without Whittier’s knowledge, sent the verses entitled ‘The Exile’s
Departure’ to the Newburyport ‘Free Press,’ a short-lived journal
edited by young William Lloyd Garrison. They appeared in the issue
of June 8, 1826. Whittier has described his emotions on first seeing
himself in print. The paper was thrown to him by the news-carrier. ‘My
uncle and I were mending fences. I took up the sheet, and was surprised
and overjoyed to see my lines in the “Poet’s Corner.” I stood gazing at
them in wonder, and my uncle had to call me several times to my work
before I could recover myself.’
Other poems were offered and accepted. Curious to see his contributor,
Garrison drove over from Newburyport to the Whittier farm. The bashful
country boy could with difficulty be persuaded to meet his guest. Then
began a lifelong friendship not uncheckered by differences without
which friendship itself lacks zest.
Garrison urged on Whittier’s parents the importance of giving the
youth an education. Backed up by the influence of A. W. Thayer, editor
of the Haverhill ‘Gazette,’ who offered to take the lad into his own
home, Whittier got his father’s consent to his attending the newly
established Haverhill Academy. He paid for one term of six months by
making slippers, an art he learned from one of the farm hands, and for
another term by teaching school, which seemed to him a less enviable
mode of life than cobbling.
The favor accorded his verse stimulated invention. During 1827–28 he
published, under assumed names, nearly a hundred poems in the Haverhill
‘Gazette’ alone. A plan for bringing out a collection of these fugitive
pieces under the title of _Poems of Adrian_ came, however, to nothing.
Garrison, who had been doing editorial work in Boston for the Colliers,
publishers of ‘The Philanthropist’ and ‘The American Manufacturer,’
advised their getting Whittier to take his place. Whittier edited the
‘Manufacturer’ from January to August, 1829, when he was summoned home
by the illness of his father. But he had had a taste of journalism and
politics, and relished both. From January to July, 1830, he edited
the Haverhill ‘Gazette.’ His newspaper work made him acquainted with
George Prentice of ‘The New England Review,’ published in Hartford.
When Prentice left Connecticut for Kentucky, where he was to spend six
months and write a campaign life of Henry Clay, he urged the owners
of the ‘Review’ to engage Whittier as his substitute. Whittier was
responsible for the conduct of the paper for a year and a half (July,
1830, to January, 1832). In spite of many drawbacks, his father’s
death, his own illness, a disappointment in love, the period of his
Hartford residence was the happiest and the most stimulating he had
yet known. He printed his first volume, _Legends of New England_, a
medley of prose and verse, edited _The Literary Remains of John G. C.
Brainard_ (the sketch of Brainard’s life prefixed to the volume throws
much light on Whittier’s reading), and brought out the narrative poem
_Moll Pitcher_, a story of the once famous ‘Lynn Pythoness.’
On his return to Haverhill he played his part in local politics
and was talked of for Congress. Somewhat later he was drawn into
the anti-slavery movement and for the next twenty-seven years this
was his life. He was a member of the legislature in 1835, and was
reëlected the next year; but in general terms it may be said that
in publishing _Justice and Expediency_, and in uniting himself with
the small, unpopular, and exasperating party of Abolitionists, he
sacrificed hope of political advancement. He gave to the cause time,
health, reputation, and when he had it to give, money. In company with
Abolitionist leaders and orators he encountered mobs and speculated
philosophically on the chance of losing his life.
In 1837 he acted as a secretary to the American Anti-Slavery Society
in New York. From 1838 to 1840 he edited ‘The Pennsylvania Freeman,’
published in Philadelphia. During an Abolitionist convention,
Pennsylvania Hall, in which were the offices of the ‘Freeman,’ was
sacked and burned by a pro-slavery mob. Whittier, disguised in a wig
and a long overcoat, mingled with the rioters and contrived to save
a few of his papers. It was a more dangerous rabble than that he
encountered during the George Thomson riot at Concord, New Hampshire,
three years earlier. Whittier once remarked that he never really feared
for his life, but that he had no mind to a coat of tar and feathers.
A true son of Essex, he soon wearied of city life. ‘I would rather live
an obscure New England farmer,’ he said. ‘I would rather see the sunset
light streaming through the valley of the Merrimac than to look out
for many months upon brick walls, and Sam Weller’s “werry beautiful
landscape of chimney-pots.”’
He really had no choice in the matter, having been warned to give up
editorial work if he would keep his precarious hold on life. He obeyed
the warning. But with Whittier journalism was a disease. He had a
relapse in 1844, when he took charge of the ‘Middlesex Standard’ of
Lowell, and again, in 1845–46, when he was virtual editor of the ‘Essex
Transcript’ in Amesbury.
