One day in the garden room Whittier spoke laughingly of some early
stories of his that he had recently found when rummaging in the garret.
He assured his listener--the writer--that they were not so bad! No
persuasion, however, could induce him to show them, or even tell her
more about them. But not a few of his poems have a dramatic touch which
suggests that had he not been reformer and poet, he would have been
famous in romance.
It may have been this faculty of romance which has given to “My
Playmate,” “In School Days,” and several other of his poems touches
which might well be construed into a meaning more tender than
friendship alone. Another such is “A Valentine,” written to this same
friend of Elizabeth and of the poet himself, and never published.
On the envelope was written in the handwriting of the recipient,
“Valentine from J. G. W.--1849.” It reads:
“To M----
Long have I sought and vainly have I yearned
To meet some spirit that could answer mine;
Then chide me not that I so soon have learned
To talk with thine.
Oh, thou wilt cherish what some hearts would spurn;
So gentle and so full of soul thou art,
And shrine my feelings in that holy urn,
Thine own true heart!”
His niece, Lizzie Whittier, afterward Mrs. Pickard, told of the poet’s
strong home affections. She said that from his early childhood in his
games he was always playing at house-keeping; and all his life the
ideal of home and the love of it never left his heart.
“A rose-cloud, dimly seen above,
Melting in heaven’s blue depths away,--
Oh, sweet, fond dream of human love!
For thee I may not pray,”
he sings in “The Wish of Today.”
* * * * *
An Amesbury neighbor, a cousin of “The Countess” of his poem, told the
writer of a remark of his. “All the ladies with whom I am associated
are in homes different from mine,” he had said, it may be speaking
especially of the friends of his early days. But she had added that all
his life, wherever he had been placed he had been socially among the
first.
This same neighbor also repeated the poet’s remark to another friend
who, too, was related to the heroine of one of his poems. “In one
thing thee have done better than I have,” he had said to him--“thee
have married a good wife.”
The finest comment in Carpenter’s book on Whittier is that upon
“Benedicite.” No other poem so expresses the renunciation of Whittier’s
life and that purity and holiness of character which made women
especially his dear and loving friends.
* * * * *
Once, unknown to the poet, his sister sent to the doctor’s home for
inspection an exquisite miniature on ivory of a very beautiful woman.
Miss Whittier’s message with the miniature was that this was the
portrait of a lady whom the poet had loved, but that she had turned
from him and married another. Now, however, in her widowhood and his
greater fame she had looked back at him again.
Today’s question is, would she have been won had she found in him his
old ardor and less resignation? At least she complained to him of the
loss of this ardor. His letters assured her that his feelings to her
were the same, but that her “fine artistic nature” could not endure the
hard, uncongenial influences of his life surroundings. How much had his
ardent emotion softened into tender and constant friendship? If his
narrow income at that time forbade him; or if loyalty to his sister
would not permit him to put another over the home of which she had been
so long the light, who can tell?
This miniature was the portrait of Elizabeth Lloyd to whom the poet’s
letters have been published. Was she the inspirer of “Benedicite,” that
poem of a deep and holy love?
* * * * *
When Bayard Taylor was ready to bring to Amesbury “his beautiful German
wife” whom the poet’s sister had been so eager to see, Miss Whittier
was too ill to make the visit possible.
For months she had been growing weaker and more suffering. The doctor
sent her to Boston to be in care of Dr. Z----, then a very famous woman
physician. During this time Miss Whittier visited Mrs. W----, a sister
of Dr. S----.
But in spite of all efforts the disease progressed, and Elizabeth
returned to Amesbury worse. From that time she steadily failed, and in
the late summer of 1864 she passed to the life beyond.
* * * * *
The doctor’s wife who was often in Miss Whittier’s room during the
latter part of her illness could well have given a touch of the poet’s
inner life.
One day Elizabeth in a spasm of pain looked up at her brother from this
friend who was bending over her.
“Ah, Greenleaf,” she said, “I wish thee had a good, strong wife like
the doctor’s.”
“So do I, Elizabeth,” he answered her. “But thee knows--”
The finishing of that sentence the hearer never told beyond the limits
of her own home.
* * * * *
After Elizabeth’s death, in his loneliness and his loyalty to those who
had gone, Whittier’s heart uttered itself. How could the world help
listening to the voice of such a heart as spoke in “Snow Bound?”
When wider fame and money followed the writing of this poem, the poet
was full of tender regret that those he loved best were not here to
share. One day he spoke to the writer of his increased income and how
he wished that he could have given his sisters what they did not have
while they were with him. And again, when some strong wind of praise
had swept down upon him, he said to one who had known Elizabeth: “If my
sister could have lived to see this day, how happy she would have been!”
But he saw “the stars shine through his cypress trees.”
To him life broadened more and more. It was given him to learn yet more
fully the truth which his labor for the slave had so well prepared him
to comprehend. For to him in a deeper sense than ever before those who
did God’s will and work in the world were united with him, as with his
Master, in a spiritual bond.
* * * * *
After the death of Elizabeth the poet’s dearest friends hoped that he
would marry. He was not a person to whom such a suggestion could be
lightly made. Yet one, out of his affection, did hint at this hope.
But Whittier’s words shattered the day dream.
“No,” he answered, mindful of his frail health. “I have not married a
wife. I will not marry a nurse.”