To the Same.
CHAMPEL, NEAR GENEVA, July 18, 1842.
MY DEAR FELLOW AND FRIEND,--At the hour of midnight, with the moon
shining in at my open window, the sound of the rushing Arve in my
ears,--around me, a fine table of land a hundred feet above the stream
that washes its base, and covered with a hundred noble chestnuts, and
laid out with beautiful walks,--thus "being and situate," I take in
hand this abominable steel pen to write you. Envy me not, William Ware!
Let no man, that is well, envy him that is sick. If I were "lying and
being and situate," as the deeds have it, and as I ought to have it, I
should think myself an object of envy, that is, supposing I thought at
all. No; in this charmed land, and in every land where I go, I bear a
burden of diseased nerves which I might well exchange for the privilege
of living on the Isle of Shoals, could I but have the constitution of
some of its pechereux (by contraction, pesky) inhabitants.
. . . There has come a new day, and I have got a new [171] pen. Last
night I was too much awake; I got up from my bed and wrote in my
dressing-gown; to-day I am too much asleep. But allons, and see what
will come of it.
This morning we walked into Geneva to church, the air so clear that
it seemed as if we could count every tile on the houses. The chimneys
are crowned with a forest of tin pipes, twisted in every direction
to carry off smoke. At dusky eve, in a superstitious time, a man,
coming suddenly upon the town, might think that an army of goblins had
just alighted upon its roofs. . . . What stupendous things do ages
accumulate upon every spot where they have passed! Every time we go
into town we pass by the very place where Servetus was burned. And
Geneva is old enough to have seen Julius Caesar!
. . . Here's another new day, William; and I wish I were a new man. But
the heavens are bright, and the air so clear that I can define every
man's patch of vineyard and farm on the Jura, ten miles off; every
fissure and seam on Saleve, two miles back of us; and through a gap in
the Saleve, I do not doubt, were I to go out on the grounds, I could
see the top of Mont Blanc. And yet lay one or two ounces' weight on a
man's brain, and a tackle, standing on the Jura, Saleve, and Mont Blanc
together, can't lift him up. You see, I am resolved you shan't envy
me. However, not to be too lugubrious, I am improving; that is, the
paroxysms of this trouble are less severe, though I am far from being
relieved of the burden.
But it is time I turn to your letter, which I received here with
Henry's, on the 12th June. Thank him, for I cannot write you both now.
Much news he gave me; [172] but how much that was distressing, and that
concerning himself most of all. What is to become of our churches? And
what is he to do? It relieves me very much to hear that Gannett's case
is no worse. My love and sympathy to him when you see him. Is he not
one of our noblest and most disinterested, as well as ablest men,--nay,
as an extemporaneous speaker, unrivalled among us? . . .
To Miss Catherine M. Sedgwick.
CHAMPEL, NEAR GENEVA, July 13, 1842.
MY DEAR FRIEND,-The public prints have doubtless relieved me from what
I should consider a most painful duty,--that of announcing to you the
death of your friend Sismondi! He died on the 25th of last month. I saw
Mme. Sismondi yesterday, and she desired me to tell you particularly
that she must defer writing to you some little time; that she did not
feel that she could write now, especially in a way to give you any
comfort. She thought it was better that I should announce it to you,
not seeming to be aware that the death of her husband is one of the
events that the newspapers soon carry through the world. Indeed, the
modesty of Sismondi and his wife is one of the things in them that has
most struck me. Mme. S. said yesterday, in speaking of the commencement
of your friendship, that "Sismondi was so grateful to her for finding
him out." And Sismondi, when I saw him on my arrival, in expressing
to me his regret and concern that it was so long since he had heard
from you, said he knew that you had many letters to write, etc.; as if
that could be the reason why you did not write to him! Well, there is
more modesty in the world than we think, I verily believe. [173]. . .
Speaking of her husband, Mme. S. said: "Of his acquisitions and powers,
I say nothing; but it was such a heart,--there never was such a heart!"
I ought to add, while speaking of Mme. S., since we owe it all to you,
that her reception of us was the kindest possible. She brought us all,
children and all, to her house immediately to pass an evening, and
indeed took all our hearts by storm,--if that can be said of a creature
so gentle and modest. . . .
I wrote the foregoing this morning. At dinner-time your letter of June
12 came, which, with several others, has so turned my head, that I
don't know whether it is morning or afternoon. We are conscious, "at
each remove," of dragging "the lengthening chain," but we do not know
exactly how heavy or how strong it is, till some one lays a hand on the
other end. The lightest pressure there!--you know how it is when some
one steps on the end of a long string which a boy draws after him. God
bless you!--it was in my heart to say no less,--for thinking it is a
long time. . . . We read and walk and talk and laugh, and sometimes
sigh. Switzerland has no remedy against that. Of myself I have nothing
to say that is worth the saying. I am improving somewhat, but I am
suffering much and almost continually, and as yet I recover no energy
for work.
To Rev. Henry W Bellows.
FLORENCE, ITALY, Nov. 24, 1842.
