the revolutions of nations--that retribution which seems forever going
on in this part of creation,--I remember with great satisfaction that
from all the ills suffered, in childhood and since, from others, I felt
that it was rather the order of things than their individual fault.
It was from being early impressed by my poor unpractical aunt, that
Providence and Prayer were all in all. Poor woman! Could her own temper
in childhood or age have been subdued, how happy for herself, who had
a warm heart; but for me would have prevented those early lessons of
fortitude, which her caprices taught me to practise. Had I prospered in
life, what a proud, excited being, even to feverishness, I might have
been. Loving to shine, flattered and flattering, anxious, and wrapped
in others, frail and feverish as myself.”
She alludes to the early days of her solitude, sixty years afterward,
on her own farm in Maine, speaking sadly the thoughts suggested by the
rich autumn landscape around her: “Ah! as I walked out this afternoon,
so sad was wearied Nature that I felt her whisper to me, ‘Even these
leaves you use to think my better emblems have lost their charm on
me too, and I weary of my pilgrimage,--tired that I must again be
clothed in the grandeurs of winter, and anon be bedizened in flowers
and cascades. Oh, if there be a power superior to me,--and that there
is, my own dread fetters proclaim,--when will He let my lights go
out, my tides cease to an eternal ebb? Oh for transformation! I am
not infinite, nor have I power or will, but bound and imprisoned, the
tool of mind, even of the beings I feed and adorn. Vital, I feel not:
not active, but passive, and cannot aid the creatures which seem my
progeny,--myself. But you are ingrate to tire of me, now you want to
look beyond. ’Twas I who soothed your thorny childhood, though you knew
me not, and you were placed in my most leafless waste. Yet I comforted
thee when going on the daily errand, fed thee with my mallows, on the
first young day of bread failing. More, I led thee when thou knewest
not a syllable of my active Cause, (any more than if it had been dead
eternal matter,) to that Cause; and from the solitary heart taught thee
to say, at first womanhood, Alive with God is enough,--’tis rapture.’”
“This morning rich in existence; the remembrance of past destitution in
the deep poverty of my aunt, and her most unhappy temper; of bitterer
days of youth and age, when my senses and understanding seemed but
means of labor, or to learn my own unpopular destiny, and that--but no
more;--joy, hope and resignation unite me to Him whose mysterious Will
adjusts everything, and the darkest and lightest are alike welcome.
Oh! could this state of mind continue, death would not be longed for.”
“I felt, till above twenty years old, as though Christianity were as
necessary to the world as existence;--was ignorant that it was lately
promulged, or partially received.” Later: “Could I have those hours in
which in fresh youth I said, To obey God is joy, though there were no
hereafter, I should rejoice, though returning to dust.”
“Folly follows me as the shadow does the form. Yet my whole life
devoted to find some new truth which will link me closer to God. And
the simple principle which made me say, in youth and laborious poverty,
that, should He make me a blot on the fair face of his Creation, I
should rejoice in His will, has never been equalled, though it returns
in the long life of destitution like an Angel. I end days of fine
health and cheerfulness without getting upward now. How did I use to
think them lost! If more liberal views of the divine government make me
think nothing lost which carries me to His now hidden presence, there
may be danger of losing and causing others the loss of that awe and
sobriety so indispensable.”
She was addressed and offered marriage by a man of talents, education,
and good social position, whom she respected. The proposal gave her
pause and much to think, but, after consideration she refused it,
I know not on what grounds: but a few allusions to it in her diary
suggest that it was a religious act, and it is easy to see that she
could hardly promise herself sympathy in her religious abandonment with
any but a rarely-found partner.
“1807. Jan. 19, Malden [alluding to the sale of her farm]. Last night
I spoke two sentences about that foolish place, which I most bitterly
lament,--not because they were improper, but they arose from anger. It
is difficult, when we have no kind of barrier, to command our feelings.
But this shall teach me. It humbles me beyond anything I have met, to
find myself for a moment affected with hope, fear, or especially anger,
about interest. But I did overcome and return kindness for the repeated
provocations. What is it? My uncle has been the means of lessening my
property. Ridiculous to wound him for that. He was honestly seeking
his own. But at last, this very night, the bargain is closed, and I
am delighted with myself:--my dear self has done well. Never did I so
exult in a trifle. Happy beginning of my bargain, though the sale of
the place appears to me one of the worst things for me at this time.”
