uttered the half-suppressed titter of two very young persons in a
corner was responded to by a general laugh. Poe remarked quietly that
on his next delivery of a public lecture "he would take Rose along, to
act the part of the raven, in which she seemed born to excel." ...
It is with feelings of deep sadness, even after the lapse of so many
years, that I approach the close of these reminiscences.
Poe one day told me that it was necessary that he should go to New
York. He must make certain preparations for establishing his magazine,
the _Stylus_, but he should in less than two weeks return to Richmond,
where he proposed henceforth to reside. He looked forward to this
arrangement with great pleasure. "I mean to turn over a new leaf; I
shall begin to lead a new life," he said, confidently. He had often
spoken to me of his books,--"few, but _recherche_,"--and he now
proposed to send certain of these by express, for my perusal. "You
must annotate them extensively," he said. "A book wherein the minds of
the author and the reader are thus brought in contact is to me a
hundredfold increased in interest. It is like flint and steel." One of
the books which he desired me to read was Mrs. Browning's poems, and
another one of Hawthorne's works. I remember his saying of the latter
that he was "indisputably the best prose writer in America;" that
"Irving and the rest were mere commonplace beside him;" and that
"there was more inspiration of true genius in Hawthorne's prose than
in all Longfellow's poetry." This may serve to give an idea of his own
opinion of what constitutes genius, though some of Longfellow's poems
he pronounced "perfect of their kind."
The evening of the day previous to that appointed for his departure
from Richmond, Poe spent at my mother's. He declined to enter the
parlors, where a number of visitors were assembled, saying he
preferred the more quiet sitting-room; and here I had a long and
almost uninterrupted conversation with him. He spoke of his future,
seeming to anticipate it with an eager delight, like that of youth. He
declared that the last few weeks in the society of his old and new
friends had been the happiest that he had known for many years, and
that when he again left New York he should there leave behind all the
trouble and vexation of his past life....
In speaking of his own writings Poe expressed his conviction that he
had written his best poems, but that in prose he might yet surpass
what he had already accomplished....
He was the last of the party to leave the house. We were standing on
the portico, and after going a few steps he paused, turned, and again
lifted his hat, in a last adieu. At the moment, a brilliant meteor
appeared in the sky directly over his head, and vanished in the east.
We commented laughingly upon the incident; but I remembered it sadly
afterward.
That night he spent at Duncan's lodge; and as his friend said, sat
late at his window, meditatively smoking, and seemingly disinclined
for conversation. On the following morning he went into the city,
accompanied by his friends Dr. Gibbon Carter and Dr. Mackenzie. The
day was passed with them and others of his intimate friends. Late in
the evening he entered the office of Dr. John Carter, and spent an
hour in looking over the day's papers; then taking Dr. Carter's cane
he went out, remarking that he would step across to Saddler's (a
fashionable restaurant) and get supper. From the circumstance of his
taking the cane, leaving his own in its place, it is probable that he
had intended to return; but at the restaurant he met with some
acquaintances who detained him until late, and then accompanied him to
the Baltimore boat. According to their account he was quite sober and
cheerful to the last, remarking, as he took leave of them, that he
would soon be in Richmond again.
... Three days after, a friend came to me with the day's issue of the
_Richmond Dispatch_. Without a word she pointed to a particular
paragraph, where I read,--"Death of Edgar A. Poe, in Baltimore."
Poe had made himself popular in Richmond, people had become interested
in him, and his death cast a universal gloom over the city. His old
friends, and even those more recently formed, and whom he had
strangely attached to himself, deeply regretted him. Mr. Sully came to
consult with me about a picture of _The Raven_ which he intended to
make; and in the course of the conversation expressed himself in
regard to his lost friend with a warmth of feeling and appreciation
not usual to him. The two had been schoolmates; and the artist said:
"Poe was one of the most warm-hearted and generous of men. In his
youth and prosperity, when admired and looked up to by all his
companions, he invariably stood by me and took my part. I was a dull
boy at learning, and Edgar never grudged time or pains in assisting
me." In further speaking, he said, with a decision and earnestness
which impressed me, "It was Mr. Allan's cruelty in casting him upon
the world, a beggar, which ruined Poe. Some who had envied him took
advantage of his change of fortune to slight and insult him. He was
sensitive and proud, and felt the change keenly. It was this which
embittered him. By nature no person was less inclined to reserve or
bitterness, and as a boy he was frank and generous to a fault." In
speaking of his poems, Mr. Sully remarked: "He has an eye for
dramatic, but not for scenic or artistic effect. Except in _The
Raven_, I can nowhere in his poems find a subject for a picture."
