MUSIC AND POETRY.
Besides other means of recreation, Carleton was happy in having been
from childhood a lover of music. In earlier life he sang in the church
choir, under the training of masters of increasing grades of skill, in
his native village, at Malden, and in Boston. He early learned to play
upon keyed instruments, the melodion, the piano, and the organ, the
latter being his favorite. From this great encyclopaedia of tones, he
loved to bring out grand harmonies. He used this instrument of many
potencies, for enjoyment, as a means of culture, for the soothing of
his spirits, and the resting of his brain. When wearied with the
monotony of work with his pen, he would leave his study, as I
remember, when living in Boston, and, having a private key to Shawmut
Church, and dependent on no assistance except that of the water-motor,
he would, for a half hour or more, and sometimes for hours, delight
and refresh himself with this organ,--grandest of all but one, in
Boston, the city of good organs and organ-makers. Many times
throughout the war, in churches deserted or occupied, alone or in the
public service, in the soldier's camp-church or meeting in the open
air, wherever there was an instrument with keys, Carleton was a valued
participant and aid in worship.
Religious music was his favorite, but he delighted in all sweet
melodies. He loved the Boston Symphony concerts and the grand opera.
Among his best pieces of writing were the accounts of Wagner's
Parsifal at Bayreuth, and the great Peace Jubilee after our civil war.
At most of the great musical events in Boston, he was present.
Shawmut Church had for many years one of the very best quartette
choirs in the city, supported at the instrument by such organists as
Dudley Buck, George Harris, Samuel Carr, H. E. Parkhurst, and Henry M.
Dunham. In Carleton, both voice and instrument found so appreciative a
hearer, and one who so often personally commended or appraised their
renderings of a great composer's thought, or a heart-touching song,
that "as well the singers as the players on instruments" were always
glad to know how he received their art and work. In Europe, this lover
of sweet sound enjoyed hearing the greatest vocalists, and those
mightiest of the masses of harmony known on earth, and possible only
in European capitals. Before going to some noble feast for ear and
soul, as, for example, Wagner's rendition of his operas at Bayreuth,
Carleton would study carefully the literary history, the ideas sought
to be expressed in sound, and the score of the composer. In his grand
description and interpretation of Parsifal, he likened it among operas
to the Jungfrau amid the Bernese Alps. "In its sweep of vision,
beauty, greatness, whiteness, glory, and grandeur, it stands alone ...
to show the greatness, the ideal of Wagner, including the conflict of
all time,--the upbuilding of individual character,--and reaching on to
eternity."
Carleton, being a real Christian, necessarily believed in, and
heartily supported, foreign missionary work. He saw in his Master,
Christ, the greatest of all missionaries, and in the twelve
missionaries, whom he chose to carry on his work, the true order and
line of the kingdom. "Apostolical" succession is, literally, and in
Christ's intent, missionary succession. He read in Paul's account of
the organization of the Christian Church, that, among its orders and
dignities, its officers and personnel, were "first missionaries." To
him the only "orders" and "succession" were those which propagated the
Gospel. He had seen the work of the modern apostles, sent forth by
American Christians, west of the Alleghanies first, west of the
Mississippi. He had later beheld the true apostles at work, in India,
China, and Japan. It was on account of his seeing that he became a
still more enthusiastic upholder of missionary, or apostolic, work. He
gave many addresses and lectures in New England, in loyalty to the
mind of the Master. As he had been a friend of the black man, slave or
free, so also was he ever a faithful defender of the Asiatic stranger
within our gates. Against the bill which practically excluded the
Chinamen from the United States, in defiance of the spirit and letter
of the Burlingame treaty, Carleton spoke vigorously, at the meeting
held in Tremont Temple, in Boston, to protest against the infamous
Exclusion bill, which committed the nation to perjury. Carleton could
never see the justice of stealing black men from Africa to enslave
them, of murdering red men in order to steal their hunting-grounds, or
of inviting yellow men across the sea to do our work, and then kicking
them out when they were no longer needed.
Carleton was instrumental in giving impetus to the movement to found
that mission in Japan which has since borne fruit in the creation of
the largest and most influential body of Christian churches, and the
great Doshisha University, in Kioto. These churches are called
Kumi-ai, or associated independent churches, and out of them have
come, in remarkable numbers, preachers, pastors, editors, authors,
political leaders, and influential men in every department of the new
modern life in Japan. It was at the meeting of the American Board,
held in Pittsburg, in the Third Presbyterian Church edifice, October
7-8, 1869, that the mission to Japan was proposed. A paper by
Secretary Treat was read, and reported on favorably, and Rev. David
Greene, who had volunteered to be the apostle to the Sunrise Empire,
made an address. The speech of Carleton, who had just returned from
Dai Nippon, capped the climax of enthusiasm, and the meeting closed by
singing the hymn, "Nearer, my God, to Thee."
At one of the later meetings of the Board, at Rutland, Vermont, the
Japanese student Neesima pleaded effectually that a university be
founded, the history of which, under the name of the One Endeavor, or
Doshisha, is well known. In the same year that Neesima was graduated
from Amherst College, Carleton received from this institution the
honorary degree of Master of Arts.
Carleton could turn his nimble pen to rhyme, when his friends required
verses, and best when his own emotions struggled for utterance in
poetry. Several very creditable hymns were composed for anniversary
occasions and for the Easter Festivals of Shawmut Church.