“Jan. 21. Weary at times of objects so tedious to hear and see. O the
power of vision, then the delicate power of the nerve which receives
impressions from sounds! If ever I am blest with a social life, let the
accent be grateful. Could I at times be regaled with music, it would
remind me that there are _sounds_. Shut up in this severe weather
with careful, infirm, afflicted age, it is wonderful, my spirits: hopes
I can have none. Not a prospect but is dark on earth, as to knowledge
and joy from externals: but the prospect of a dying bed reflects lustre
on all the rest.
“The evening is fine, but I dare not enjoy it. The moon and stars
reproach me, because I had to do with mean fools. Should I take so
much care to save a few dollars? Never was I so much ashamed. Did
I say with what rapture I might dispose of them to the poor? Pho!
self-preservation, dignity, confidence in the future, contempt of
trifles! Alas, I am disgraced. Took a momentary revenge on ---- for
worrying me.”
“Jan. 30. I walked to Captain Dexter’s. Sick. Promised never to put
that ring on. Ended miserably the month which began so worldly.
“It was the choice of the Eternal that gave the glowing seraph his
joys, and to me my vile imprisonment. I adore Him. It was His will
that gives my superiors to shine in wisdom, friendship, and ardent
pursuits, while I pass my youth, its last traces, in the veriest shades
of ignorance and complete destitution of society. I praise Him, though
when my strength of body falters, it is a trial not easily described.”
“True, I must finger the very farthing candle-ends,--the duty assigned
to my pride; and indeed so poor are some of those allotted to join me
on the weary needy path, that ’tis benevolence enjoins self-denial.
Could I but dare it in the bread-and-water diet! Could I but live free
from calculation, as in the first half of life, when my poor aunt
lived. I had ten dollars a year for clothes and charity, and I never
remember to have been needy, though I never had but two or three aids
in those six years of earning my home. That ten dollars my dear father
earned, and one hundred dollars remain, and I can’t bear to take it,
and don’t know what to do. Yet I would not breathe to ---- or ---- my
want. ’Tis only now that I would not let ---- pay my hotel-bill. They
have enough to do. Besides, it would send me packing to depend for
anything. Better anything than dishonest dependence, which robs the
poorer, and despoils friendship of equal connection.”
In 1830, in one of her distant homes, she reproaches herself with some
sudden passion she has for visiting her old home and friends in the
city, where she had lived for a while with her brother [Mr. Emerson’s
father] and afterwards with his widow. “Do I yearn to be in Boston?
’Twould fatigue, disappoint; I, who have so long despised means, who
have always found it a sort of rebellion to seek them? Yet the old
desire for the worm is not so greedy as [mine] to find myself in my old
haunts.”
1833. “The difficulty of getting places of low board for a lady, is
obvious. And, at moments, I am tired out. Yet how independent, how
better than to hang on friends! And sometimes I fancy that I am emptied
and peeled to carry some seed to the ignorant, which no idler wind can
so well dispense.” “Hard to contend for a health which is daily used
in petition for a final close.” “Am I, poor victim, swept on through
the sternest ordinations of nature’s laws which slay? yet I’ll trust.”
“There was great truth in what a pious enthusiast said, that, if God
should cast him into hell, he would yet clasp his hands around Him.”
“Newburyport, Sept. 1822. High, solemn, entrancing noon, prophetic of
the approach of the Presiding Spirit of Autumn. God preserve my reason!
Alone, feeling strongly, fully, that I have deserved nothing; according
to Adam Smith’s idea of society, ‘done nothing;’ doing nothing, never
expect to; yet joying in existence, perhaps striving to beautify one
individual of God’s creation.
“Our civilization is not always mending our poetry. It is sauced and
spiced with our complexity of arts and inventions, but lacks somewhat
of the grandeur that belongs to a Doric and unphilosophical age. In a
religious contemplative public it would have less outward variety, but
simpler and grander means; a few pulsations of created beings, a few
successions of acts, a few lamps held out in the firmament enable us to
talk of Time, make epochs, write histories,--to do more,--to date the
revelations of God to man. But these lamps are held to measure out some
of the moments of eternity, to divide the history of God’s operations
in the birth and death of nations, of worlds. It is a goodly name for
our notions of breathing, suffering, enjoying, acting. We personify it.
