recognized as the place described by Whittier in his "Tent on the
Beach." When that poem was written, not one of these hundreds of
cottages was built, and those who encamped here brought tents. Hampton
Beach is a continuation of Salisbury Beach beyond the state line into
New Hampshire. It has given its name to one of the most notable of
Whittier's poems, and several ballads refer to it. "The Wreck of
Rivermouth" has for its scene the mouth of the Hampton River, which,
winding down from the uplands across salt meadows, and dividing this
beach, finds its outlet to the sea. At the northern end of the beach
is the picturesque promontory of Boar's Head, and eastward are seen the
Isles of Shoals, and in the further distance the blue disk of
Agamenticus. Whittier describes the place with his usual exactness:--
"And fair are the sunny isles in view
East of the grisly Head of the Boar,
And Agamenticus lifts its blue
Disk of a cloud the woodlands o'er;
And southerly, when the tide is down,
'Twixt white sea-waves and sand-hills brown,
The beach-birds dance and the gray gulls wheel
Over a floor of burnished steel."
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF ROCKY HILL CHURCH]
Rev. J. C. Fletcher, in an article published in 1879, says that he was
with Whittier at Salisbury Beach, in the summer of 1861, when he saw
the remarkable mirage commemorated in these lines in "The Tent on the
Beach:"--
"Sometimes, in calms of closing day,
They watched the spectral mirage play;
Saw low, far islands looming tall and nigh,
And ships, with upturned keels, sail like a sea the sky."
[Illustration: MOUTH OF HAMPTON RIVER
Scene of "The Wreck of Rivermouth"]
Mr. Fletcher was spending several weeks that summer with his family in
a tent on the beach. He says: "Here we were visited by friends from
Newburyport and Amesbury. None were more welcome than Whittier and his
sister, and two nieces, one of whom, Lizzie, as we called her, had the
beautiful eyes--the grand features in both the poet and his sister.
Those eyes of his sister Elizabeth are most touchingly alluded to by
Whittier when he refers to his sister's childhood in the old Snow-bound
homestead:--
"'Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes,
Now bathed in the unfading green
And holy peace of Paradise.'
"One day, late in the afternoon, I recall how Elizabeth was enjoying a
cup of tea in the family tent, while Whittier and myself were seated
upon a hillock of sand outside. It had been a peculiarly beautiful day,
and as the sun began to decline, the calm sea was lit up with a dreamy
grandeur wherein there seemed a mingling of rose-tint and color of
pearls. All at once we noticed that the far-off Isles of Shoals, of
which in clear days only the lighthouse could be seen, were lifted into
the air, and the vessels out at sea were seen floating in the heavens.
Whittier told me that he never before witnessed such a sight. We called
to the friends in the tent to come and enjoy the scene with us.
Elizabeth Whittier was then seeing from the shore the very island,
reduplicated in the sky, where two years afterwards she met that fatal
accident which, after months of suffering, terminated her existence."
[Illustration: SALISBURY BEACH, BEFORE THE COTTAGES WERE BUILT
Scene of "The Tent on the Beach"]
Elizabeth fell upon the rocks at Appledore in August, 1863. It was not
thought at the time that she was seriously injured, and perhaps Mr.
Fletcher is wrong in attributing her death solely to this cause. For
many years before and after the death of his sister, Mr. Whittier spent
some days each summer at Appledore. It was at his insistence that Celia
Thaxter undertook her charming book, "Among the Isles of Shoals."
[Illustration: HAMPTON RIVER MARSHES]
Other ballads of this region are "The Changeling," and "The New Wife
and the Old." The ancient house which is the scene of the last named
poem is still standing, and may be seen by passengers on the Boston and
Maine road, near the Hampton station. It has a gambrel roof, and is on
the left when the train is going westward. On the right as the train
passes Hampton Falls station may be seen in the distance, shaded by
magnificent elms, the house of Miss Gove, in which Whittier died. It
was upon these broad meadows and the distant line of the beach that his
eyes rested, when he took his last look upon the scenery he loved and
has so faithfully pictured in his verse. The photographs here
reproduced were taken by his grandnephew a few days before his death,
and the last time he stood on the balcony where his form appears. The
room in which he died opens upon this balcony. It was his cousin,
Joseph Cartland, who happened to stand by his left side when the
picture was taken. This house is worthy of notice aside from its
connection with Whittier, as one of the finest specimens of colonial
architecture, its rooms filled with the furniture and heirlooms of the
ancestors of the present proprietor. A trolley line from Amesbury now
passes the house.
