We should not think at all of Him, but turn,
And of the world that He has given us make
What best we may.
What we are we know (says the beloved Apostle, does he not?), or at any
rate, can make some sort of guess, which is much more than we can about
what we shall be: howbeit we know, or rather hope, that if we have done
something here, it will count for something there; nor will those be
nothing to each other there that have consorted faithfully here.
Lay not your hand upon the veil of the inner sanctuary, to try and lift
it up; go, thou proselyte of the gate, and do thy service where it is
permitted thee. Is it for nothing, but for the foolish souls of men
to be discontented and repine and whimper at, that He made this very
tolerably beautiful earth, with its logic and its arithmetic, and its
exact and punctual multifarious arrangements, &c. &c.? Is it the end
and object of all finite creation that sentimental human simpletons
may whine about their infinite longings? Was it ordered that twice two
should make four, simply for the intent that boys and girls should be
cut to the heart that they do not make five? Be content, when the veil
is raised, perhaps they will make five! who knows?
April 3.
As for the objects of life, heaven knows! they differ with one’s
opportunities. (_a_) Work for others--political, mechanical, or as it
may be. (_b_) Personal relations. (_c_) Making books, pictures, music,
&c. (_d_) Living in one’s shell. ‘They also serve who only stand and
wait.’ I speak as a philosopher, otherwise fool; but you may look at
things under some such heads.
It is odd that I was myself in a most Romanizing frame of mind
yesterday, which I very rarely am. I was attracted by the spirituality
of it. But what has hitherto always come before me as the truth is
rather that--
It seems His newer will
We should not think at all of Him, but turn,
And of the world that He has given us make
What best we can.
_To ----_
Rugby: April 11.
I am enjoying myself here. Jowett, the great Balliol tutor, is here.
This morning I walked out into broad and breezy pasture-fields,
eastwards, looking towards Naseby, where perhaps we shall ride
to-morrow. Rugby, you know, lies not far from Naseby field, near the
source of the Shakespearian Avon; a branch railway to Peterborough runs
up through the wide pasture-slopes, pretty well past the very sources.
We are on the blue lias formation, from which, westward, you pass at
Coventry into the red sand-stone, which stretches away to Liverpool;
while eastward, within four miles, the Northamptonshire villages are
all built of their native yellow-brown oolite. The Northamptonshire
peasantry, also, in their knee-breeches and fustian gaiters, have a
yellow-brown oolitish appearance.
In the Warwickshire physiognomy I can frequently detect the dross of
Shakespeare. You have another bright, light-haired, sanguine, less
bilious type, which perhaps comes of the Northmen--for our villages all
hereabouts, Barby, Kilsby, Buckby, Naseby, including Rugby itself, have
the characteristic Danish _by_ termination.
April 13.
Well, we went our long ride: not quite to Naseby, but to the Hemplow
Hills, a little short of it, starting at 2.30 and returning at seven.
All through fields with chains of gates, broad grassy swells, where the
Northamptonshire beef is fed, or used to be, for London markets; Shairp
on his hunter, the pride of his heart, leading the way, and opening the
gates, and commanding in chief. A party of six we were--two ladies,
Mrs. Arnold and Miss Shairp; Conington was one. At 7.30 we reassembled,
to dine with Shairp. Our course was eastward towards the sources of
Avon; the wells of Avon are just below Naseby village, I believe.
The whole country is a sheet of pasture (rather brown at present),
over which you may well imagine King Charles and his Cavaliers riding
south-westward from Leicester, to run their heads against the wall of
Cromwell’s army.
The country is singularly destitute of gentlemen’s houses, and has
a solitary unoccupied appearance, with its wide fields and its
field-roads. A railway, however, with a single line of rails, and, I
believe, three trains a day, looking quite afraid of what it is doing,
runs up through them from Rugby to Stamford.
_To ----_
London: May 24.
The flowers are a great deal too beautiful for me, and I a great deal
too unbeautiful for them. However, here they are now standing in my
unartificial arrangement, glorifying this unfortunate apartment. I
have not failed to find out the scarlet azalea. I have put it in a
wine-glass with the lily, which, after all, is my chief friend.
How beautiful the falling leaves of flowers are! not decayed, not
even as yet decaying, but ripe, full to their fullest of growth and
adolescence. I cannot prevail upon myself to empty the wine-glass,
the surface of whose water is covered with fallen geranium petals,
though there are still buds enough opening and opened to make a
fair show. The kalmias still survive; they will perhaps last till
Thursday--sufficiently, at least, to satisfy the eyes of a lover of
falling petals.
