When after Whittier’s morning writing at the desk by the French window
in the garden room, the desk on which were written “Snow-Bound,” “The
Tent on the Beach,” and other well-loved poems, the poet rested,
did he go to the woods, to the fields, to the streams he loved so
well? Undoubtedly, he did sometimes. But his walks afield were more
frequently afternoon strolls. He lived before the days of the postman.
His morning mail was waiting for him at the office, and although
sometimes he sent for it, he more frequently went himself, and rested
from his poems by neighborly chats. On poetry? Hardly--in the post
office, or the grocery store!
He liked the local news of the day; he liked social
intercourse--especially when he could jump up from his chair, or his
sugar barrel, or wherever he might have been seated and take his
departure when he felt so disposed.
But there was more than this. He also had a purpose.
* * * * *
Three years previous to the moving of Whittier’s family to Amesbury
had been held the Anti-Slavery Convention in Philadelphia, in which
Garrison, Whittier, Wright, Samuel J. May, and so many others whose
names are familiar in the cause of freedom for the slave, had taken
part.
But Whittier’s hopes of more active co-operation had been ended by his
delicate health, his want of power to endure the fatigues of such a
life as that to which scenes like the Boston mob, the Philadelphia mob,
and convention work would have subjected him. Yet he still had work
in abundance as Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society, as an earnest
and most important advocate of that political party which some of the
anti-slavery reformers had determined to build up, the principle of
which was inserted in the Albany Anti-Slavery Convention of 1839.
Whittier was one of the business committee of this National Convention
of Abolitionists in which the formation of a political anti-slavery
party was inaugurated. The opinion of the abolitionist, Abraham L.
Pennock of Pennsylvania, made in the January of 1840, six months after
the Convention, Whittier publicly endorsed the following year as his
own opinion also.
“What an absurdity is moral action apart from political,” declared both
these men who with others determined to use the legitimate weapon of
their vote in the cause of freedom--not as a right only, but a duty,
since it was in their hands.
Together with Sumner, Henry Wilson, and many others at the East,
Whittier was working toward the growth of a political party, eventually
to become one with the great party at the West where Abraham Lincoln’s
“Lincoln-Stone protest” against the encroachment of the Slave Power had
developed into his famous debates with Douglas upon slavery, under the
guise of the Kansas-Nebraska bill and other measures. There had arisen
in the country many forces which in different ways and places, but
with the same object, had come to stand for opposition to the spread
of slavery, and were assimilating. Forces moral, spiritual, political
were uniting--unconsciously at first--for the great conflict under the
leadership of Abraham Lincoln.
* * * * *
To Whittier’s insight political measures were to be the salvation of
the country he loved and eventual destruction to the slavery he hated.
To him therefore each man’s vote counted.
While he was in the grocery store, or the post-office, or in some shop,
that especial place became by power of the poet’s character and purpose
the rendezvous of a political force that had for its object the turning
of politics from chicanery and bribery into the might that dwells in
an honest man’s vote wisely given.
If the poet accepted men as he found them, it was because in them
he found good. He never accepted evil in men or passed it by with
indifference, but strove in some way to speak the word, or do the act
which should turn the man to good. Politics led by Whittier in Amesbury
was under that same leadership which by personal counsel as well as by
published poem and word was so helpful in organizing the Republican
party. None recognized more quickly than did Whittier that men all over
the country were like men in Amesbury, no more intelligent, no more
honest, no more progressive. And his poems to
“Rouse the sleeping citizen;
Summon out the might of men!”
his written pleas for the right and appeals against oppression were
made to just such men as those he daily met and talked with.
None knew better than he did that suggestions and inspirations are in
the air and hit one in the way of them. Whittier had a quality also
accredited to Roosevelt--he went where things were. How he always
managed to get there in his life of a recluse it is difficult to
explain, except upon the principle that electricity travels a thousand
miles as readily as one, and the poet’s perceptions were charged with
spiritual electricity.
Therefore these men whom he was daily meeting had something to say to
him also, although often unconsciously; and his knowledge of their
powers and possibilities, of how they looked at things, and how to
reach their hearts gave to his “Songs of Freedom” a note of power that
sent them ringing over the land.
