more than was
good for my happiness; but certainly no more than was good for my
character. The idea of character was at the basis of everything we
did, or dreamed, or learned.
There is a scarecrow which "liberal" beliefs put together, hang in
the field of public terror or ridicule, and call it Orthodoxy. Of this
misshapen creature we knew nothing in Andover.
Of hell we heard sometimes, it is true, for Andover Seminary believed
in it--though, be it said, much more comfortably in the days before
this iron doctrine became the bridge of contention in the recent
serious, theological battle which has devastated Andover. In my own
case, I do not remember to have been shocked or threatened by this
woful doctrine. I knew that my father believed in the everlasting
misery of wicked people who could be good if they wanted to, but
would not; and I was, of course, accustomed to accept the beliefs of
a parent who represented everything that was tender, unselfish, pure,
and noble, to my mind--in fact, who sustained to me the ideal of a
fatherhood which gave me the best conception I shall ever get, in this
world, of the Fatherhood of God. My father presented the interesting
anomaly of a man holding, in one dark particular, a severe faith, but
displaying in his private character rare tenderness and sweetness of
heart. He would go out of his way to save a crawling thing from death,
or any sentient thing from pain. He took more trouble to give comfort
or to prevent distress to every breathing creature that came within
his reach, than any other person whom I have ever known. He had not
the heart to witness heartache. It was impossible for him to endure
the sight of a child's suffering. His sympathy was an extra sense,
finer than eyesight, more exquisite than touch.
Yet, he did believe that absolute perversion of moral character went
to its "own place," and bore the consequence of its own choice.
Once I told a lie (I was seven years old), and my father was a
broken-hearted man. He told me _then_ that liars went to hell. I
do not remember to have heard any such personal application of the
doctrine of eternal punishment before or since; and the fact made a
life-long impression, to which I largely owe a personal preference for
veracity. Yet, to analyze the scene strictly, I must say that it was
not fear of torment which so moved me; it was the sight of that broken
face. For my father wept--only when death visited the household did
I ever see him cry again--and I stood melted and miserable before
his anguish and his love. The devil and all his angels could not have
punished into me the noble shame of that moment.
[Illustration: PROFESSOR AUSTIN PHELPS, FATHER OF ELIZABETH STUART
PHELPS. From a photograph by Warren, Boston.]
I have often been aware of being pitied by outsiders for the
theological discipline which I was supposed to have received in
Andover; but I must truthfully say that I have never been conscious of
needing compassion in this respect. I was taught that God is Love, and
Christ His Son is our Saviour; that the important thing in life was
to be that kind of woman for which there is really, I find, no better
word than Christian, and that the only road to this end was to be
trodden by way of character. The ancient Persians (as we all know)
were taught to hurl a javelin, ride a horse, and speak the truth.
I was taught that I should speak the truth, say my prayers, and
consider other people; it was a wholesome, right-minded, invigorating
training that we had, born of tenderness, educated conscience, and
good sense, and I have lived to bless it in many troubled years.
What if we did lend a little too much romance now and then to our
religious "experience"? It was better for us than some other kinds
of romance to which we were quite as liable. What if I did "join the
church" (entirely of my own urgent will, not of my father's preference
or guiding) at the age of twelve, when the great dogmas to which I was
expected to subscribe could not possibly have any rational meaning for
me? I remember how my father took me apart, and gently explained to me
beforehand the clauses of the rather simple and truly beautiful
chapel creed which he himself, I believe, had written to modernize and
clarify the old one--I wonder if it were done at that very time? And
I remember that it all seemed to me very easy and happy--signifying
chiefly, that one meant to be a good girl, if possible. What if one
did conduct a voluminous religious correspondence with the other
Professor's daughter, who put notes under the fence which divided our
homes? We were none the worse girls for that. And we outgrew it, when
the time came.
[Illustration: PROFESSOR M. STUART PHELPS, ELDEST SON OF PROFESSOR
AUSTIN PHELPS, AND BROTHER OF ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.
Professor M. Stuart Phelps died in 1883, at the age of 34. He was
professor of philosophy in Smith College, was called by those entitled
to judge, the most promising young psychologist in this country, and a
brilliant future was prophesied for him. The above portrait is from a
photograph by Pach Brothers, New York.]
One thing, supremely, I may say that I learned from the Andover life,
or, at least, from the Andover home. That was an everlasting scorn of
worldliness--I do not mean in the religious sense of the word. That
tendency to seek the lower motive, to do the secondary thing, to
confuse sounds or appearances with values, which is covered by the
word as we commonly use it, very early came to seem to me a way of
looking at life for which I know no other term than underbred.
There is no better training for a young person than to live in the
atmosphere of a study--we did not call it a library, in my father's
home. People of leisure who read might have libraries. People who
worked among their books had studies.
The life of a student, with its gracious peace, its beauty, its
dignity, seemed to me, as the life of social preoccupation or success
may seem to children born to that penumbra, the inevitable thing.