We call it by every name of fleeting, dreaming, vaporing imagery. Yet
it is nothing. We exist in eternity. Dissolve the body and the night is
gone, the stars are extinguished, and we measure duration by the number
of our thoughts, by the activity of reason, the discovery of truths,
the acquirement of virtue, the approach to God. And the gray-headed god
throws his shadows all around, and his slaves catch, now at this, now
at that, one at the halo he throws around poetry, or pebbles, bugs,
or bubbles. Sometimes they climb, sometimes creep into the meanest
holes--but they are all alike in vanishing, like the shadow of a cloud.”
To her nephew Charles: “War; what do I think of it? Why in your ear I
think it so much better than oppression that if it were ravaging the
whole geography of despotism it would be an omen of high and glorious
import. Channing paints its miseries, but does he know those of a
worse war,--private animosities, pinching, bitter warfare of the human
heart, the cruel oppression of the poor by the rich, which corrupts old
worlds? How much better, more honest, are storming and conflagration
of towns! They are but letting blood which corrupts into worms and
dragons. A war-trump would be harmony to the jars of theologians and
statesmen such as the papers bring. It was the glory of the Chosen
People, nay, it is said there was war in Heaven. War is among the means
of discipline, the rough meliorators, and no worse than the strife with
poverty, malice and ignorance. War devastates the conscience of men,
yet corrupt peace does not less. And if you tell me of the miseries
of the battle-field, with the sensitive Channing, (of whose love of
life I am ashamed), what of a few days of agony, what of a vulture
being the bier, tomb, and parson of a hero, compared to the long years
of sticking on a bed and wished away? For the widows and orphans--O,
I could give facts of the long-drawn years of imprisoned minds and
hearts, which uneducated orphans endure!
“O Time! Thou loiterer. Thou, whose might has laid low the vastest
and crushed the worm, restest on thy hoary throne, with like potency
over thy agitations and thy graves. When will thy routines give way to
higher and lasting institutions? When thy trophies and thy name and
all its wizard forms be lost in the Genius of Eternity? In Eternity, no
deceitful promises, no fantastic illusions, no riddles concealed by thy
shrouds, none of thy Arachnean webs, which decoy and destroy. Hasten to
finish thy motley work, on which frightful Gorgons are at play, spite
of holy ghosts. ’Tis already moth-eaten and its shuttles quaver, as the
beams of the loom are shaken.
“Sat. 25. Hail requiem of departed Time! Never was incumbent’s funeral
followed by expectant heir with more satisfaction. Yet not his hope
is mine. For in the weary womb are prolific numbers of the same sad
hour, colored by the memory of defeats in virtue, by the prophecy of
others, more dreary, blind and sickly. Yet He who formed thy web, who
stretched thy warp from long ages, has graciously given man to throw
his shuttle, or feel he does, and irradiate the filling woof with many
a flowery rainbow,--labors, rather--evanescent efforts, which will wear
like flowerets in brighter soils;--has attuned his mind in such unison
with the harp of the universe, that he is never without some chord of
hope’s music. ’Tis not in the nature of existence, while there is a
God, to be without the pale of excitement. When the dreamy pages of
life seem all turned and folded down to very weariness, even this idea
of those who fill the hour with crowded virtues, lifts the spectator
to other worlds, and he adores the eternal purposes of Him who lifteth
up and casteth down, bringeth to dust, and raiseth to the skies. ’Tis a
strange deficiency in Brougham’s title of a System of Natural Theology,
when the moral constitution of the being for whom these contrivances
were made is not recognized. The wonderful inhabitant of the building
to which unknown ages were the mechanics, is left out as to that part
where the Creator had put his own lighted candle, placed a vice-gerent.
Not to complain of the poor old earth’s chaotic state, brought so near
in its long and gloomy transmutings by the geologist. Yet its youthful
charms as decked by the hand of Moses’ Cosmogony, will linger about
the heart, while Poetry succumbs to Science. Yet there is a sombre
music in the whirl of times so long gone by. And the bare bones of this
poor embryo earth may give the idea of the Infinite far, far better
than when dignified with arts and industry:--its oceans, when beating
the symbols of ceaseless ages, than when covered with cargoes of war
and oppression. How grand its preparation for souls,--souls who were
to feel the Divinity, before Science had dissected the emotions, and
applied its steely analysis to that state of being which recognizes
neither psychology nor element.