People should not be _very_ sceptical about things in general. ‘_Wen
Gott betrügt, ist wohl betrogen._’ There are plenty of good things in
the world, and good persons. Fitness is a great deal, but truth is a
great deal more. If things are good, we ought to accept them as such;
looking at _them_, and not thinking of our own fitness.
_To R. W. Emerson, Esq._
London: June 17, 1852.
My dear Emerson,--I hope a letter from me will not be a disagreeable
visitor, though it is to be all about business, and that entirely my
own business. The business is, that I entertain thoughts of emigrating
to your side of the water. University Hall has not flourished; I have
left it some months. I am at present merely Professor of English
Language and Literature at University College, here, the stipend for
which honourable position amounts to some 30_l._ a year. Meantime,
like the rest of mankind, I wish to be married and am as good or bad
as engaged. Is there any chance, do you think, of earning bread and
water, if not bread and flesh, anywhere between the Atlantic and the
Mississippi, by teaching Latin, Greek, or English?
I am half loath now, after nearly three years’ apprenticeship, to quit
this great town. It is almost like beginning to go down from a high
mountain top which it has taken long hours to get to. But I dare say it
would be for the best.
_To ----_
Weybridge: July 30, 1852.
Last night I came down here with Farrer, and walked straight away
from the station to Chertsey. We went to St. Anne’s Hill, where there
is a fine view; from it you can see Richmond and Betchworth beeches:
thence across the ferry to Laleham, where Arnold lived before he went
to Rugby, and where I had never been. We found our way to the house he
used to occupy--a solidish red brick place, with a narrow turn for a
carriage in front, and a tolerable garden alongside: it is unoccupied.
We also looked in at the church window, and made out the pulpit whence
he used to fulminate, and saw four gravestones in the churchyard over
his mother, two sisters, and another, to me unknown, relation. We got
back through the meadows only about 9 P.M.
And this morning I have been to Chobham. I took the Ordnance Map, and
walked, I should say, about eight miles, by road and by common, through
sun and shade, specially the former, and about half-past twelve found
myself seated under a beech avenue, looking out over wide heathy banks
to the westward, and to the southward into a sort of wide, tolerably
rich, and treey upper valley; the avenue leading to iron gates at the
south-east end; some clumps of Scotch firs on the heath to the north,
visible through the opposite rows of beeches. Really a very pretty
place indeed. I walked down under the house, and on into the village,
and refreshed myself at a tavern called the Sun, and walked on three
miles to the railway, and so home. Certainly Chobham is a remarkably
nice place--so green and rich, close to the very edge of the wide waste
heath, and looking abroad far over all the expanse from Bagshot to
Epsom, and I know not what more. The distance was dull in the heat of
noon.
There is a letter from Emerson, with general encouragement towards
America, and urging a preliminary visit by ‘first ship.’
_To R. W. Emerson, Esq._
London: August 6, 1852.
Your letter came, a welcome surprise to me, on Saturday last. My best
way of thanking you is, I believe, simply to accept your kind proposal.
You will, I dare say, not refuse to recognise thanks in that shape. My
‘first ship,’ however, cannot, I fear, be earlier than the very middle
of October. Come, however, I shall, and avail myself of your proffered
hospitalities.
_To ----_
Min-y-don, Colwyn: August 1852.
I have been making farewell visits[16] to my relations. I have ridden
seven miles and back to Conway, and walked two miles and back to make a
call; all of which, however, scarcely keeps me properly awake in this
dreamy seaside place, and dreamy late summer weather. I am continually
stopping to look out at the view through the window before my table.
I look out on the Little Orme’s Head, with its rounded weather-beaten
limestone rocks. We are here half-way between Abergele and Conway,
the sea a hundred yards off, with a bit of a lawn between, ending in
a gorse hedge on the top of a steep bank going down direct upon the
shore, in which bank now runs the line of railway; the Little Orme’s
Head, four miles off, closing the view of the coast.
LETTERS.
FROM 1852 TO 1853.
AMERICA.
_To ----_
On board the ‘Canada’: Friday, November 5, 1852.
Here you see my first written words on board H.M.S. ‘Canada,’ which is
tossing like fury against a dead-ahead wind.
