Being obliged on account of ill health to decline a visit to old
friends, he wrote to them:
“I would like to see how Haverhill looks at this delightful season
[October] and enjoy with old friends there the wonderful glory of the
autumnal woods. But I find that I have to let a great many pleasant
things drop out of my life. I thank God for such as remain, and,
especially, for the love and goodwill of my friends, among whom I am
glad to reckon the inmates of the F---- homestead. With love to thee
and the Col. and C----, I include myself in Tiny Tim’s benediction,
‘God bless us every one!’”
* * * * *
“I went to the country for three or four weeks,” he said in 1885 in a
letter to the writer, “and came back feeling better for it, but for the
last three weeks have fallen back and the first hint of cold weather
makes me dread the coming winter and feel that I have little assurance
of another season of leaves and flowers. If I live a few weeks longer I
shall be seventy-eight!”
* * * * *
It was that same year that he wrote again to his Haverhill friend
in regard to the reunion of the surviving students of the Haverhill
Academy in 1827-28.
“I thank thee for thy kind invitation,” he says, “but I have been so
ill for the last week that I am quite unfit for going anywhere. I shall
try to be at my old friend Wingate’s tomorrow, but I shall not venture
to do anything more. It would give me no small pleasure to visit you,
but I cannot do it. I hope there will be a very quiet meeting of the
old scholars and nothing of a public nature. We don’t want to make a
show of our old selves in the least. The thing is no plan of mine.”
* * * * *
A few years later he wrote to the same:
“My dear friend, Charles Wingate, has passed on peacefully and
hopefully. His departure leaves me nearly alone in that old generation.”
Mr. Wingate was of the family of “The Countess” of Whittier’s beautiful
poem.
“I attended the Haverhill reunion,” he writes shortly after that event,
“but I have suffered for it since; the fatigue and excitement were too
much for me.”
For this occasion he wrote the poem, “Reunion,” ending:
“Hail and farewell! We go our way
Where shadows end, we trust, in light;
The star that ushers in the night
Is herald also of the day!”
Two years later, in the latter part of July, 1887, the poet wrote from
Centre Harbor:
“I got away from the hotel before the fire. We are stopping here at the
Sturtevant Farm near Holderness. It has been hot and damp for the last
week. The fields are green as June, but too wet for comfort.”
* * * * *
Thus, in spite of being “half sick,” as he was sometimes--and sometimes
wholly so, he had many happy days among the friends who gathered about
him in the quiet summer resorts which he frequented as long as he had
strength for the journeys. Occasionally, he went to Appledore, one of
the most beautiful of the Isles of Shoals. Here the retreat of Mrs.
Thaxter’s cottage kept him from the crowd. But more often he went to
the hills; and this was especially true in his later years.
* * * * *
“I have been ill a good deal of the past month,” wrote the poet in the
December of 1881, “and in addition I suffer from lameness in my knee.
I begin to suspect I am growing old in earnest.... I have not been in
Boston for nearly a year and have hardly courage to attempt it. Did any
of you hear Archdeacon Farrar? He and Phillips Brooks came to see me
and I was much pleased with him.”
In another letter Whittier says:
“I have been reading with a great deal of satisfaction Phillips
Brooks’s ‘Sermons,’ not always agreeing with him, but liking his spirit
and earnest convictions. He is a rare man.”
* * * * *
More than a year later Whittier wrote:
“I ought long ago to have written thee, but the sickness and death of
my brother and my own illness have made my winter here a hard and sad
one and compelled me to neglect my correspondence.... Lucy Larcom is
in the city at Concord Square. I saw her last week. Do you ever come
into the city? If so will you not call on me? I have not been about the
city at all, but many of my old friends have called on me. What there
is to see or hear I do not know. In some respects I might as well be in
Amesbury as here. But I hope I am getting somewhat over my fatigue and
illness, and am very thankful for it, and for the many blessings of my
allotment.”
* * * * *
A letter in the March of 1883 regretting missing a friend who had
called at the hotel to see him, adds:
“Why didn’t thee call here? Anybody comes here who wishes to. If thee
are in town again try this place.”
“This place” was the Mt. Vernon Street home of former Governor and
Mrs. Claflin, where the poet was always so cordially welcomed and so
tactfully entertained that he frequently visited there. Mrs. Claflin
appreciated the privilege of the presence of the “old saint,” as she
rightly named the poet, in her home. Her “Personal Recollections” of
Whittier give a just estimate of his character and many interesting
reminiscences.
* * * * *
“I really think this pleasant day is the beginning of the end of our
long winter,” wrote the poet from Oak Knoll to the writer in the
February of 1887. “I for one am glad to think so. My cousins, Mrs.
W----, Miss J----, and Phebe have been for some weeks in Bermuda where
they only complained of too much warmth. They expect to return the
latter part of this month. I have been shut in in the cold and snow,
but am freer now from pain than I was at the outset of winter. The want
of exercise in the open air I feel of course very much.
“I scarcely know what is going on in the literary, political, or
theological world. I feel sometimes that I have a word to say that is
needed, but I have not felt strong enough to write. So, the world must
get on without my shoulder to the wheel, and I guess it will.... I wish
I could look in upon you and see you all together as formerly. I am
glad to think of you in health, which after all is the main thing.”
The poet with his usual thought of giving pleasure enclosed jasmine
blossoms from Bermuda in his letter.
A portion of this letter Mr. Pickard quotes in his biography of the
poet.