In closing these reminiscences, I may be allowed to make a few remarks
founded upon my actual personal knowledge of Poe, in at least the
phase of character in which he appeared to me. What he may have been
to his ordinary associates, or to the world at large, I do not know;
and in the picture presented to us by Dr. Griswold,--half maniac, half
demon,--I confess, I cannot recognize a trait of the gentle, grateful,
warm-hearted man whom I saw amid his friends,--his careworn face all
aglow with generous feeling in the kindness and appreciation to which
he was so little accustomed. His faults were sufficiently apparent;
but for these a more than ordinary allowance should be made, in
consideration of the unfavorable influences surrounding him from his
very birth. He was ever the sport of an adverse fortune. Born in
penury, reared in affluence, treated at one time with pernicious
indulgence and then literally turned into the streets, a beggar and an
outcast, deserted by those who had formerly courted him, maliciously
calumniated, smarting always under a sense of wrong and
injustice,--what wonder that his bright, warm, and naturally generous
and genial nature should have become embittered? What wonder that his
keenly sensitive and susceptible poetic temperament should have become
jarred, out of tune, and into harsh discord with himself and mankind?
Let the just and the generous pause before they judge; and upon their
lips the breath of condemnation will soften into a sigh of sympathy
and regret.
LX
ARTEMUS WARD
Poor Artemus! says Haweis in his lecture on the American humorist, I
shall not see his like again, as he appeared for a few short weeks
before an English audience at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly.
Sometimes, as to looks, profoundly dejected, at others shy or
reproachful; nervously anxious to please (apparently), yet with a
certain twinkle at the back of his eye which convinced you of his
perfect _sang froid_, and one thing always--full, unescapably full, of
fun....
When Artemus arrived here in 1866 he was a dying man.
I can see him now, as he came on the narrow platform in front of his
inferior panorama, and stole a glance at the densely packed room and
then at his panorama.
His tall, gaunt, though slender figure, his curly light hair and large
aquiline nose, which always reminded me of a macaw; his thin face
flushed with consumption, his little cough, which seemed to shake him
to pieces, and which he said "was wearing him out," at which we all
laughed irresistibly, and then felt ashamed of ourselves, as well we
might; but he himself seemed to enjoy his cough. It was all part of
that odd, topsy-turvy mind in which everything appeared most natural
upside down!
On first entering he would seem profoundly unconscious that anything
was expected of him, but after looking at the audience, then at his
own clothes, and then apologetically at his panorama, he began to
explain its merits.
The fact is Artemus intended having the finest scenes that could be
painted, but he gave that up on account of the expense, and then
determined to get the worst as the next best thing for his purpose.
When anything very bad came up he would pause and gaze admiringly at
the canvas, and then look round a little reproachfully at the company.
"This picture," he would say, "is a great work of art; it is an oil
painting done in petroleum. It is by the Old Masters. It was the last
thing they did before dying. They did this, and then they expired. I
wish you were nearer to it so you could see it better. I wish I could
take it to your residences and let you see it by daylight. Some of the
greatest artists in London come here every morning before daylight
with lanterns to look at it. They say they never saw anything like it
before, and they hope they never shall again!"
Certain curious brown splotches appearing in the foreground, Artemus
pointed gravely to them, and said:
"These are intended for horses; I know they are, because the artist
told me so. After two years, he came to me one morning and said, 'Mr.
Ward, I cannot conceal it from you any longer; they are horses.'"
Apropos of nothing he observed:
"I really don't care for money; I only travel around to show my
clothes."
This was a favorite joke of his. He would look with a piteous
expression of discomfort and almost misery at his black trousers and
swallowtail coat, a costume in which he said he was always most
wretched.