[Illustration: HOUSE OF MISS GOVE, HAMPTON FALLS]
[Illustration: CHAMBER IN WHICH WHITTIER DIED]
As a coincidence that was at the time considered singular, the
superstition in regard to the matter of thirteen at table was recalled
when Whittier dined for the last time with his friends. During the
summer he had lodged at the house of Miss Gove, taking his meals with
others of his party in a house adjoining. One evening all had taken
their places at the table except Mr. Whittier. His niece noticed there
were twelve seated, and without comment took her plate to a small table
in a corner of the room. When her uncle came in, he said in a cheery
way, "Why, Lizzie, what has thee been doing, that they put thee in the
corner?" Some evasive reply was made, but probably Mr. Whittier guessed
the reason, for he was well versed in such superstitions, and sometimes
laughingly heeded them. In a few minutes, Mr. Wakeman, the Baptist
clergyman of the village, just returned from his summer vacation, came
in unexpectedly, and took the thirteenth seat that had just been
vacated. Whittier's grandnephew, to again break the omen, took his
plate over to the table in the corner with his mother. It was all done
in a playful way, but the matter was recalled while we were at
breakfast next morning. The news then came of the paralysis which had
affected Mr. Whittier while dressing to join us. He never again came to
the dining room. Another incident of the same evening was more
impressive, and remains to this day inexplicable. After sitting for a
while in the parlor conversing with friends, he took his candle to
retire, and as he said "Goodnight" to his friends, and passed out of
the door, an old clock (the clock over the desk) struck once! It had
not been wound up for years, and as no one present had ever before
heard it strike, it excited surprise--the more so as the hands were not
in position for striking. It was an incident that had a marked effect
upon a party little inclined to heed omens; and in many ways, without
success, we tried to get the clock to strike once more.
[Illustration: AMESBURY PUBLIC LIBRARY]
A beautiful little lake in the northern part of Amesbury, formerly
known as Kimball's Pond, is the scene of "The Maids of Attitash." Its
present name was conferred by Whittier because huckleberries abound in
this region, and Attitash is the Indian name for this berry. His poem
pictures the maidens with "baskets berry-filled," watching
... "in idle mood
The gleam and shade of lake and wood."
In a letter to the editor of "The Atlantic" inclosing this ballad, he
says of Attitash: "It is as pretty as St. Mary's Lake which Wordsworth
sings, in fact a great deal prettier. The glimpse of the Pawtuckaway
range of mountains in Nottingham seen across it is very fine, and it
has noble groves of pines and maples and ash trees." A trolley line
from Amesbury to Haverhill passes this lake; but this is not the line
which passes the Whittier birthplace.
Annually, in the month of May, the Quarterly Meeting of the Society of
Friends is held at Amesbury, and during the fifty-six years of Mr.
Whittier's residence in the village, this was an occasion on which he
kept open house, and wherever he happened to be, he came home to enjoy
the company of friends, giving up all other engagements. He could not
be detained in Boston or Danvers, or wherever else he might be, when
the time for this meeting approached. It was an annual event in which
his mother and sister took much interest, and after they passed away,
the custom was maintained with the same spirit of hospitality with
which they had invested it, to the last year of his life.
Among Mr. Whittier's neighbors was an aged pair, a brother and sister,
whose simple, old-fashioned ways and quaint conversation he much
enjoyed. He thought they worked harder than they had need to do, as the
infirmities of age fell upon them, for they had accumulated a
competency, and on one occasion he suggested that they leave for
younger hands some of the labor to which they had been accustomed. But
the sister said, "We must lay by something for our last sickness, and
have enough left to bury us." Whittier replied, "Mary, did thee ever
know any one in his last sickness to stick by the way for want of
funds?" The beautiful public library of Amesbury was built with the
money of this aged pair, whose will was made at the suggestion of
Whittier. Part of the money Whittier left to hospitals and schools
would have been given to this library, had he not known that it was
provided for by his generous neighbors.