Indeed, the first money ever paid him by a publisher was for a
poem,--"The Old Man's Meditations," which was copied into "Littell's
Living Age." The pre-natal life, birth, and growth of this first-born
child of Carleton's brain and heart, which inherited a "double
portion," in both fame and pelf, is worth noting. In 1852, an aged
uncle of Mrs. Coffin, who dwelt in thoughts that had not yet become
the commonplace property of our day, being at home in the immensities
of geology and the infinities of astronomy, made a visit to the home
in Boscawen, spending some days. Carleton was richly fed in spirit,
and, conceiving the idea of the poem, on going out to plough, put
paper and pencil in his pocket. As he thought out line upon line, or
stanza by stanza, he penned each in open air. At the end of the
furrow, or even in the middle of it, he would stop his team, lay the
paper on the back of the oxen, and write down the thought or line.
Finished at home in the evenings, the poem was read to a friend, who
persuaded the author to test its editorial and mercantile value.
"I shall never forget," wrote Mrs. Coffin, October 13, 1896, "with
what joy he came to me and showed me the poetry in the magazine, and a
check for $5.00."
The last three stanzas are:
"He sails once more the sea of years
So wide and vast and deep!
He lives anew old hopes and fears--
Sweet tales of love again he hears,
While flow afresh the scalding tears,
For one long since asleep.
"He sees the wrecks upon the shore,
And everything is drear;
The rolling waves around him roar,
The angry clouds their torrents pour,
His friends are gone forevermore,
And he alone is here.
"Yet through the gloom of gathering night,
A glory from afar
Streams ever on his fading sight,
With Orient beams that grow more bright,
The dawn of heaven's supernal light
From Bethlehem's radiant star."
During the evenings of 1892, Carleton guided a Reading Club of young
ladies who met at his house. I remember, one evening, with what effect
he read Lowell's "Biglow Papers," his eyes twinkling with the fun
which none enjoyed more than he. On another evening, after reading
from Longfellow's "The Poet's Tale," "Lady Wentworth," and other
poems, Carleton, before retiring, wrote a "Sequel to Lady Wentworth."
It is full of drollery, suggesting also what might possibly have
ensued if "the judge" had married "Maud Mueller." Carleton's poem tells
of the risks and dangers to marital happiness which the old magistrate
runs who weds a gay young girl.
Carleton was ever a lover and student of poetry, and among poets,
Whittier was from the first his favorite. As a boy he committed to
memory many of the Quaker poet's trumpet-like calls to duty. As a man
he always turned for inspiration to this sweet singer of freedom. What
attracted Carleton was not only the intense moral earnestness of the
Friend, his beautiful images and grand simplicity, but the seer's
perfect familiarity with the New Hampshire landscape, its mountains,
its watercourses, the ways and customs of the people, the local
legends and poetical associations, the sympathy with the Indian, and
the seraphic delight which he took in the play of light upon the New
Hampshire hills. Not more did Daniel Webster study with eager eyes the
glowing and the paling of the light on the hilltops, no more
rapturously did Rembrandt unweave the mazes of darkness, conjure the
shadows, and win by study the mysteries of light and shade, than did
Whittier. To Carleton, a true son of New Hampshire, who had himself so
often in boyhood watched and discriminated the mystery-play of light
in its variant forms at dawn, midday, and sunset, by moon and star and
zodiac, at the equinoxes and solstices, the imagery of his favorite
poet was a perennial delight.
As he ripened in years, Carleton loved poetry more and more. He
delighted in Lowell, and enjoyed the mysticism of Emerson. He had read
Tennyson earlier in life without much pleasure, but in ripened years,
and with refined tastes, his soul of music responded to the English
bard's marvellous numbers. He became unspeakably happy over the tender
melody of Tennyson's smaller pieces, and the grand harmony of "In
Memoriam," which he thought the greatest poem ever written, and the
high-water mark of intellect in the nineteenth century. Carleton was
not only a lover of music, but a composer. When some especially tender
sentiment in a hymn impressed him, or the re-reading of an old sacred
song kindled his imagination by its thought, or moved his
sensibilities by its smooth rhythm, then Carleton was not likely to
rest until he had made a tune of his own with which to express his
feelings. Of the scores which he composed and sang at home, or had
sung in the churches, a number were printed, and have had happy use.
To the end of his life, he seemed to present, in his carriage and
person, some of that New Hampshire ruggedness, and even rustic
simplicity, that attracted and lured, while it foiled and disgusted
those hunters of human prey who, in every large city, wait to take in
the wayfaring man, whether he be fool or wise. Because he wore
comfortable shoes, and cared next to nothing about conformity to the
last new freak of fashion, the bunco man was very apt to make a fool
of himself, and find that he, and not the stranger, was the victim. In
Boston, which of late years has been so far captured by the Irishman
that even St. Patrick's is celebrated under the guise of "Evacuation
Day," matters were not very different from those in New York.
Carleton, while often conducting parties of young friends around
Copp's Hill, and the more interesting historical, but now uncanny
houses of the North End, was often remarked. Occasionally he was
recognized by the policeman, who would inform suspicious or inquiring
fellow foreigners or adopted sons of the Commonwealth, that "the old
fellow was only a countryman in town, and wouldn't do any harm."
Lest some might get a false idea, I need only state that Mr. Coffin
was a man of dignified dress, and scrupulously neat. He was a
gentleman whose engaging presence might suggest the older and more
altruistic, rather than the newer and perhaps brusquer style of
manners. His was a "mild and magnificent" blue eye in which so many,
who loved him so, liked to dwell, and he had no need to wear glasses.
The only sign of ornament about him was his gold watch-chain and
cross-bar in his black vest buttonhole.