"These clothes I have on," he continued, "were a great success in
America." And then quite irrelevantly and rather hastily, "How often
do large fortunes ruin young men! I should like to be ruined, but I
can get on very well as I am!"
So the lecture dribbled on with little fragments of impertinent
biography, mere pegs for slender witticisms like this:
"When quite a child I used to draw on wood. I drew a small cartload of
raw material over a wooden bridge, the people of the village noticed
me, I drew their attention, they said I had a future before me; up to
that time I had an idea it was behind me."
Or this:
"I became a man. I have always been mixed up with art. I have an uncle
who takes photographs, and I have a servant who takes anything he can
set his hands on."
With one more example from his life among the Mormons, which, perhaps,
though brief, includes a greater variety of wit and humor than any
single passage I could select, I must conclude my memorial glimpses of
this incomparable and lamented humorist.
"I regret to say that efforts were made to make a Mormon of me while I
was in Utah.
"It was leap year when I was there, and seventeen young widows--the
wives of a deceased Mormon (he died by request)--offered me their
hearts and hands. I called upon them one day, and taking their soft,
white hands in mine--which made eighteen hands altogether--I found
them in tears. And I said 'Why is this thus?--what is the reason of
this thusness?'
"They hove a sigh--seventeen sighs of different size. They said--
"'Oh, soon thou wilt be gonested away!'
"I told them that when I got ready to leave a place I usually
wentested. They said--'Doth not like us?'
"I said, 'I doth, I doth!' I also said, 'I hope your intentions are
honorable, as I am a lone child and my parents are far, far away!'
"They then said, 'Wilt not marry us?'
"I said, 'Oh no, it cannot was.'
"Again they asked me to marry them, and again I declined. When they
cried--
"'Oh, cruel man: this is too much--oh, too much!'
"I told them it was on account of the muchness that I declined."
LXI
EDMUND GOSSE VISITS WHITTIER
In December of 1884, Mr. Edmund Gosse, one of the most distinguished
of English critics, visited Whittier at a house called Oak Knoll, in
Massachusetts, where he was then staying with friends. We quote brief
extracts from a report of that visit as published in _Good Words_, an
English magazine:
"Doubtless in leafy season Oak Knoll may have its charms, but it was
distinctly sinister that December morning. We rang, and after a long
pause the front door opened slightly, and a very unprepossessing dog
emerged, and shut the door (if I may say so) behind him. We were face
to face with this animal, which presented none of the features
identified in one's mind with the idea of Mr. Whittier. It sniffed
unpleasantly, but we spoke to it most blandly and it became assured
that we were not tramps. The dog sat down, and looked at us; we had
nowhere to sit down, but we looked at the dog. Then, after many
blandishments, but feeling very uncomfortable, I ventured to hold the
dog in conversation while I rang again. After another pause the door
was slightly opened, and a voice of no agreeable timbre asked what we
wanted. We explained, across the dog, that we had come by appointment
to see Mr. Whittier. The door was closed a second time, and, if our
carriage had still been waiting, we should certainly have driven back
to Danvers. But at length a hard-featured woman grudgingly admitted
us, and showed us, growling as she did it, into a parlor.
"Our troubles were then over, for Mr. Whittier, himself appeared, with
all that report had ever told of a gentle sweetness and dignified
cordial courtesy. He was then seventy-seven years old, and, although
he spoke of age and feebleness, he showed few signs of either; he was,
in fact, to live eight years more. Perhaps because the room was low,
he seemed surprisingly tall; he must, in fact, have been a little less
than six feet high. The peculiarity of his face rested in the
extraordinary large and luminous black eyes, set in black eyebrows,
and fringed with thick black eye-lashes curiously curved inward....
"His generosity to those much younger and less gifted than himself is
well known, and I shall not dwell on the good-natured things which he
proceeded to say to his English visitor. He made no profession, at any
time, of being a critic, and his formula was that such and such verse
or prose had given him pleasure--'I am grateful to thee for all that
enjoyment' was his charming way of being kind.... He spoke with great
emotion of Emerson--'the noblest human being I have known,' and of
Longfellow, 'perhaps the sweetest. But you will see Holmes,' he added.