No restriction was placed on his doing work at home. He wrote
unceasingly, prose and verse, reaching his literary audience through
the ‘Democratic Review’ and his audience of reformers through Bailey’s
paper, ‘The National Era,’ both published in Washington. Whittier was
corresponding editor of the ‘Era’ from 1847 to 1850, and printed in its
columns, besides political articles, such now famous poems as ‘Maud
Muller,’ ‘Ichabod,’ ‘Tauler,’ and ‘The Chapel of the Hermits.’
The list of Whittier’s chief publications up to the year 1857 contains
seventeen titles: _Legends of New England_, 1831; _Moll Pitcher_,
1832 (revised edition 1840); _Justice and Expediency_, 1833; _Mogg
Megone_, 1836; _Poems written during the Progress of the Abolition
Question_, etc., 1837 (unauthorized issue); _Poems_, 1838; _Lays of my
Home and Other Poems_, 1843; _The Stranger in Lowell_, 1845; _Voices
of Freedom_, 1846; _The Supernaturalism of New England_, 1847;
_Leaves from Margaret Smith’s Journal_, 1849; _Poems_, 1849;[36] _Old
Portraits and Modern Sketches_, 1850; _Songs of Labor and Other Poems_,
1850; _The Chapel of the Hermits and Other Poems_, 1853; _Literary
Recreations and Miscellanies_, 1854; _The Panorama and Other Poems_,
1856.
The founding of the ‘Atlantic Monthly’ (1857) gave Whittier a more
assured place. His work was sought and the pay was generous. He became
an overseer of Harvard College in 1858. In 1860 the college made him a
Master of Arts, and in 1866 a Doctor of Laws.
His home for many years was in Amesbury, the farm at East Haverhill
having been sold in 1836. After the death of his mother and younger
sister he passed much of his time with kinsfolk at the house known as
‘Oak Knoll,’ in Danvers. For all his admiration of women, Whittier
never married. He enjoyed allusions to a supposititious Mrs. Whittier.
Writing to his niece, Mrs. Pickard, about some friend who was unhappy
over political defeat, Whittier said: ‘I told him I had been in the
same predicament ... and got abused worse than he did, for I was
charged with ill-treating my wife!’
Whittier was a birthright member of the Society of Friends and
influential in their councils. His advice was much sought and freely
given in terms of blended modesty, good sense, and humor.
During the last twenty years of his life Whittier published the
following volumes: _Home Ballads and Poems_, 1860; _In War Time and
Other Poems_, 1864; _National Lyrics_, 1865; _Snow-Bound_, 1866; _The
Tent on the Beach and Other Poems_, 1867; _Among the Hills and Other
Poems_, 1869; _Ballads of New England_, 1870; _Miriam and Other Poems_,
1871; _The Pennsylvania Pilgrim and Other Poems_, 1872; _Mabel Martin_,
1874; _Hazel-Blossoms_, 1875; _The Vision of Echard and Other Poems_,
1878; _The King’s Missive and Other Poems_, 1881; _The Bay of Seven
Islands and Other Poems_, 1883; _Saint Gregory’s Guest and Recent
Poems_, 1886; _At Sundown_, 1892.
The honors accorded him on his seventieth, eightieth, and eighty-fourth
anniversaries gave Whittier much happiness. He was especially pleased
to learn that the bells of St. Boniface, in Winnipeg, Manitoba
(celebrated in his ‘Red River Voyageur’), were rung for him at midnight
of December 17, 1891. Said the poet in his letter to Archbishop Tâché:
‘Such a delicate and beautiful tribute has deeply moved me. I shall
never forget it.’
Nothing was left undone that the tenderest love and wisest solicitude
could do for his comfort. His last illness was brief. He died at
Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, on September 7, 1892.
II
WHITTIER’S CHARACTER
Whittier’s shyness was proverbial. Those who knew him also knew
that beneath that shyness was a masterful spirit. Evasion and
inconclusiveness on the part of those with whom he dealt would not
avail. Whittier wanted to know where public men stood and for what they
stood. A politician himself, he understood the art of dealing with
politicians. To a certain candidate he said: ‘Thee cannot expect the
votes of our people unless thee speak more plainly.’ Being in great
need of the votes of ‘our people,’ the candidate was compelled to speak
at once and to use the words Whittier put into his mouth.
Another possessed of like skill in controlling men might have grown
despotic. Not so Whittier. Tactful and conciliatory, no grain of
selfishness was to be found in his composition. He worked for the cause
alone.