“September, 1836. Vale. The mystic dream which is shed over the season.
O, to dream more deeply; to lose external objects a little more! Yet
the hold on them is so slight, that duty is lost sight of perhaps, at
times. Sadness is better than walking talking acting somnambulism. Yes,
this entire solitude with the Being who makes the powers of life! Even
Fame, which lives in other states of Virtue, palls. Usefulness, if it
requires action, seems less like existence than the desire of being
absorbed in God, retaining consciousness. Number the waste-places of
the journey,--the secret martyrdom of youth, heavier than the stake, I
thought, the narrow limits which know no outlet, the bitter dregs of
the cup,--and all are sweetened by the purpose of Him I love. The idea
of being no mate for those intellectualists I’ve loved to admire, is no
pain. Hereafter the same solitary joy will go with me, were I not to
live, as I expect, in the vision of the Infinite. Never do the feelings
of the Infinite, and the consciousness of finite frailty and ignorance,
harmonize so well as at this mystic season in the deserts of life.
Contradictions, the modern German says, of the Infinite and finite.”
I sometimes fancy I detect in her writings, a certain--shall I
say--polite and courtly homage to the name and dignity of Jesus, not at
all spontaneous, but growing out of her respect to the Revelation, and
really veiling and betraying her organic dislike to any interference,
any mediation between her and the Author of her being, assurance of
whose direct dealing with her she incessantly invokes: for example,
the parenthesis “Saving thy presence, Priest and Medium of all this
approach for a sinful creature!” “Were it possible that the Creator
was not virtually present with the spirits and bodies which He has
made:--if it were in the nature of things possible He could withdraw
himself,--I would hold on to the faith, that, at some moment of His
existence, I was present: that, though cast from Him, my sorrows, my
ignorance and meanness were a part of His plan; my death, too, however
long and tediously delayed to prayer,--was decreed, was fixed. Oh how
weary in youth--more so scarcely now, not whenever I can breathe, as
it seems, the atmosphere of the Omnipresence: then I ask not faith nor
knowledge; honors, pleasures, labors, I always refuse, compared to this
divine partaking of existence;--but how rare, how dependent on the
organs through which the soul operates!
“The sickness of the last week was fine medicine; pain disintegrated
the spirit, or became spiritual. I rose,--I felt that I had given to
God more perhaps than an angel could,--had promised Him in youth that
to be a blot on this fair world, at His command, would be acceptable.
Constantly offer myself to continue the obscurest and loneliest thing
ever heard of, with one proviso,--His agency. Yes, love Thee, and all
Thou dost, while Thou sheddest frost and darkness on every path of
mine.”
For years she had her bed made in the form of a coffin; and delighted
herself with the discovery of the figure of a coffin made every evening
on their sidewalk, by the shadow of a church tower which adjoined the
house.
Saladin caused his shroud to be made, and carried it to battle as his
standard. She made up her shroud, and death still refusing to come, and
she thinking it a pity to let it lie idle, wore it as a night-gown, or
a day-gown, nay, went out to ride in it, on horseback, in her mountain
roads, until it was worn out. Then she had another made up, and as she
never travelled without being provided for this dear and indispensable
contingency, I believe she wore out a great many.
“1833. I have given up, the last year or two, the hope of dying. In the
lowest ebb of health nothing is ominous; diet and exercise restore.
So it seems best to get that very humbling business of insurance. I
enter my dear sixty the last of this month.” “1835, June 16. Tedious
indisposition:--hoped, as it took a new form, it would open the cool,
sweet grave. Now existence itself in any form is sweet. Away with
knowledge;--God alone. He communicates this our condition and humble
waiting, or I should never perceive Him. Science, Nature,--O, I’ve
yearned to open some page;--not now, too late. Ill health and nerves.
O dear worms,--how they will at some sure time take down this tedious
tabernacle, most valuable companions, instructors in the science of
mind, by gnawing away the meshes which have chained it. A very Beatrice
in showing the Paradise. Yes, I irk under contact with forms of
depravity, while I am resigned to being nothing, never expect a palm, a
laurel, hereafter.”