As one grew to think out life for one's self, one came to perceive
a width and sanctity in the choice of work--whether rhetoric or art,
theology or sculpture, hydraulics or manufacture--but to _work_, to
work hard, to see work steadily, and see it whole, was the way to be
reputable. I think I always respected a good blacksmith more than a
lady of leisure.
I know it took me a while to recover from a very youthful and amusing
disinclination to rich people, which was surely never trained into
me, but grew like the fruit of the horse-chestnut trees, ruggedly,
of nature, and of Andover Hill; and which dropped away when its time
came--just about as useless as the big brown nuts which we cut into
baskets and carved into Trustees' faces for a mild November day, and
then threw away.
When I came in due time to observe that property and a hardened
character were not identical, and that families of ease in which one
might happen to visit were not deficient in education because their
incomes were large--I think it was at first with a certain sense of
surprise. It is impossible to convey to one differently reared the
delicious _naïveté_ of this state of mind.
Whatever the "personal peculiarities" of our youthful conceptions of
life, as acquired at Andover, one thing is sure--that we grew into
love of reality as naturally as the Seminary elms shook out their
long, green plumes in May, and shed their delicate, yellow leaves in
October.
I can remember no time when we did not instinctively despise a sham,
and honor a genuine person, thing, or claim. In mere social pretension
not built upon character, intelligence, education, or gentle birth,
we felt no interest. I do not remember having been taught this, in so
many words. It came without teaching.
My father taught me most things without text-books or lessons. By far
the most important portion of what one calls education, I owe to him;
yet he never preached, or prosed, or played the pedagogue. He talked
a great deal, not to us, but with us; we began to have conversation
while we were still playing marbles and dolls. I remember hours of
discussion with him on some subject so large that the littleness
of his interlocutor must have tried him sorely. Time and eternity,
theology and science, literature and art, invention and discovery
came each in its turn; and, while I was still making burr baskets, or
walking fences, or coasting (standing up) on what I was proud to
claim as the biggest sled in town, down the longest hills, and on the
fastest local record--I was fascinated with the wealth and variety
which seem to have been the conditions of thought with him. I have
never been more _interested_ by anything in later life than I was in
my father's conversation.
I never attended a public school of any kind--unless we except the
Sunday-school that studied Acts--and when it came time for me to
pass from the small to the large private schools of Andover, the same
paternal comradeship continued to keep step with me. There was no
college diploma for girls of my kind in my day; but we came as near to
it as we could.
There was a private school in Andover, of wide reputation in its time,
known to the irreverent as the "Nunnery," but bearing in professional
circles the more stately name of Mrs. Edwards's School for Young
Ladies. Two day-scholars, as a marked favor to their parents, were
admitted with the boarders elect; and of these two I was one. If
I remember correctly, Professor Park and my father were among the
advisers whose opinions had weight with the selection of our course
of study, and I often wonder how, with their rather feudal views of
women, these two wise men of Andover managed to approve so broad a
curriculum.
Possibly the quiet and modest learned lady, our principal, had ideas
of her own which no one could have suspected her of obtruding against
the current of her times and environment; like other strong and
gentle women she may have had her "way" when nobody thought so. At
all events, we were taught wisely and well, in directions to which the
fashionable girls' schools of the day did not lift an eye-lash.
I was an out-of-door girl, always into every little mischief of snow
or rainfall, flower, field, or woods or ice; but in spite of skates
and sleds and tramps and all the west winds from Wachusett that blew
through me, soul and body, I was not strong; and my father found it
necessary to oversee my methods of studying. Incidentally, I think, he
influenced the choice of some of our text-books, and I remember that,
with the exception of Greek and trigonometry--thought, in those days,
to be beyond the scope of the feminine intellect--we pursued the same
curriculum that our brothers did at college. In some cases we had
teachers who were then, or afterwards, college professors in their
specialties; in all departments I think we were faithfully taught, and
that our tastes and abilities were electively recognized.
I was not allowed, I remember, to inflict my musical talents upon the
piano for more than one hour a day; my father taking the ground that,
as there was only so much of a girl, if she had not unusual musical
gift and had less than usual physical vigor, she had better give the
best of herself to her studies. I have often blessed him for this
daring individualism; for, while the school "practice" went on about
me, in the ordinary way, so many precious hours out of a day that
was all too short for better things--I was learning my lessons quite
comfortably, and getting plenty of fresh air and exercise between
whiles.
I hasten to say that I was not at all a remarkable scholar. I
cherished a taste for standing near the top of the class, somewhere,
and always preferred rather to answer a question than to miss it; but
this, I think, was pure pride, rather than an absorbing, intellectual
passion. It was a wholesome pride, however, and served me a good turn.