His physical courage, of which there are abundant illustrations,
was fully equal to his moral courage. The nerve required to face a
disciplined enemy, as in war, is always admirable; one would not wish
to underestimate it. But it is a type of courage not difficult to
comprehend. A glamour hangs about the battlefield. Men are carried
on by the esprit de corps. They do wonders and marvel at their
own courage afterwards. Facing a mob is another matter. A mob is
an assassin; the last thing it wants is fair play. Whittier had no
experiences like those to which Bailey and Garrison were subjected, but
he had enough to try his mettle.
He was one of the most modest of men, holding his achievements,
literary and otherwise, at far lower estimate than did the public. To
an anxious inquirer Whittier said that he did not think ‘Maud Muller’
worth serious analysis. He asked for criticism on his verses, and was
not slow to act upon it when given. His open-mindedness is shown in
the way he accepted Lowell’s suggestion about the refrain of ‘Skipper
Ireson’s Ride.’ He defended himself when the criticism touched his
motives or impugned his love of truth. Charged with having boasted that
his story of ‘Barbara Frietchie’ would live until it got beyond reach
of correction, Whittier replied: ‘Those who know me will bear witness
that I am not in the habit of boasting of anything whatever, least
of all of congratulating myself upon a doubtful statement outliving
the possibility of correction.... I have no pride of authorship to
interfere with my allegiance to truth.’
He was a stanch friend, and a helpful neighbor. His filial piety was
deep--no trait of his character was more pronounced. He was the most
devoted of sons, the best of brothers.
The seriousness of Whittier’s temper and mind was relieved by a keen
sense of humor which found expression in many engaging ways. His
letters written in young manhood are at times almost boisterously
mirthful. His humor grew subdued as he became older, but it never lost
its charm. Those who were nearest him realized how much it contributed
to making him the most companionable of men.
III
THE LITERARY CRAFTSMAN
‘I have left one bad rhyme ... to preserve my well known character in
that respect,’ says Whittier in a letter to Fields, his publisher. The
charge of laxity in rhymes was the one most often brought against him.
He labored under two capital disadvantages; he was self-taught and he
wrote always for a moral purpose. His objection to reprinting _Mogg
Megone_ grew out of the feeling, not that it was bad poetry,--though
he had no delusions about its artistic value,--but that it was not
calculated to do good. Ethics, rather than art, were uppermost in his
thought. There has never been question of his native power. He could
be exquisitely felicitous, but, having acquired the habit of writing
for a cause, of sacrificing nicety of phrase for vigor of thought
and rapidity of utterance, being eager always to strike a blow at
the critical moment, he found it difficult to write with a dominant
artistic motive. He wrote better (technically speaking) the older he
grew. It is difficult to realize as we listen to the rich strains of
his later years that Whittier could have been as inharmonious as he
often was in the first period of his poetic life. He confessed his
defect. To Fields he once said: ‘It’s lucky that other folks’ ears are
not so sensitive as thine.’
His variety of metres, if not great, was sufficiently ample to preclude
the feeling of sameness. His verse never comes laden with scholarly
suggestion in rhythm or thought, with the faint sweet echoes of
old-time poetry, as does Longfellow’s. Whittier was not ‘literary,’
though he made a noble addition to the literature of his country.
Whittier’s prose has been ignored rather than underestimated. It is
clear and forceful, often impassioned, and sometimes eloquent. Whether
a reputation could be based on it is another matter. Certainly it has
not been accorded the popular favor it deserves. Among a thousand
readers, for example, who know _Snow-Bound_ there are possibly two or
three who have read _Margaret Smith’s Journal_.
Of the seven prose sketches in _Legends of New England_ not one was
thought by the author worth preserving. He also suppressed much of the
contents of the two volumes published some fifteen years after the
_Legends_. Both these later books, _The Stranger in Lowell_ and _The
Supernaturalism of New England_, ought to be reprinted as they came
first from Whittier’s hand.
_The Stranger in Lowell_, a volume of more or less related essays,
is in part a record of impressions made on the author during a
brief residence in the new manufacturing town by the Merrimac. The
extraordinary growth of ‘The City of a Day’ was then, and is still,
a legitimate cause for wonder. All the eighteen papers are readable,
and that entitled ‘The Yankee Zincali’ is a little classic. Whittier’s
next volume of prose, _The Supernaturalism of New England_, consists of
nine chapters on witches, wizards, ghosts, apparitions, haunted houses,
charms, and the like. It is rather a wide survey of the subject,
from the Indian powahs to the Irish Presbyterians who settled in New
Hampshire in 1720, and brought with them, ‘among other strange matters,
potatoes and fairies.’ Whittier dwells on these traditions of his
country with deep interest and sets them forth with no little humor. It
is a fault of the book that he does not dwell on them at greater length.