Saturday night we passed Holyhead, Sunday coasted Ireland, and passed
the ‘Asia’ steamer with all her sails set. This day week we are to be
in port, spite of head wind.
Sunday, November 7.
A very Sunday-like Sunday indeed: fair wind and bright weather; church
service in the chief cabin, read by the surgeon, with sermon by the
Rev. Dr. Cook, of the Presbyterian Established Church in Quebec:
the lieutenant in his uniform, and some ten or twelve broad-chested
sailors, in their blue woollen shirts, occupying the end of the cabin,
aft--fine fellows as need be seen. Since then, a deal of promenading
on the quarter-deck. I got sick of the publicities, however, about
two o’clock, and come down to my cabin to scribble. Lowell, who is on
board, is very friendly indeed. Thackeray and I also get on.
We have on board a Dragoon officer and a young Engineer officer, bound
for Bermuda; two American medical students; a young half-English New
York candidate for orders; a Manchester youth, on his first trip
to New Orleans; a Cambridge travelling bachelor, with his brother,
an Oxford man, knocked up with work in the University crew, going
to Montreal; a Comptroller of the Customs in Halifax, and perhaps a
well-to-do Halifax merchant, both well-bred Englishmen; a south country
merchant, also English, with an American wife; a Boston chronometer
maker; a Virginian with wife, son, and little niece. Sundry American
brokers, &c. &c., make up our party.
November 8.
No sun to-day, and no observation; but we are running thirteen knots;
and the sea is a very gentle beast, and hardly rocks at all, and we are
all good-humoured and hungry.
November 9.
The ship is plunging like a porpoise. Last night came on a sort of
gale, with cloud and fog, and we moreover just off Cape Race, and, I
believe, really running straight upon it, which, you know, is a great
mass of cliff 300 or 400 feet high. However, we stopped and sounded,
and stopped and sounded again, and changed our course southward, and
were safe past before bedtime, but have been going slowly, with a
strong head wind.
November 11.
Off the coast of Nova Scotia. Last night at one o’clock we got to
Halifax. We had a very noisy night of it--boxes going out and boxes
coming in, and passengers ditto.
I have walked one lady about the deck for an hour, and talked half an
hour to another, and another half-hour with Thackeray, who was laid
up in his berth. I was called on deck to see the ‘Niagara’ steaming
away eastward from Halifax, some eight miles to the south of us. I am
perhaps a little sick of the amount of intimacy which enforces itself
upon one under the circumstances of fellow-passengership. It is to be
ended, however, to-morrow.
There was speechifying and toasting at dinner yesterday in the usual
approved style. All our healths were drunk at the lunch-dinner.
Thackeray, of course, was drunk; then Mr. Degen proposed Lowell, the
American poet; and Lowell, in returning thanks, proposed the English
poet--me!--and all the people stared at this extraordinary piece of
information, and I made my very modest speech, &c. &c.
I have been interrupted by a discourse on the Fugitive Slave Law by a
citizen of Hartford, Connecticut, who takes, _not_ the anti-slavery
view, and affirms that the North is quite satisfied. The Lowells
meantime are fervent Abolitionists.
Tremont House, Boston: Monday, November 15, 1852.
Here I am an established Bostonian. _Friday_ arrived at sunset; found
Thackeray already at this hotel, and that I had been inquired for.
Supped with Thackeray & Co., and went to bed.
_Saturday._--Lady Lyell takes me to the Ticknors; go to Dr. Howe’s
office, close by here, and see him; presently in comes young Mr.
Norton, and afterwards Mrs. Howe. Leave letters on the Appletons and
Abbott Lawrences. In returning meet Norton, with whom I swear eternal
friendship; he takes me and introduces me at the Athenæum, and at a
Club, and we walk and talk till 2.30.
Then I dine at the hotel, at the ‘Ladies’ Ordinary,’ with Thackeray and
the Lyells; then lionise with Thackeray and his friend Crowe through
the streets, till it is time to go off to the railway, which at 6.45
carries me off to Concord, to Emerson. Mrs. Emerson is out, with her
eldest girl. Old Mrs. Emerson, called ‘Madam,’ is sitting in the
room--a small, benevolent-looking, large-eyed old lady, the original of
Ralph Waldo.
