Whittier’s biography mentions the encouragement given to his earliest
attempts at literature and the prospect thus held out to him of fame
and competence in comparative youth; of his congenial work in Boston
and his opportunities there for study and research.
But in the garden room by his own fireside the poet one day told the
writer of an early experience given later in his biography. To his
astonishment he had been called upon by George D. Prentice, then editor
of the “New England Review,” to take charge of this magazine during
Prentice’s temporary absence. Whittier’s secret tremors had not caused
him an instant’s hesitation in accepting the position; and as the
phrase goes, he soon “caught on.”
But before long there came a malignant attack upon one of his
editorials, an anti-slavery article called forth by some incident
of the day; and no doubt Whittier had struck out from the shoulder,
as was his habit in fighting against wrong. The poet in his youth
and inexperience was overwhelmed by the virulence of the attack and
wondered at first if he should not take the writer’s scornful advice
and “go back to the farm.” But he did no such thing; he braced himself
and “made good.” Telling the story that day in the garden room with
the world singing his praises, he added that he did not know what
had become of that critic. But this remark was far from wishing to
emphasize his own eminent position; there was not an iota of boast in
Whittier; it was made as a significant encouragement to his youthful
companion who, as he knew, had felt the sting of literary rebuffs.
* * * * *
It was not in literature alone, however, that the spirit moved him to
say and do the kind thing. A short time after the Civil War his friend,
Dr. S----, who had been long trying to secure a pension for a soldier’s
widow, very poor, at last appealed to the poet to help him. Whittier
sent the following letter:
“Amesbury, 26, 10th mo., 1867 (or 69)
“Dear General:
Our excellent friend General F---- goes to Boston today with reference
to the pension of Mrs. D---- of this town whose husband lost his life
in the service of his country. It is a very urgent case and there has
been some difficulty in obtaining the needed papers; but I hope if it
is in thy power, thee will aid him in his object.
Very truly thy friend,
John G. Whittier.”
The pension was secured.
* * * * *
The world knows well many of the poet’s rare and gracious qualities.
But the life that Whittier lived in his own family and among his
neighbors, the traits that came out in this daily life--these are not
known to the world, and never can be, except by lightest sketches. Yet
of all his poems the most beautiful was his life.
It was in 1869 that he wrote the following characteristic note to Dr.
S----, the “doctor” of these pages:
“Dear Doctor:
There is to be what they call a surprise party at Mrs. C----’s this
evening--the anniversary of her marriage forty years ago. They would
like to see thee and Mrs. S----, I am sure. It was got up by some of
her friends and relatives.”
The poet does not mention that he himself was one of the “friends” most
active in this endeavor to help a neighbor to tide over one of those
hard places plentifully scattered throughout her life. Her home was
across the little side street from Mr. Whittier’s. She had always been
a friend and many times a nurse to his sister Elizabeth. For in those
days when trained nurses were rare in the country, she often went into
families to nurse in illness. She had been much in the poet’s home in
his anxiety, his sorrow, and his own times of straitened means.
Her early opportunities of education had been small, and yet the
terms on which she lived with the Whittier family were in themselves
an education. Whittier appreciated her love of books, and it is to
her advice that the world owes a beautiful poem. One day when she was
in the house he came out of the garden room with a volume of “Mrs.
Jamieson” in his hand, and reading this neighbor in whose literary
judgment he believed, that writer’s account of the origin of the stars
and stripes, he remarked that it would be a good subject for a poem.
“Indeed, it would; and you are just the one to write it,” retorted his
listener with spirit. “Why don’t you do it?”
The poet returned to his room. And we have “The Mantle of St. John de
Matha.”
Years afterward when poverty and illness had become intimates of hers,
from her bed of pain which was henceforth to know only respite and not
cure, she epitomized in a sentence the poet’s character. Looking up
into the face of the writer who standing beside her had been speaking
of him, she exclaimed:
“Oh--Mr. Whittier!” Her voice choked, her face lighted, her eyes filled
with tears. She saw the past with its many trials and sufferings, and
to relieve these whenever possible, that blessed presence whose visits
to her in her need had not been in one respect as is wrongly said of
the angels--“few and far between.” In a moment she added brokenly,
“When you need _him_, you never have to say, ‘Come!’ he’s always there!”
He was “always there” for any need of any one that he could meet,
and he could meet many and diverse needs. For his was his Master’s
definition of his neighbor. There was nothing in the range of human
experience to which he did not accord open-hearted sympathy--except
meanness of motive and falsity of any kind. Yet mixed with hatred of
the sin was always compassion for the sinner; for no empty words to him
were these:
“And hope for all the language is,
That He remembereth we are dust.”