“1826, July. If one could choose, and without crime be gibbeted,--were
it not altogether better than the long drooping away by age without
mentality or devotion? The vulture and crow would _caw caw_,
and, unconscious of any deformity in the mutilated body, would relish
their meal, make no grimace of affected sympathy, nor suffer any
real compassion. I pray to die, though happier myriads and mine own
companions press nearer to the throne. His coldest beam will purify
and render me forever holy. Had I the highest place of acquisition
and diffusing virtue here, the principle of human sympathy would be
too strong for that rapt emotion, that severe delight which I crave;
nay for that kind of obscure virtue which is so rich to lay at the
feet of the Author of morality. Those economists (Adam Smith) who say
nothing is added to the wealth of a nation but what is dug out of the
earth, and that, whatever disposition of virtue may exist, unless
something is done for society, deserves no fame,--why I am content with
such paradoxical kind of facts; but one secret sentiment of virtue,
disinterested (or perhaps not), is worthy, and will tell, in the world
of spirits, of God’s immediate presence, more than the blood of many a
martyr who has it not.” “I have heard that the greatest geniuses have
died ignorant of their power and influence on the arts and sciences. I
believe thus much, that their large perception consumed their egotism,
or made it impossible for them to make small calculations.”
“That greatest of all gifts, however small my power of receiving,--the
capacity, the element to love the All-perfect, without regard to
personal happiness:--happiness?--’tis itself.” She checks herself
amid her passionate prayers for immediate communion with God;--“I who
never made a sacrifice to record,--I cowering in the nest of quiet
for so many years;--I indulge the delight of sympathizing with great
virtues,--blessing their Original: Have I this right?” “While I am
sympathizing in the government of God over the world, perhaps I lose
nearer views. Well, I learned his existence _a priori_. No object
of science or observation ever was pointed out to me by my poor aunt,
but His Being and commands; and oh how much I trusted Him with every
event till I learned the order of human events from the pressure of
wants.”
“What a timid, ungrateful creature! Fear the deepest pit-falls of
age, when pressing on, in imagination at least, to Him with whom a
day is a thousand years,--with whom all miseries and irregularities
are conforming to universal good! Shame on me who have learned within
three years to sit whole days in peace and enjoyment without the least
apparent benefit to any, or knowledge to myself;--resigned, too, to
the memory of long years of slavery passed in labor and ignorance, to
the loss of that character which I once thought and felt so sure of,
without ever being conscious of acting from calculation.”
Her friends used to say to her, “I wish you joy of the worm.” And when
at last her release arrived, the event of her death had really such a
comic tinge in the eyes of every one who knew her, that her friends
feared they might, at her funeral, not dare to look at each other, lest
they should forget the serious proprieties of the hour.
She gave high counsels. It was the privilege of certain boys to have
this immeasurably high standard indicated to their childhood; a
blessing which nothing else in education could supply. It is frivolous
to ask,--“And was she ever a Christian in practice?” Cassandra uttered,
to a frivolous, skeptical time, the arcana of the Gods: but it is easy
to believe that Cassandra domesticated in a lady’s house would have
proved a troublesome boarder. Is it the less desirable to have the
lofty abstractions because the abstractionist is nervous and irritable?
Shall we not keep Flamsteed and Herschel in the observatory, though it
should even be proved that they neglected to rectify their own kitchen
clock? It is essential to the safety of every mackerel fisher that
latitudes and longitudes should be astronomically ascertained; and so
every banker, shopkeeper and wood-sawyer has a stake in the elevation
of the moral code by saint and prophet. Very rightly, then, the
Christian ages, proceeding on a grand instinct, have said: Faith alone,
Faith alone.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 14: Aunt of Mr. Emerson, and a potent influence on the lives
of him and his brothers. This paper was read before the “Woman’s
Club,” in Boston, in 1869, under the title “Amita,” which was also the
original superscription of the “Nun’s Aspiration,” in his Poems; a
rendering into verse of a passage in Miss Emerson’s diary. Part of this
poem forms the motto of this chapter.]
SAMUEL HOAR.
Magno se judice quisque tuetur;
Victrix causa deis placuit sed victa Catoni.