I said that it was my great privilege to be seeing Dr. Holmes every
day, and that the night before he had sent all sorts of affectionate
messages by me to Mr. Whittier. The latter expressed great curiosity
to see Holmes's short _Life of Emerson_ which, in fact, was published
five or six days later.... Mr. Whittier greatly surprised me by
confessing that he was quite color-blind. He exemplified his condition
by saying that if I came to Amesbury I should be scandalized by one of
his carpets. It appeared that he was never permitted, by the guardian
goddess of his hearth, to go 'shopping' for himself, but that once,
being in Boston, and needing a carpet, he had ventured to go to a
store and buy what he thought to be a very nice, quiet article,
precisely suited to adorn a Quaker home. When it arrived at Amesbury
there was a universal shout of horror, for what had struck Mr.
Whittier as a particularly soft combination of browns and grays
proved, to normal eyes, to be a loud pattern of bright red roses on a
field of the crudest cabbage-green."
LXII
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF WHITTIER
In the _New England Magazine_ Charlotte Forten Grimke writes
entertainingly of Whittier. From this article we are permitted to
quote the following extracts:
"And so it happened that, one lovely summer day, my friend and I found
ourselves on the train, rapidly whirling eastward, through the
pleasant old town of Newburyport, across the 'shining Merrimac,' on
our way to the poet's home in Amesbury. Arriving at the station, we
found Mr. Whittier awaiting us, and a walk of a few minutes brought us
to his house on Friend Street. Amesbury, a busy manufacturing town,
pleasantly situated on the Merrimac, impressed me at first as hardly
retired enough for a poet's home; for fresh in my recollection were
Longfellow's historic house, guarded by stately poplars, standing back
from the quiet Cambridge street, and Lowell's old mansion, completely
buried in its noble elms; and each of these had quite realized my
ideal of the home of a poet. But the little house looked very quiet
and homelike; and when we entered it and received the warm welcome of
the poet's sister, we felt, as all felt who entered that hospitable
door, the very spirit of peace descending upon us. The house was
then white (it was afterwards painted a pale yellow), with green
blinds, and a little vine-wreathed piazza on one side, upon which
opened the glass door of 'the garden room,' the poet's favorite
sitting-room and study. The windows of this room looked out upon a
pleasant, old-fashioned garden. The walls on both sides of the
fireplace were covered with books. The other walls were hung with
pictures, among which we noticed 'The Barefoot Boy,' a painting of Mr.
Whittier's birthplace in Haverhill, a copy of that lovely picture,
'The Motherless,' under which were written some exquisite lines by
Mrs. Stowe, and a beautiful little sea-view, painted by a friend of
the poet. Vases of fresh, bright flowers stood upon the mantelpiece.
After we had rested we went into the little parlor, where hung the
portrait of the loved and cherished mother, who some years before had
passed away to the 'Better Land.' Hers was one of those sweet, aged
faces which one often sees among the Friends,--full of repose,
breathing a benediction upon all around. There were other pictures and
books, and upon a table in the corner stood Rogers' 'Wounded Scout.'
[Illustration: JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
From a photograph]
"At the head of the staircase hung a great cluster of pansies, purple
and white and gold. Mr. Whittier called our attention to their
wonderful resemblance to human faces,--a resemblance which we so often
see in pansies, and which was brought out with really startling
distinctness in this picture.
"In the cool, pleasant chamber assigned to us, pervaded by an air of
Quaker serenity and purity, was a large painting of the poet in his
youth. This was the realization of my girlish dreams. There were the
clustering curls, the brilliant dark eyes, the firm, resolute mouth.
He looked like a youthful Bayard, 'without fear and without reproach,'
ready to throw himself unflinchingly into the most stirring scenes of
the battle of life.