_Sunday._--Loads of talk with Emerson all morning. Breakfast at eight
displays two girls and a boy, the family. Dinner at 2.30. Walk with
Emerson to a wood with a prettyish pool. Concord is very bare (so is
the country in general); it is a small sort of village, almost entirely
of wood houses, painted white, with Venetian blinds, green outside,
with two white wooden churches--one with a stone façade of Doric
columns, however. Emerson’s ancestor brought his congregation here from
Gloucestershire (I think) in the year 1635.
There are some American elms, of a weeping kind, and sycamores,
_i.e._ planes; but the wood is mostly pine--white pine and yellow
pine--somewhat scrubby, occupying the tops of the low banks, and marshy
hay land between, very brown now. A little brook runs through to the
Concord river.
At 6.30, tea and Mr. Thoreau; and presently Mrs. Ellery Channing, Miss
Channing, and others.
This morning I came away at a quarter to nine: a hard frost. To-day I
have seen Norton, and called on Charles Sumner. To-morrow I am to dine
with Norton, to meet Felton, the Greek Professor, at the Club; and the
next day at his father’s, and to call on Longfellow, who called on me.
I like Boston. There is a sort of park, ‘the Common,’ with iron
railings, and houses something like the Piccadilly row above the Green
Park, only all residences without shops--one built by Governor Hancock,
whose name is first in the Declaration of Independence, quite an
old-fashioned George II. house; the others later, of red brick, with
balustrading and carving, many of them. It is really very tolerably
English in the town. The harbour is very pretty. It is like a very good
sort of English country town in some respects.
People dine here at 2.30 regularly, and ask you to dine then.
Fashionable dinners at five. At evening parties you are supposed to
have had tea, and to want supper.
Alas! I have not seen a garden yet in Massachusetts. Emerson’s little
girl, however, brought in some small ‘pensées,’ which she called
‘lady’s delights,’ and some other little things that did for flowers.
Edith is a very nice child, and will be eleven next Monday. ‘When I was
going to be nine years old I didn’t know how I should feel.’ ‘Well, and
how did you feel?’ ‘Oh, I didn’t feel anyhow.’
I had Abolition pretty well out with Emerson, with whom one can
talk with pleasure on the subject. His view is in the direction of
purchasing emancipation. I send a bit of bark from a birch in Emerson’s
wood lot, the white or papyra birch, from which the Indians make
canoes. I remember long years ago seeing these birches on a hill near
Lebanon Springs, up which we children were taken to look out over a
tract of country which we were told was Massachusetts.
November 19.
I am to settle at Cambridge next Tuesday. I suppose I shall by degrees
find out the defects of the Yankee at home, but certainly they are very
kind.
Here, in Boston, I am ‘the _celebrated_ author of “The Bothie,”’ a
whole edition of which was printed and _sold_, they say, here.
Houses are sadly dear, one is told, both in Cambridge and Boston; and
things in general are said to be expensive, meat and drink excepted.
Drink, however, in the shape of wine and spirits, is actually
forbidden. Temperance is established by law. Only those who have stocks
on hand of their own can drink; a few sellers, whose licenses have not
expired, can sell. But after that there will be no selling at all. This
is called Maine Law, and is said to be of great benefit in the country
places, crime being greatly reduced. Dr. Howe gives no wine; at Mr.
Dwight’s there was sherry and Madeira, but hardly any was drunk: three
very small glasses apiece by the gentlemen--by the ladies none. Wine
and spirits are certainly not required where there is so much stimulant
in the air; even tea and coffee may be well dispensed with. The best
drink for the climate, I think, is cocoa.
November 21.
Yesterday Emerson gave a grand dinner, in honour of my poor self
apparently, at the Tremont House, where were Longfellow, Hawthorne,
Greenough the sculptor, Charles Sumner, Theodore Parker, Ellery
Channing, Lowell, and five others--a very swell dinner, I assure you.
November 22.
I have been up and have called on Mr. Prescott and Mr. Winthrop.
Cambridge is three miles from Boston, with omnibuses every quarter of
an hour, and also a railway. The cold increases; snow is announced, but
has not come yet here, though it has in most parts.
Cambridge: November 24.
Here I am settled at Cambridge in my own apartments, with all but my
books about me: indoors and out-of-doors, north-west wind and hard
frost.
To-morrow, which is Thanksgiving Day, the old Puritan substitute for
Christmas Day, I have promised to go to church with the Nortons. The
Congregationalists, Baptists, and Unitarians all unite for the day, in
the Unitarian building.
