[307] Nothing can be imagined more peaceful than the retirement of
Sheffield. Removed from the main lines of traffic and travel, even now
that a railroad passes through it, the village remains, as it has been
for a hundred and fifty years, the quiet centre of the quiet farms
spread for four or five miles about it. The Housatonic wanders at its
own sweet and lazy will among the meadows, turning and returning upon
itself till it has loitered twenty miles in crossing the eight-mile
township, but never turning a mill or offering encouragement to any
industry but that of the muskrats who burrow in its banks, or the
kingfishers who break its glassy surface in pursuit of their prey. No
busy factories are there; no rattle of machinery or feverish activity
of commerce disturbs the general placidity; and the still valley
lies between its enclosing hills as if it were, indeed, that happy
Abyssinian vale my father fancied it in his childhood.
The people share the calm of the landscape. Like many New England towns
where neither water-power nor large capital offers opportunity for
manufactures, and where farming brings but slow returns, the village
has been gradually drained of the greater part of its active and
enterprising younger population, and is chiefly occupied by retired and
quiet persons who maintain a very gentle stir of social life, save for
a month or two in summer, when the streets brighten with the influx of
guests from abroad.
[308] It must have been very different seventy years ago. Instead of
three slenderly attended churches, divided by infinitesimal differences
of creed, and larger variations of government and discipline, all the
people then were accustomed to meet in one well-filled church; and
the minister, a life resident, swayed church and congregation with
large and unquestioned rule. There were several doctors with their
trains of students, and lawyers of county celebrity, each with young
men studying under his direction; and all these made the nucleus of a
society that was both gay and thoughtful, and that received a strong
impulse to self-development from the isolated condition of a small
village in those days. Railroads and telegraphs have changed all this,
and scarcely a hamlet is now so lonely as not to feel the great tides
of the world's life sweep daily through it, bringing polish and general
information with them, but washing away much of the racy individuality
and concentrated mental action which formerly made the pith of its
being. Sheffield has gained in external beauty and refinement year
by year, but, judging from tradition, has lost in intellectual
force. There is more light reading and less hard reading, much more
acquaintance with newspapers and magazines, and less knowledge of great
poets, than in my father's youth; but his love for his birthplace
remained unchanged, and his eyes and his heart drank repose from its
peaceful and familiar beauty.
[309] To William Cullen Bryant, Esq.
ST. DAVID'S, Oct. 6, 1869.
DEAR BRYANT, THE BOUNTIFUL,--You are something like grapes yourself.
By the bye, it 's no matter what you call me; "my dear Doctor" is well
enough, if you can't do better; only "my dear Sir" I do hate, between
good old friends such as we are, as much as Walter Scott did. But, as I
was saying, you are like grapes yourself,--fair, round, self-contained,
hanging gracefully upon the life-vine, still full of sap; shining under
the covert of leaves, but more clearly seen, now that the frosts of
age are descending, and causing them to fall away; while I am more
like--but I have so poor an opinion of myself, that I won't tell you
what. This is no affected self-depreciation. I can't learn to be old,
but am as full of passion, impatience, foolishness, blind reachings
after wisdom, as ever. Instance: I am angry with the expressman because
he did not bring the grapes to-day; angry with the telegraph because
it did not bring a despatch to tell how a sick boy was, under nine
hours. . . .
Here I am, Thursday morning, on a second sheet, waiting for the grapes.
What else, in the mean time, shall I entertain you with? The flood! It
has been prodigious, the highest known for many years; water, water all
around, from beside the road here to the opposite hill. It is curious
to see men running like rats from the deluge, up to their knees in
water, on returning from a common walk (fact, happened to the S--s),
trying to drive home one way and could n't,--going round to a bridge
and finding that swept away,--dams torn down and mills toppled over,
and half the "sure and firm-set earth" turned into water-courses and
flood-trash. . . .
[310] The afternoon train has arrived, and no grapes. Very angry.
The faithless express, you see, is a great plague to you as well as me;
for not only does it not bring me the grapes, but is the cause of your
having this long dawdling letter. Why don't you show up its iniquities?
What is a "Post" made and set up for, if not, among other things,
to bear affiches testifying to the people of their wickedness? The
express is the most slovenly agent and the most irresponsible tyrant in
the country. What it brings is perhaps ruined by delay,--plants, for
instance. No help. "Pay," it says to the station-master, "or we don't
leave it." Oh, if I had the gift and grace to send articles to the
"Post," from time to time, upon abuses!
Friday. No grapes. More angry.
Saturday. No grapes. I 'm furious.
This last was the record of the afternoon; but in the evening,
at half-past nine, they were sent down from the station,--and in
remarkably good order, considering, and in quantity quite astonishing.
The basket seemed like the conjurer's hat, out of which comes a
half-bushel of flowers, oranges; and what not. We are all very much
obliged to you; and, judging from the appearance of the six heaped-up
plates, I am sure, when we come to eat them, that every tooth will
testify, if it does not speak.
To the Same.
ST. DAVID'S, Feb. 28, 1870.
MY DEAR BRYANT,--The volume has not come, but the kindness has, and
I will acknowledge the one without [311] waiting for the other;
especially as it is not a case where one feels it expedient to give
thanks for a book before he has read it. We all know the quality of
this, from passages of the work printed in advance. It will be the
translation into English of the Iliad, I think, though not professing
to be learned in translations of Homer, still less in the original.
I read your preface in the "Post." Nothing could be better, unless it
is your speech at the Williams dinner, which was better, and better
than any occasional speech you have given, me judice.
Great changes are projected in Sheffield,--you will have to come and
see them and us,--a widening of the village on the east, towards the
meadow and pine knoll, and--what do you think?--a railroad to the top
of Taghkonic! 'T is even so-proposed. An eastern company has bought the
Egremont Hotel, and the land along the foot of the mountain down as far
as Spurr's ( a mile), and they talk seriously of a railroad. So the
Taghkonic is to be made a watering-place, if the thing is feasible, in
quite another sense than that in which it has long sent its streams and
cast its lonely shadows upon our valley.
We are having winter at last, and our ice-houses filled with the best
of ice, and the prospect is fair for the wood-piles. The books you sent
are turning to great account with us. In that and in every way I am
obliged to you; and am, as ever,
Yours truly,