"We were at once greatly interested in Miss Whittier, and impressed by
the simplicity and kindness of her manner. We saw the soul's beauty
shining in her soft, dark eyes, and in the smile which, like her
brother's, was very winning, and we felt it in the music, of her
gentle voice and the warm pressure of her hand. There was a refreshing
atmosphere of unworldliness about her. She had rarely been away from
her home, and although her brother's fame obliged her to receive many
strangers, she had never, as she told us, been able to overcome a
shyness of disposition, except in the case of a very few friends. She
was naturally witty and original, and when she did shake off her
shyness, had a childlike way of saying bright things which was very
charming. She and her brother had lived together, alone since their
mother's death, and in their mutual devotion have been well compared
to Charles Lamb and his sister.
"We spent a delightful evening in the garden-room in quiet, cheerful
talk. In society Mr. Whittier had the reputation of being very shy,
and he was so among strangers; but at times, in the companionship of
his friends, no one could be more genial. He had even a boyish
frankness of manner, a natural love of fun, a keen appreciation of the
humorous, which the sorrows and poor health of many years failed to
subdue. That night he talked to us freely of his childhood, of the
life on the old farm in Haverhill, which he has so vividly described
in _Snow-Bound_, and showed us a venerable book, _Davideis_, being a
history of David written in rhyme, the quaintest and most amusing
rhyme, by Thomas Ellwood, a friend of Milton. It was the first book of
'poetry,' he told us, that he read when a boy. He entertained us with
stories of people who came to see him. He had many very interesting
and charming visitors, of course, but there were also many exceedingly
queer ones, and these, he said with a queer smile, generally 'brought
their carpet bags!' He said he was thankful to live in such a place as
Amesbury, where people did not speak to him about his poems, nor think
of him as a poet. Sometimes he had amused himself by tracking the most
persistent of the lion-hunters, and found that the same individuals
went to Emerson and Longfellow and other authors, and made precisely
the same speeches. Emerson was not much annoyed by them; he enjoyed
studying character in all its phases.
"Begging letters and begging visits were also very frequent, and his
sister told us that her brother had frequently been victimized in his
desire to help those whose pitiful stories he believed. One day he
received a letter from a man in a neighboring town, asking him for a
loan of ten dollars, and assuring him that he should blow his brains
out if Mr. Whittier did not send him the money. The tone of the letter
made him doubt the sincerity of the writer, and he did not send the
money, comforting himself, he said, with the thought that the man
really had no brains to blow out. 'I must confess, however,' he
added, 'I looked rather anxiously at the newspapers for the next few
days, but seeing no news of a suicide in the neighboring town, I was
relieved.'
"His sister once told us of an incident which occurred during the war,
which pleased them very much. One night, at a late hour, the door-bell
rang, and her brother, on answering it, found a young man in an
officer's uniform standing at the door. 'Is this Mr. Whittier?' he
asked. 'Yes.' 'Well, sir,' was the quick reply, 'I only wanted to have
the pleasure of shaking hands with you.' And with that he seized the
poet's hand, shook it warmly, and rushed away, before Mr. Whittier had
recovered from his surprise.
"In subsequent visits to Mr. Whittier, he was sometimes induced to
talk about his poems, although that was a subject on which he rarely
spoke. On my friend's once warmly praising _Maud Muller_, he said
decidedly that he did not like the poem, because it was too sad; it
ministered to the spirit of unrest and dissatisfaction which was only
too prevalent. With _My Psalm_ he felt much better satisfied, because
it was more hopeful. His favorite poets were Wordsworth and Burns. He
once showed us an autograph letter of Burns, which he prized very
highly, and a number of beautiful photographs of Scotch scenery, the
gift of a sturdy old Scotchman, a neighbor of his and also an ardent,
admirer of Burns.
"Our conversation occasionally touched on the subject of marriage, and
I remember his asking us if we could imagine why there should be so
much unhappiness among married people, even among those who seemed to
have everything calculated to make them happy, and who really loved
each other. He said he had pondered over the subject a good deal, and
had finally concluded that it was because they saw too much of each
other. He did not believe it was well for any two human beings to have
too much of each other's society. We told him that, being a
much-to-be-commiserated bachelor, he was not competent authority on
that subject.
"Among the most intimate of his friends were Mr. and Mrs. James T.
Fields, Colonel Higginson, Charles Sumner, and Bayard Taylor. To the
two latter, and also to Emerson, he has alluded very beautifully in
one of his most characteristic poems, _The Last Walk in Autumn_.