[Illustration: WHITTIER AT THE AGE OF FORTY-NINE]
In his poem "The Common Question," Whittier refers to a saying of his
pet parrot, "Charlie," a bird that afforded him much amusement, and
sometimes annoyance, by his tricks and manners. His long residence in
this Quaker household had the effect to temper his vocabulary, and he
almost forgot some phrases his ungodly captors had taught him. But
there would be occasional relapses. He had the freedom of the house,
for Whittier objected to having him caged. One Sunday morning, when
people were passing on the way to meeting, Charlie had gained access to
the roof, and mounted one of the chimneys. There he stood, dancing and
using language he unfortunately had not quite forgotten, to the
amazement of the church-goers! Whatever Quaker discipline he received
on this occasion did not cure him of the chimney habit, but some time
later he was effectually cured; for while dancing on this high perch he
fell down one of the flues and was lost for some days. At last his
stifled voice was heard in the parlor, in the wall over the mantel. A
pole was let down the flue and he was rescued, but so sadly demoralized
that he could only faintly whisper, "What does Charlie want?" He died
from the effect of this accident, but we will not dismiss him without
another story in which he figures: He had the bad habit of nipping at
the leg of a person whose trousers happened to be hitched above the top
of the boot. One day Mr. Whittier was being worn out by a prosy
harangue from a visitor who sat in a rocking-chair, and swayed back and
forth as he talked. As he rocked, Whittier noticed that his trousers
were reaching the point of danger, and now at length he had something
that interested him. Charlie was sidling up unseen by the orator. There
was a little nip followed by a sharp exclamation, and the thread of the
discourse was broken! The relieved poet now had the floor as an
apologist for his discourteous parrot.
At a time when Salmon P. Chase was in Lincoln's Cabinet, but was
beginning to think of the possibility of supplanting him at the next
presidential election, he visited Massachusetts, and called upon his
old anti-slavery friend, Mr. Whittier. Chase told him among other
things that he did not like Abraham Lincoln's stories. Whittier said,
"But do they not always have an application, like the parables?" "Oh,
yes," said Chase, "but they are not decent like the parables!"
Henry Taylor was a village philosopher of Amesbury given to the
discussion of high themes in a somewhat eccentric manner, and Whittier
had a warm side for such odd characters. Once when Emerson was his
guest, he invited Taylor to meet him, knowing that the Concord
philosopher would be amused if not otherwise interested in his Amesbury
brother. Taylor found him a good listener, and gave him the full
benefit of his theories and imaginings. Next morning Whittier called on
him to inquire what he thought of Emerson. "Oh," said he, "I find your
friend a very intelligent man. He has adopted some of my ideas."
[Illustration: THE WOOD GIANT, AT STURTEVANT'S, CENTRE HARBOR
"Alone, the level sun before;
Below, the lake's green islands;
Beyond, in misty distance dim,
The rugged Northern Highlands."]
The likeness of Whittier on page 97 is from a daguerreotype taken in
October, 1856, and has never before been published in any volume
written by or about the poet. Mr. Thomas E. Boutelle, the artist who
took this daguerreotype, is now living in Amesbury at the age of
eighty-five. He tells me how he happened to get this picture,--a rather
difficult feat, as it was hard to induce the poet to sit for his
portrait. He had set up a daguerrean saloon in the little square near
Whittier's house, and Whittier often came in for a social chat, but
persistently refused to give a sitting. One day he came in with his
younger brother Franklin, whose picture he wanted. When it was
finished, Franklin said, "Now, Greenleaf, I want your picture." After
much persuasion Greenleaf consented, and Mr. Boutelle showed him the
plate before it was fully developed, with the remark that he thought he
could do better if he might try again. By this bit of strategy he
secured the extra daguerreotype here reproduced, but he took care not
to show it in Amesbury, for fear Whittier would call it in. He took it
to Exeter, N. H., and put it in a show-case at his door. His saloon was
burned, and all he saved was this show-case and the daguerreotype,
which many of the poet's old friends think to be his best likeness of
that period.
Several of Whittier's poems referring to New Hampshire scenery
celebrate particular trees remarkable for age and size. For these
giants of the primeval forest he ever had a loving admiration. The
great elms that shade the house in which he died would no doubt have
had tribute in verse if his life had been spared. He invited the
attention of every visitor to them. The immense pine on the Sturtevant
farm, near Centre Harbor, called out a magnificent tribute in his poem
"The Wood Giant." Our engraving on page 99 gives some idea of "the
Anakim of pines." There is a grove at Lee, N. H., on the estate of his
dearly-loved cousins, the Cartlands, to which he refers in his poem "A
Memorial:"--
"Green be those hillside pines forever,
And green the meadowy lowlands be,
And green the old memorial beeches,
Name-carven in the woods of Lee!"