. . . It is now a fortnight or more since the overwhelming news came to
us of the death of Channing. During this time my mind has been passing
through steps of gradual approximation to the reality, but never did
it [174] find, or else voluntarily interpose, so many barriers between
itself and reality as in this most deplorable event. There are losses
which I should more acutely feel than the loss of Channing; because
friendship with him lacked, I imagine, in all who enjoyed it, those
little familiarities, those fonder leanings, which leave us, as it
were, bewildered and utterly prostrate when the beloved object is
gone. But there is here a sense of general and irreparable loss, such
as the people of a realm might be supposed to feel when its cherished
head is suddenly taken away. For I suppose that no person sustained so
many and such vital relations to the whole republic of thought, to the
whole realm of moral feeling among us, as this, our venerated teacher
and friend. To call him "that great and good man," does not meet the
feeling we have about him. Familiar to almost nobody, he was near to
everybody. His very personality seems to have been half lost in the
sense of general benefit. He was one of those great gifts of God, like
sunlight or the beauty of nature, which we scarcely know how to live
without, or in the loss of which, at least, life is sadly changed, and
the world itself is mournfully bereft.
But a letter affords no scope for such a theme; and besides, painful
as it is to pass to common topics, they claim their dues. Life, ay,
common life, must go on as it ever did, and nothing shall tear that
infinite web of mystery in which it walks enveloped. Ours, however,
in these days, is rather a shaded life. Absence from home, a strange
land, a land, too, that sits in mourning over the great relics of the
past,--all this tends to make it so. More material still is what passes
within the microcosm, and I am not yet well. Not that I am worse, for
I am continually better. But--but, in short, not to [175] speak too
gravely, if a man feels as if one of the snakes of Medusa's head were
certainly in his brain,--I have seen a horrible picture of the Medusa
to-day by Leonardo da Vinci,--he cannot be very happy, you know. And if
those around him be of such as "bear one another's burdens," then you
see how the general conscience follows.
But let me not make the picture too dark, for the sake of truth and
gratitude. Pleasantly situated we are, in his fair Florence, which
grows fairer to my eye the more I see it. Our rooms look to the south,
and down from a balcony upon a garden full of orange-trees, and roses
End chrysanthemums in full bloom. . . . Then we have reading and
music in-doors, and churches and palaces and galleries out-doors. And
such galleries they grow upon me daily; the more ordinary paintings,
or those hat seemed such at first, reveal something new on very new
perusal. It is great reading with such walls or pages. Still there is a
longing, almost a sick pining, or home at times. . .
To Rev. William Ware.
NEW YORK, Sept. 26, 1843.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--Why have I not written to you, before? Every day for
the last three weeks I have thought of it. I have been with you in
thought, and with him, your dear brother,--my dear friend! If he should
have known me and conversed with me, I could lot have refrained from
making the journey to see him. How easy his converse ever was, how
natural, how sensible [176] and humorous by turns, but especially so
unforced that for me it always had a charm by itself. The words seemed
to drop from our lips almost without our will, and yet with nobody
could I get through so much conversation in so little time. Neither
of us seemed to want much explanation from the other; I think we
understood one another well.
Where is he now? With whom talks he now? Perhaps with Channing and
Greenwood! Oh! are not the best of us gone; and all in one year! Was
there ever such a year?
My dear William Ware, we must hold on to the ties of life as we may,
and especially to such as unite you and me. But are you not getting a
strange feeling of nonchalance about everything,--life, death, and the
time of death, what matters it? I rather think it is natural for the
love of life to grow stronger as we advance in life and yet it is so
terribly shaken by the experience of life, and one is so burdened at
times by the all-surrounding and overwhelming mystery and darkness,
that one is willing to escape any way and on any terms.
I have your few kind words. I hope I shall have such oftener than once
or twice a year. I will try to take care of myself, and to live. . . .
To the Same.
NEW YORK, Oct. 17, 1844.
MY DEAR WARE,--I ought not--I must not--I cannot--I dare not,--at least
not at present. When the present stress is over. I may feel better. The
fact is, at present I am scarcely fit to take care of my parish, and it
would be madness to take upon myself any new [177] burden. See there
a fine fellow I should be to have charge of the "Examiner," who have
written present three times in as many lines! However, I am writing
now in terrible haste, on the spur of an instant determination; for I
must and will put this thing off from my mind. I have kept it there for
a fortnight. I have wished to do this. First, because you wished it;
secondly, because others wish it; and, thirdly, I had a leaning to it.
In case of a colleagueship, and that must come, I might be glad of it.
Bellows, too, would help me,--would take charge with me,--and that may
be, if the thing is open by and by, but not now; I must not think of it
any more now. I have not slept a wink all night for thinking of this
and other things.
All this, my dear fellow, is somewhat confidential. I do not wish to
be considered a good-for-nothing. Perhaps I shall rally. I was doing
very well when I left the Continent. England overwhelmed me with
engagements, and so it is here. With our love to your love and the
children,
Yours as ever,