At one epoch of history, so far back that I cannot date it, I remember
to have been a scholar at Abbott Academy long enough to learn how to
spell. Perhaps one ought to give the honor of this achievement where
honor is due. When I observe the manner in which the superior sex
is often turned out by masculine diplomas upon the world with the
life-long need of a vest-pocket dictionary or a spelling-book, I
cherish a respect for the method in which I was compelled to spell
the English language. It was severe, no doubt. We stood in a class of
forty, and lost our places for the misfit of a syllable, a letter, a
definition, or even a stumble in elocution. I remember once losing the
head of the class for saying: L-u-ux--Lux. It was a terrible blow, and
I think of it yet with burning mortification on my cheeks.
In the "Nunnery" we were supposed to have learned how to spell. We
studied what we called Mental Philosophy, to my unmitigated delight;
and Butler's Analogy, which I considered a luxury; and Shakespeare,
whom I distantly but never intimately adored; Latin, to which dead
language we gave seven years apiece, out of our live girlhood;
Picciola and Undine we dreamed over, in the grove and the orchard;
English literature is associated with the summer-house and the grape
arbor, with flecks of shade and glints of light, and a sense of
unmistakable privilege. There was physiology, which was scarcely work,
and astronomy, which I found so exhilarating that I fell ill over it.
Alas, truth compels me to add that Mathematics, with a big _M_ and
stretching on through the books of Euclid, darkened my young
horizon with dull despair; and that chemistry--but the facts are too
humiliating to relate. My father used to say that all he ever got out
of the pursuit of this useful science in his college days--and he was
facile valedictorian--was the impression that there was a sub-acetate
of something dissolved in a powder at the bottom.
All that I am able to recall of the study of "my brother's
text-books," in this department, is that there was once a frightful
odor in the laboratory for which Professor Hitchcock and a glass jar
and a chemical were responsible, and that I said, "At least, the name
of _this_ will remain with me to my dying hour." But what _was_ the
name of it? "Ask me no more."
In the department of history I can claim no results more calculated
to reflect credit upon the little student who hated a poor recitation
much, but facts and figures more. To the best of my belief, I can be
said to have retained but two out of the long list of historic dates
with which my quivering memory was duly and properly crowded.
I _do_ know when America was discovered; because the year is inscribed
over a spring in the seaside town where I have spent twenty summers,
and I have driven past it on an average once a day, for that period
of time. And I can tell when Queen Elizabeth left this world, because
Macaulay wrote a stately sentence:
"In 1603 the Great Queen died."
It must have been the year when my father read De Quincey and
Wordsworth to me on winter evenings that I happened for myself on
Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The first little event opened for me, as
distinctly as if I had never heard of it before, the world of letters
as a Paradise from which no flaming sword could ever exile me; but the
second revealed to me my own nature.
The Andover sunsets blazed behind Wachusett, and between the one
window of my little room and the fine head of the mountain nothing
intervened. The Andover elms held above lifted eyes arch upon arch
of exquisite tracery, through which the far sky looked down like some
noble thing that one could spend all one's life in trying to reach,
and be happy just because it existed, whether one reached it or not.
The paths in my father's great gardens burned white in the summer
moonlights, and their shape was the shape of a mighty cross. The June
lilies, yellow and sweet, lighted their soft lamps beside the cross--I
was sixteen, and I read Aurora Leigh.
A grown person may smile--but, no; no gentle-minded man or woman
smiles at the dream of a girl. What has life to offer that is nobler
in enthusiasm, more delicate, more ardent, more true to the unseen
and the unsaid realities which govern our souls, or leave us sadder
forever because they do not? There may be greater poems in our
language than Aurora Leigh, but it was many years before it was
possible for me to suppose it; and none that ever saw the hospitality
of fame could have done for that girl what that poem did at that time.
I had never a good memory--but I think I could have repeated a large
portion of it; and know that I often stood the test of hap-hazard
examinations on the poem from half-scoffing friends, sometimes of the
masculine persuasion. Each to his own; and what Shakespeare or the
Latin Fathers might have done for some other impressionable girl, Mrs.
Browning--forever bless her strong and gentle name!--did for me.
I owe to her, distinctly, the first visible aspiration (ambition is
too low a word) to do some honest, hard work of my own, in the World
Beautiful, and for it.
It is April, and it is the year 1861. It is a dull morning at school.
The sky is gray. The girls are not in spirits--no one knows just
why. The morning mail is late, and the Boston papers are tardily
distributed. The older girls get them, and are reading the head-lines
lazily, as girls do; not, in truth, caring much about a newspaper, but
aware that one must be well-informed.
Suddenly, in the recitation room, where I am refreshing my
accomplishments in some threatening lesson, I hear low murmurs and
exclamations. Then a girl, very young and very pretty, catches the
paper and whirls it overhead. With a laugh which tinkles through my
ears to this day, she dances through the room and cries:
"War's begun! _War's begun!_"
An older girl utters a cry of horror, and puts her hand upon the
little creature's thoughtless lips.
"Oh, how _can_ you?" so I hear the older
girl. "Hush, hush, _hush_!"