There is a "Whittier Elm" at West Ossipee, and indeed wherever he chose
a summer resort, some wood giant still bears his name.
[Illustration: THE CARTLAND HOUSE, NEWBURYPORT
Where Whittier spent the last winter of his life. A century ago the
residence of the father of Harriet Livermore.]
Visitors to Whittier-Land will find an excursion to Oak Knoll, in
Danvers, to be full of interest. Here the poet, after the marriage of
his niece, spent a large part of each of the last fifteen years of his
life in the family of his cousins, the Misses Johnson and Mrs. Woodman.
Without giving up his residence in Amesbury, where his house was always
kept open for him during these years by Hon. George W. Cate, he found
in the beautiful seclusion of the fine estate at Oak Knoll a restful
and congenial home. Many souvenirs of the poet are here treasured, and
the historical associations of the place are worthy of note. Here lived
the Rev. George Burroughs, who suffered death as a wizard more than two
centuries ago. He was a man of immense strength of muscle, and his
astonishing athletic feats were cited at his trial as evidence of his
dealings with the Evil One. The well of his homestead is shown under
the boughs of an immense elm, and the canopy now over it was the
sounding-board of the pulpit of an ancient church of the parish so
unenviably identified with the witchcraft delusion.
Inquiries are sometimes made in regard to the places in Boston
associated with the memory of Whittier. His first visit to the city was
in his boyhood, when he came as the guest of Nathaniel Greene, a
distant kinsman of his, who was editor of the "Statesman" and
postmaster of Boston. Many of his earliest poems were published in the
"Statesman" under assumed names, and until lately never recognized as
his. Not one of these juvenile productions, of which I have happened
upon many specimens, was ever collected. When he was editing the
"Manufacturer," he boarded with the publisher of that paper, Rev. Mr.
Collier, at No. 30 Federal Street. When visiting Boston in middle life,
he felt most at home in the old Marlboro Hotel on Washington Street. He
would often leave the hotel for a morning walk, and find a hearty
welcome at the breakfast hour from his dear friends, Mr. and Mrs. James
T. Fields, at No. 148 Charles Street. In later life, at the home of
Governor Claflin, at No. 63 Mount Vernon Street, he was frequently an
honored guest. It was here he first met Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, who
gives this account of their meeting: "On this morning he came in across
the thick carpet with that nervous but soft step which every one who
ever saw him remembers. Straight as his own pine tree, high of stature,
and lofty of mien, he moved like a flash of light or thought. The first
impression which one received was of such eagerness to see his friends
that his heart outran his feet. He seemed to suppose that he was
receiving, not extending the benediction; and he offered the delicate
tribute to his friend of allowing him to perceive the sense of debt. It
would have been the subtlest flattery, had he not been the most honest
and straightforward of men. We talked--how can I say of what? Or of
what not? We talked till our heads ached and our throats were sore; and
when we had finished we began again. I remember being surprised at his
quick, almost boyish, sense of fun, and at the ease with which he rose
from it into the atmosphere of the gravest, even the most solemn,
discussion. He was a delightful converser, amusing, restful,
stimulating, and inspiring at once." The winter of 1882-83 he spent at
the Winthrop Hotel, on Bowdoin Street, where the Commonwealth Hotel now
stands.
[Illustration: WHITEFIELD'S CHURCH AND BIRTHPLACE OF GARRISON]
A visit to Whittier-Land is incomplete if Old Newbury and Newburyport
(originally one town) are left out of the itinerary. At the celebration
of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of
Newbury, in 1885, a letter from Whittier was read in which he recites
some of the reasons for his interest in the town. He says: "Although I
can hardly call myself a son of the ancient town, my grandmother, Sarah
Greenleaf of blessed memory, was its daughter, and I may therefore
claim to be its grandson. Its genial and learned historian, Joshua
Coffin, was my first school-teacher, and all my life I have lived in
sight of its green hills, and in hearing of its Sabbath bells. Its
history and legends are familiar to me.... The town took no part in the
witchcraft horror, and got none of its old women and town charges
hanged for witches. 'Goody' Morse had the spirit rappings in her house
two hundred years earlier than the Fox girls did, and somewhat later a
Newbury minister in wig and knee-buckles rode, Bible in hand, over to
Hampton to lay a ghost who had materialized himself and was stamping up
and down stairs in his military boots.... Whitefield set the example
since followed by the Salvation Army, of preaching in its streets, and
now lies buried under one of the churches with almost the honor of
sainthood. William Lloyd Garrison was born in Newbury. The town must be
regarded as the Alpha and Omega of the anti-slavery agitation."
