In the May of 1868 Whittier wrote to his sister’s friend and his own:
“Many thanks for thy very interesting letter from Vineland. I wished I
was there when I read it. It has been dismally cold here most of the
time since thee left. Nothing has been done in the gardens. The snow,
however, is all gone now and there have been a few days of spring
weather. The grass is springing up, the arbutus is almost in bloom, and
the maple at our door is in full blossom. I have been a week in Boston
and vicinity and got home last night. I was at Mrs. Pitman’s and one or
two other places, but generally kept quiet. Yesterday at three o’clock
when I left Boston, the thermometer was near summer heat; before I got
home the air was full of rain and sleet; and it was winter. I feel the
effects of the change a good deal this morning.
“There is nothing new here.” Then follow a few items of news of
Amesbury. “When shall thee return?” he adds. “We miss thee a great
deal. A---- left us a week ago. Lizzie sends love. She had a great
time at Richmond.” [The niece who had been at the South teaching the
freedmen.]
Again in May, six years later, he writes from Amesbury: “I have been
a good deal unwell this spring, and had to keep house for two or
three weeks. I hope I am getting better.... Yesterday the ministers
and laymen came here in great force. The orthodox houses were filled
with hungry guests, and as the day was beautiful, they had a good
time.... Mrs. S---- from N---- and Gail Hamilton and Lucy Larcom were
at our house.... Mr. Pickard has been here and staid two days. This is
the second time he has been here since thee left.... We had a great
thunderstorm on the last seventh day night. Spring has come in earnest
now. The grass is green on the hills, the elms are putting out their
leaves, and the maples are in blossom.”
* * * * *
In another letter he says that he should have written before but for
his many visitors and the “overwhelming mass of letters” that had been
pouring down upon him; and also but for illness--“a hard attack of
neuralgia,” he writes, “which has now nearly passed off, and a weary
time of sleeplessness remains. I want to go to Amesbury, but cannot
until I feel stronger and better. The extreme cold of the past month
has been very trying.... My dear old friend, Mrs. Pitman, has been
very sick, but is now improving. Mrs. Fields has had a severe attack
of pneumonia, but is now thought out of danger. Things, I believe,
remain about the same at Amesbury. I was saddened by the death of Mr.
B----. I shall miss him much. The C---- boys are still with Mrs. B----;
but a place must be found for them soon and I hardly know what to do
about it. I hope to get to Amesbury by the middle of the month.”
This letter was from Oak Knoll in the February of 1888.
* * * * *
In Whittier’s note to his poem, “Voyage of the Jettie,” written at
Wayside Inn at West Ossipee, he says that to readers who know the place
it will recall pleasant seasons by the Bearcamp and Chocorua. And he
adds that to himself the verses have a special interest “from the
fact that they were written, or improvised, under the eye and for the
amusement of a beloved invalid friend whose last earthly summers faded
from the mountain ranges of Ossipee and Sandwich.”
This “beloved invalid friend” was the father of the “C---- boys”
mentioned in the above letter--one of those Amesbury “boys and girls”
in whom the poet showed an unfailing interest. This gifted young man
was an early victim of tuberculosis. For years in his failing health
he was watched over with solicitude by the poet, whose letters make
frequent mention of him. On the invalid’s death Whittier wrote, “I miss
him sadly.”
The poet’s care for the orphan boys was characteristic of his fidelity.
* * * * *
“There is nothing especially new in Amesbury,” he says in a letter to
the writer, “except the one hundredth anniversary of the old Rocky Hill
meeting house for which Mrs. Spofford wrote an admirable poem. The
C----’s are at Lion’s Mouth. Dr. M---- D---- is in attendance on her
mother who is failing with consumption. I met A---- and M---- A---- in
Portland. I had not seen them for a long time before. I found Lizzie
(Mrs. Pickard) on the whole better than I had seen her for years. M----
B---- is seriously ill with spinal trouble and I fear with no prospect
of recovery. The beautiful June weather is very welcome after the long
and bitter winter and spring. I enjoy it, but am hardly able to get
about much.”
* * * * *
He writes from Oak Knoll:
“I have been here for three or four weeks, much of the time ill with
cold and rheumatism. I have been close indoors most of the time,
though I went one day to Boston to see my brother who was troubled with
his old enemy, inflammatory rheumatism.... I shall hope to see you when
I return to Amesbury sometime this month. Have you seen the Cartlands
yet?... Tell thy mother I will send her by the Cartlands who are
reading it, the ‘Life of Dr. Norman McLeod’ which I know she will like.
It is one of the pleasantest books I have read for years.”
* * * * *
A letter to M-- C-- in the May of 1889 records the loss of other
friends:
“I have been in Amesbury for a week or ten days,” he says. “The
great Methodist Conference met here last week with one hundred and
fifty ministers and a bishop. Of course, I had callers all the week.
I suppose thee have seen in the papers that my sister’s and my old
friend, Mrs. Harriet W. Sewall, was killed on the railroad crossing at
Wellesley.” And he adds: “Yesterday I had the sad news of the death of
my old friend of sixty years, President Barnard of Columbia College.
So they all drop away! The spring weather with its sudden changes is
rather hard for me and I am not feeling quite as strong as usual. I
think the neighbors here are pretty well.... I hope thee will be home
by the time of our quarterly meeting which takes place on the fourth
Thursday of this month.”
* * * * *
After the celebration of his seventieth birthday:
“I am very glad thy golden silence has become silvern,” he says in a
letter to this old friend. “I was just on the point of writing thee....
What a queer fuss has been made because I have grown old and got the
rheumatism! I trust it is about over here, but I am now getting letters
from England. I have had hundreds and many of them I was obliged to
answer. It is all so strange and unexpected. Of course I am very
grateful for the words of kindness which have reached me. I only wish I
deserved them better. If thee see M---- G---- again, give her my love,
and to Dr. Furness also, he is a nobleman.... I have just returned from
Amesbury and shall go to Boston next week. I have had a rather hard
time with headache and other aches but feel better now. The weather has
been below zero yesterday, but today is springlike again--the winter
wears away very comfortably even here, and it will soon be spring by
the almanac; but I suppose winter will linger in its lap until May.”
“I had more than one thousand letters on my birthday!” he wrote to
another friend, “and callers without number. I have not been able to
answer a quarter part of my letters. I begin to dread to touch a pen.”