_Leaves from Margaret Smith’s Journal_ is an admirable study of
colonial New England in 1678. The style is sweet, the narrative
flowing, the characters, many of them historical, are consistent and
lifelike, and the tone of delicate irony running through the book
is most engaging. Genuinely illuminating to the student of manners
are such passages in the journal as those describing the ordination
of Mr. Brock at Reading, the meeting at the inn with a son of Mr.
Increase Mather, ‘a pert talkative lad’ abounding in anecdotes of the
miraculous, the antics of Mr. Corbet’s negro boy Sam, and the encounter
on the way back to Boston with the good old deacon under the influence
of flip. A strong and engrossing plot might have made the book more
popular, as it might also have been inconsistent with the artlessness
of what purports to be a young girl’s journal.
_Old Portraits and Modern Sketches_ is a volume of character studies
of ancient worthies (such as Bunyan, Ellwood, Baxter, Marvell) and of
two or three moderns (like William Leggett, to whom Whittier pays a
generous tribute). _Literary Recreations and Miscellanies_ consists of
a reprint of material used in earlier books, together with a group of
reviews and other papers.
IV
NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY VERSE
Whittier’s instinct drew him irresistibly to native themes. He believed
that the American poet should write about America. ‘New England is
full of Romance,’ he had said in his sketch of Brainard. ‘The great
forest which our fathers penetrated--the red men--their struggle and
their disappearance--the Powwow and the War-dance--the savage inroad
and the English sally--the tale of superstition, and the scenes of
Witchcraft,--all these are rich materials of poetry.’ And it is safe to
assume that Whittier never questioned the wisdom of his own choice of
subjects, though he was often dissatisfied with the treatment.
Much of Whittier’s early verse died a natural death. More ought in
his opinion to have done so. He marvelled at the ‘feline tenacity of
life’ exhibited by certain poems and thought it flat contradiction of
the theory of the survival of the fittest. He destroyed every copy
of _Legends of New England_ that he could get his hands on. He would
have been glad to suppress _Mogg Megone_. ‘Is there no way to lay the
ghosts of unlucky rhymes?’ he asked, when the question was raised of
reprinting the story in the ‘blue and gold’ volumes of 1857. It had
appeared in the first collected edition (1849), and again in 1870; but
when the definitive edition was published (1888), _Mogg Megone_ was
consigned to ‘the limbo of an appendix,’ and printed in type small
enough to make the reading a torture.
The plot is imaginary, but the characters are for the most part
historical. The outlaw Bonython sells his daughter to the Saco
chief Hegone, or, as he was commonly called, Mogg Megone. The girl
murders the savage as he lies drunk in her father’s hut. For Mogg had
boasted of killing her seducer. She flies to the settlement of the
Norridgewock Indians to confess to the Jesuit Sebastian Ralle, and is
repulsed by the angry priest, whose plans are thwarted by Megone’s
untimely death. Wandering about in agony, she sees the attack by the
English on Norridgewock, when Ralle was shot at the foot of the cross,
and later is found by Castine and his men, dead in the forest. The poem
is spirited and abounds in incident, but it is melodramatic. It lacks
the magic of Whittier’s art. Nevertheless he unjustly depreciated it.
A better performance is ‘The Bridal of Pennacook,’ with its strongly
marked characters of Passaconaway, Weetamoo, and Winnepurkit, its
contrasting pictures of the rich Merrimac valley and the wild Saugus
marshes. Along with this story of Indian life may be read ‘The
Fountain’ and the musical stanzas of the ‘Funeral Tree of the Sokokis.’
‘The Truce of Piscataqua’ and ‘Nauhaught, the Deacon’ are later poems
illustrating Indian character.
Living in what had been for many years one of the border towns of
Massachusetts, Whittier was naturally drawn to themes, partly historic,
partly legendary, touching the struggles between French, English, and
Indians. ‘Pentucket’ commemorates Hertel de Rouville’s night attack on
Haverhill. ‘St. John,’ a ballad of Acadia, describes the sack of La
Tour’s fortress by his rival, D’Aulnay. ‘Mary Garvin’ and ‘The Ranger’
are ‘border’ ballads.
Now and then he rhymes ‘a wild and wondrous story,’ such as ‘The
Garrison of Cape Ann,’ which he found in the _Magnalia Christi_:--
Dear to me these far, faint glimpses of the dual life of old,
Inward, grand with awe and reverence; outward, mean and coarse and cold;
Gleams of mystic beauty playing over dull and vulgar clay,
Golden-threaded fancies weaving in a web of hodden gray.