The grandmother to whom he refers was born in that part of the town
nearest to his own birthplace. The outlet to Country Brook is nearly
opposite the Greenleaf place, and Whittier's poem "The Home-Coming of
the Bride" describes the crossing of the river and the bridal
procession up the valley of the lesser stream, a part of which is known
as Millvale because of the mills alluded to in the poem.
The house in which Garrison was born is on School Street next to the
Old South meeting-house, in which Whitefield preached, and under the
pulpit of which his bones are deposited. Whitefield died in the house
next to Garrison's birthplace. The ancient Coffin house, built in 1645,
the home of Joshua Coffin, to whom Whittier addressed his poem "To My
Old Schoolmaster," is on High Street, about half a mile below State
Street. Whittier's cousins, Joseph and Gertrude Cartland, with whom he
spent a large part of the last year of his life, lived at No. 244 High
Street, at the corner of Broad.
WHITTIER'S SENSE OF HUMOR
III
WHITTIER'S SENSE OF HUMOR
Few men of his day, of equal prominence, have been so greatly
misunderstood as Whittier by the public which knows him only by the
writings he allowed to be published. These reveal him on the one hand
as an earnest reformer bitterly denouncing the sins of a guilty people,
and on the other as a prophet of God, with a message of cheer to those
who turn them from their evil ways. While slavery existed, he lashed
the institution with a whip of scorpions, and in later years, in poems
of exquisite sweetness, he sang of "The Eternal Goodness," and brought
words of consolation and hope to despairing souls. In the popular mind
there has been built up for him a reputation for extreme seriousness
and even severity. To be sure, some of the poems in his collected works
have witty and even merry lines, but they usually have a serious
purpose. The real fun and frolic of his nature were known only to those
privileged with his intimacy. He delighted at times in throwing off his
mantle of prophecy, and unbending even to jollity, in his home life and
among friends. The presence of a stranger was a check to such
exuberance. And it was not from any unsocial habit that he fell into
this restraint. It was because he found that the unguarded words of a
public man are often given a weight they were not intended to bear. If
he unbent as one might whose every word has not come to be thought of
value, it led to misunderstandings. In his home and among near friends
he revealed a charming readiness to engage in lively and frolicsome
conversation.
Some stories illustrating his keen sense of humor, and specimens of
verse written in rollicking vein for special occasions, which might not
properly find place in a serious attempt at biography, I have thought
might be allowed in such an informal work as this. Few of the lines I
shall here give have ever appeared in any of his collected works, and
some of them were never before in print. I am sure I do no wrong to his
memory in thus bringing out a phase of his character which could not be
fully treated in biography.
I never heard him laugh aloud, but a merrier face and an eye that
twinkled with livelier glee when thoroughly amused are not often seen.
He would double up with mirth without uttering a sound,--his chuckle
being visible instead of audible,--but this peculiar expression of
jollity was irresistibly infectious. The faculty of seeing the humorous
side of things he considered a blessing to be coveted, and he had a
special pity for that class of philanthropists who cannot find a laugh
in the midst of the miseries they would alleviate. A laugh rested him,
and any teller of good stories, any writer of lively adventures,
received a hearty greeting from him. He told Dickens that his "Pickwick
Papers" had for years been his remedy for insomnia, and Sam Weller had
helped him to many an hour of rested nerves. He loved and admired
Longfellow and Lowell, and they were his most cherished friends, but
the lively wit of Holmes had a special charm for him, and jolly times
they had whenever they met. The witty talk and merry letters of Gail
Hamilton, full as they were of a mad revelry of nonsense, were a great
delight to him. It was not in praise of but in pity for Charles Sumner
that he wrote:--