A young lady, the other night, after I was introduced, told me she had
had the pleasure of _looking_ at me (the celebrated author!) at a party
a few nights before. The force of compliment could no further go. I
very much doubt, however, whether the fact of my authorship has reached
the serene nostrils of the Boston magnates, though Longfellow fully
recognises the high merit of the Pastoral.
November 26.
In some respects this is a barren and shallow soil; but it is an
immense thing to feel that you really are in all likelihood wanted,
whereas in London one was wasted in occupying a place which some one
else wished for. I shall send you an American edition of the poor old
‘Bothie.’ People here put it on their drawing-room tables, and think
it innocent enough, which indeed, believe me, it really is: a little
boyish, of course, but really childishly innocent. I read it nearly
through the other morning, which I had not done since the time of its
first appearance; but I had heard it alluded to so much, I thought it
my duty to see what it was like.
Longfellow is a very good fellow; he gave us quite an English dinner
yesterday. He had just received a present of grouse, pheasants, and
milk-punch from some one he had been civil to, and issued immediately
his invitations: Norton, Felton, Lowell, and me.
November 28.
Here I am with my first Anglo-American pupil, aged seventeen, at his
first day’s work. He is a descendant of the old Governor Winthrop, of
Cromwell’s times. He is to come three hours a day till July. But I
should not wonder if before that he were across the Rocky Mountains,
or filibustering in Cuba, or sowing other wild oats _à la jeune
Américaine_. Here, however, in bodily form, to the extent of six foot
one, he is, turning Greek into English, neither better nor worse,
before me at the present moment. It is agreeable after a fashion to be
at work again; and teaching Greek is a very _innocent_ trade at any
rate--as innocent, I should think, as most.
Last night I went to tea at Mrs. ----’s. I like herself very much;
not equally so some of her friends; they do the satirical and the
sarcastic, and the ill-natured and the fastidious, and the intellectual
and all that, for which one had better go back to London.
December 5.
This winter is extraordinarily mild: to-day a little hoar frost, but
bright sunshine all the same. The difference here in general is, that
there is bright daylight from 6½ A.M. to near 6 P.M., even now just
before the shortest day. You know we are in the latitude of Rome.
Yesterday I walked, from three to six, towards the river Mystic; to-day
across the river Charles (which is close here, running under the low
bank of Cambridge), towards Brookline and Roxbury, which was rather
pretty; but everything is sadly bare--no hedges, and not many trees.
The only green trees now, of course, are the firs, which are much like
the spruce firs in England. There is a sort of juniper, which grows
high like a cypress, or even higher, and is pretty.
Yesterday I had a walk with James Lowell to a very pretty spot, Beaver
Brook. Then I dined with him, his wife, and his father, a fine old
minister, who is stone deaf, but talks to you. He began by saying that
he was born an Englishman, _i.e._ before the end of the Revolution.
Then he went on to say, ‘I have stood as near to George III. as to you
now;’ ‘I saw Napoleon crowned Emperor;’ then, ‘Old men are apt to be
garrulous, especially about themselves;’ ‘I saw the present Sultan ride
through Constantinople on assuming the throne;’ and so on--all in a
strong clear voice, and in perfect sentences, which you saw him making
beforehand. And all one could do was to bow and look expressive, for
he could only just hear when his son got up and shouted in his ear.
December 14.
I am to read a lecture here on English literature, gratis; but if
I should read it two or three times after that, I may make it pay
something worth speaking of. One lecture may be read as much as a
hundred times. It is rather a distinction, though a barren one, to read
it, as I shall, the first time here in Cambridge; at least the other
lecturers in the same course are Professors, and it was thought it
would make me known in College.
Look here at this little incident in illustration of manners and
customs. I find, in the middle of my small breakfast, that there is no
sugar, so I ring; no one comes, and I do without. About a quarter of an
hour after comes the Irishwoman, and says, ‘Did ye want anything when
ye rang? I was sorry I couldn’t come just then. I thought it was to
take away, and I wasn’t through my breakfast. ‘I wasn’t through’ is the
universal Yankee for ‘I hadn’t done.’ ‘Are you through?’ for ‘Have you
done?’ continually occurs.
A school for boys or girls is what all the good advisers give as their
best advice--Felton, Longfellow, G. Emerson. I am content to do this
till I am forty, at any rate. I think often of the plan of joining
somebody who is in the trade already. But this seems not after Yankee
fashion; everybody is for himself. Mr. George Emerson’s school for
girls is conducted entirely by himself, with lady-teachers under him.