As leader and inspirer he stood--not autocrat. He cared to know all
men’s opinions, and his weapons were argument and persuasion, and that
keen rapier of retort which pierced many a false theory.
* * * * *
Yet, as it has been said, in these morning hours politics were not
all. The poet had been writing; he needed recreation. Everything that
was going on around him was of interest to him; the local story, the
fun, the jest, the laugh were not wanting; nor was any situation with
the possibility of humor in it lost upon this politician and poet. He
appreciated broadcloth, he delighted in cultured phrase; both he could
find in his own town. But where these were lacking,
“A man’s a man for a’ that.”
For Whittier lived so much in the realities that he held men as they
stood in the ranks of character, and in reading them he was wonderfully
keen.
So, he talked and listened and joked and laughed with his
fellow-townsmen, and reckoned among them many a true friend.
* * * * *
In a letter to Mrs. F---- written in the November of 1876, he says:
“What does the Colonel think of the election? I staid to vote in
Amesbury and have been here for ten days or more. The dismal and misty
weather seems to correspond with the doubtful and wearisome political
condition of the country. For myself, I would prefer to see Tilden
president than to elect Hayes by fraud. Yet there seems a possibility
of his fair election.”
* * * * *
After giving some Amesbury news to a correspondent, he adds:
“Do thee ever think of our sojourn at the Bearcamp House? I always
recall it with pleasure. H---- C---- [a young friend of whom Whittier
was fond] is now in Amesbury. He is still, I hope, improving.”
X
Sometimes the poet did not see his friends and acquaintances upon
the street, or he was too absorbed in a poem--or, alas it may have
been with a headache--to give sign of recognition. Yet to a neighbor
who one day laughingly accused him of “cutting” her, he spoke of
the two persons whom he never failed to recognize, whatever his
preoccupation--one an old cooper, the other an old lame man, both of
whom through their poverty found many persons blind to them.
But, again, sometimes Whittier’s eyes served him well. One morning
coming out of the post-office, he saw the doctor driving past and
the two stopped to greet one another. Then, as the interview seemed
finished and the doctor was about to drive on again, the poet said in
an undertone:
“Don’t thee go yet. There’s So-and-So,” naming a bore, “waiting for me.
Let him get by first.”
So the poet and the doctor’s carriage stood in the road until Mr.
“So-and-So” grew tired of waiting and took himself off.
* * * * *
Occasionally, a visitor who happened to be in the garden room when the
poet returned from the post-office was treated to tidbits from his
mail. One day he read aloud a letter from a woman of brilliant literary
fame and brilliant personality. She announced that she was coming to
visit him.
“She is one of the most easily entertained visitors I ever have,” he
commented, “for I don’t have to answer her; I don’t get a chance!” And
as he laughed, he knew well that, had the writer of the letter heard
him, she would have had her retort ready. For when did Gail Hamilton
ever fail of a good retort? “Now, what does she send that to an old
fellow like me for?” he went on, holding out a snip of her new gown
which for his edification she had inclosed in her letter.
She told him also where she was about to visit and added her request
for a letter from him, or for a few words, or for merely his name, so
that in a moment of abstraction she could draw the envelope from her
pocket as by accident, and drop it back again with the remark, “Ah, a
letter from Whittier!”
* * * * *
The poet in speaking to a friend about his comprehension of character,
told how he sometimes regretted this ability. She responded that at
times she also read people better than she liked.
“So do I, Mrs. S----,” he answered eagerly. “I read them too well.” His
sensitive organization which vibrated to the least change in the winds
of heaven, vibrated also to human emotions and passions in others.
And yet here his kindness did not fail him; nor when face to face with
evil, did he rebuke the evil-doer with any consciousness of superior
personal merit. Instead, he appealed from the evil in evidence to the
good in reserve.
As when one morning in the garden room he listened to an amazing
proposition, namely--that his visitor should write the poetry, which
the poet was assured by the speaker the latter could do fluently, and
that Whittier should put his name to it, which would make it sell, and
that the two should share the profits!
The poet showed no anger at the suggestion of linking his name with
doggerel, or contempt for the other’s stupendous conceit. It was the
deceit which he attacked.
“Thee is a minister of the Gospel,” he answered the man. “Now, does
thee think it would be right to do a thing like that?”