A number of the poems turn on the witchcraft persecutions: ‘Mabel
Martin,’ ‘The Witch of Wenham,’ and the fine ‘Prophecy of Samuel
Sewall.’ In _The Tent on the Beach_ are two more: ‘The Wreck of the
Rivermouth’ and ‘The Changeling.’
Whittier was always ready to speak on the injustice of injustice. His
Quaker ancestors used to receive gifts of forty stripes save one. They
were martyrs for the cause of religious liberty. And the sufferings
of the New England Quakers was a subject always to the poet’s hand.
He contemplated the wrongs that had been righted and was grateful
therefor; but it was a part of his mission to teach his readers what
progress had been made since the days in which state and church united
to persecute a harmless if sometimes extravagant people. The lesson
may be found in such poems as ‘How the Women went from Dover’ and ‘The
King’s Missive.’ Whittier knew that injustice is always ridiculous,
and a grim humor plays at times about his treatment of events in that
dreadful day, as in the story of Thomas Macy. The most characteristic
setting of his general theme is to be found in the spirited ballad of
‘Cassandra Southwick.’ The incident is told dramatically by the heroine
herself, but the passion which glows through the verse is true Whittier.
V
_VOICES OF FREEDOM_, _SONGS OF LABOR_, _IN WAR TIME_
The militant note in Whittier’s verse was sounded early. In 1832, when
he was twenty-five years old, he wrote the stanzas ‘To William Lloyd
Garrison.’ They were followed by ‘Toussaint L’Ouverture’ (1833), ‘The
Slave-Ships’ (1834), ‘The Hunters of Men’ and ‘Stanzas for the Times’
(1835), ‘Clerical Oppressors’ (1836), and the stinging ‘Pastoral
Letter’ (1837). He was now fairly embarked on his mission.
The brunt of his attack fell on supine Northern politicians, clerical
apologists, and anxious business men who feared agitation might injure
their Southern trade. Nothing was more abhorrent to Whittier than
traffic in human flesh. He marvelled that it was not abhorrent to every
one, and strove with all his power to make it so. America, in his
belief, was a by-word among the nations, forever prating of ‘liberty’
while she bought and sold slaves.
As he was the assailant of timid vote-seekers, money-getters, and
ministers who defended slavery ‘on scriptural grounds,’ so was Whittier
the eulogist of all who made sacrifices for the cause, or who, like
‘Randolph of Roanoke,’ a man with every traditional motive to cling to
the peculiar institution, testified against it. _Voices of Freedom_
is a record of the guerilla warfare which Whittier waged during forty
years against slavery. With the additions he made to it in the progress
of the struggle, it became not only the largest division of his work
but one of the most notable. The history of Abolitionism is written
here. ‘The Pastoral Letter’ was Whittier’s response to the body of
Congregational ministers who deprecated the discussion of slavery as
tending to make trouble in the churches. ‘Massachusetts to Virginia’
was called out by Latimer’s case. ‘Texas,’ ‘Faneuil Hall,’ and the
lines ‘To a Southern Statesman’ are a protest against the annexation of
territory ‘sufficient for six new slave states.’ ‘For Righteousness’
Sake’ was inscribed to friends ‘under arrest for treason against the
slave power.’ The fine closing stanza deserves to be better known:--
God’s ways seem dark, but, soon or late,
They touch the shining hills of day;
The evil cannot brook delay,
The good can well afford to wait.
Give ermined knaves their hour of crime;
Ye have the future grand and great,
The safe appeal of Truth to Time!
‘The Kansas Emigrants’ celebrates the Western advance, the coming of
the new Pilgrims, armed with the Bible and free schools. ‘Le Marais
du Cygne’ was written on hearing of the Kansas massacre in May, 1858.
‘The Quakers are Out,’ a campaign song (not included in the collected
writings), celebrates the Republican victory in Pennsylvania on the eve
of the National election:--
Away with misgiving--away with all doubt,
For Lincoln goes in, when the Quakers are out!
Not the least notable among these poems is ‘The Summons,’ in which
the poet contrasts the quiet of summer with the distant tumult of
approaching war, and his knowledge of his place in the approaching
struggle with consciousness of his inability to act.
The Voices of Freedom are often harsh and discordant. Lines were
written in hot haste and sent to press before the ink had time to
dry. The needs of the moment were imperative. There was little time
to correct and no time to polish. Had Whittier possessed a lyric gift
approximating that of Hugo or Swinburne, how wonderful must have been
his contribution to our literature. For the cause was great and his
devotion single. Much of the verse, however, is journalism.