the universal form of life, but this is constantly marred by a stray
thought of permanence and the confusing hint of the passive mind that we
suppose the balance to be the law, and are glad to accept night with day,
and cold with heat, because there is a blindness in the spiritual eye
which will not let us see the riper spirits who are not sated but
satisfied with permanency. For there, too, is a reason that we are so glad
to hide in the equipoise as an eternal fact that we are surfeited with
constancy. Drowning in the malmsey-butt is no better than the Thames.
Enjoyment to-day is secured by the certain prospect of sorrow to-morrow,
which is not wilful, but a lesson of life, and as we suppose, at last, of
the central life, just as the creation at daybreak is supported and
adorned in the mind by the prospective tenderness of twilight. And this
balancing, so universal in this sphere, in outward if not in real life, is
therefore a fact, and why not as profound as any, since there is no
standard of life? Is there any law at last? Nature seems so general and
yet so intensely individual. As fine harmony results from the accord of
distinct tones, and each tone an infinite division of vibrations. At
bottom no things are similar. Harmony is only unison, not identity. Nature
is like the ocean, which bears whole forests hewn into ships laden with
treasure; but no bottom is found to support all the weight, only a drop
resting upon a drop forever. The elephant that bore the earth stood upon a
tortoise, who fortunately could keep his feet in his shell, and so had no
need to stand anywhere!
The spring day looks very inscrutably upon all such wandering fancies. Her
beauty is very inexorable, yet fascinating beyond resistance. It is not
regal and composing and self-finding as is the mellowed summer, but an
alluring splendor. It is a bud in inner, as well as outer, expression, and
not yet a satisfying flower. Yet in the young days of June is sometimes
seen the sereneness of autumn. After the full summer it is quite plain. It
is like a child with pale, consumptive hands. Yet this is a constant
reference to unity, which just now seemed so far off. Beauty suggests what
Truth only can answer and Goodness realize; and the whole circle of nature
offers these three only, beauty, truth, and goodness, or, again, poetry,
philosophy, religion, or, more subtly, tone, color, feeling. This lies
beyond words, because they are an intellectual means. Music foreshadows
their interpretation, but always faintly, as it does everything, because
music is revealed only enough here that we may not be surprised hereafter
in some sphere. This is an intellectual sphere, but music is sentiment, so
it is here an accomplishment for women, and for men of finer natures.
Music is the science of spiritual form; and poetry, which is the loftiest
expression of the intellectual sphere, finds its profound distinction from
prose, which is the language of the vulgar, in its spiritual and sensuous
rhythm, and so is music applied to the intellectual state.
Nature answers questions by removing us out of inquisitiveness. It is
wilfully that we are querulous in nature, and not naturally.
I just now went to the door, and the still beauty of the moonlight night
makes me a little ashamed of my letter. If I had stayed all day in the
woods, and seen you there, I should have been content to be silent; but
removed from the immediate glow of nature, and sitting in a purely human
society, surrounded by circumstances produced humanly, as the house and
furniture, the mind is withdrawn into a separate chamber, like one who
goes down from the house-top into a room and so looks towards the north or
west or south, and does not see all around as before.
Good-night, good friend.
Yr. aff.
G.W.C.
XXIII
CONCORD, _April 5th, 1845._
Judge, my unitary friend, how grateful was your letter, perfumed with
flowers and moonlight, to an unfortunate up to his ears in manure and
dish-water! For no happier is my plight at this moment. I snatch a moment
out of the week wherein the significance of that fearful word _business_
has been revealed to me to send an echo, a reply to your good letter.
Since Monday we have been moving and manuring and fretting and fuming and
rushing desperately up and down turnpikes with bundles and baskets, and
have arrived at the end of the week barely in order. Yesterday, in the
midst, while I was escorting a huge wagon of that invaluable farming
wealth, I encountered Mrs. Pratt and family making their reappearance in
civilization. All Brook Farm in the golden age seemed to be strapped to
the rear of their wagon as baggage, for Mrs. Pratt was the first lady I
saw at Brook Farm, where ladyhood blossomed so fairly. Ah! my minute is
over, and I must leave you to lie in wait for another.
Evening. I have captured an evening instead, my first tolerably quiet
evening in this new life, this new system of ours for a summer sojourn.
The waves of my nomadic life drift me on strange shores, and sometimes, as
I mount them, I dream of a home, quiet and beautiful, that home which
allures all young minds and gradually fades into the sad features of such
households as we see. In all my experience I think of three happy homes
where the impression is uniform, for in all there are May Days and
Thanksgivings; and yet to see a complete home would be to see that
marriage which, if we may credit Miss Fuller, does not belong to an age
when celibacy is the "great fact." As if the divine force could be
extinguished! I must marry and spite her theory. You would be amused if
you could see some of the letters which I receive, and which discourse of
a wife with the same gravity as they do of washing clothes, as if each
were a necessary, and that it would not do for me to settle upon a farm
until I am married. There is some wisdom in the last advice. An old
bachelor upon a farm, with a solitary old maid-servant, is not the most
pleasing prospect for young one-and-twenty to contemplate. But I ignore
farms and maids and prospects, saving always the natural one. Next year
may find me the favored of all three.
How gladly I would be with you on Monday, you know; but what candidate for
the plough and the broom should I be after the bewilderment of that scene!
I remember too well the festivals which graced the younger days to trust
myself within their sphere again, save in the midst of a boundless summer
leisure. And when, after these chill, moist, April days, the perfect
flower of summer shall bloom, I will be in its heart and breathe the
enchanted air again. The word reminds me how glad I am that the flowers
were so grateful. I committed my memory to delicate guardians, who, dying,
did not suffer that to die. And the trinity of tone, color, and sentiment,
though I knew not, like you, how to indicate it, is one of the most
alluring of mysteries, so much so that I must leave it even unexpressed.
Since so little may be known, I will not bring it into the melancholy
purlieus of theory, but see it and hear it and feel it in echoes and
glimpses. Yet all these rainbows which span the heaven of thought, finely
woven of the tears of humility, one would sometimes grasp and crystallize
forever. In that I find my satisfaction in what I know of Fourier; but to
clutch at the rainbow! can it be crystallized?
Let not the spasm of infidelity mar my letter in your eyes or heart, and
on your anniversary let one stream flow to the memory of your friend,
G.W.C.
XXIV
CONCORD, _April 17th, 1845._
As a good friend, am I not bound to advise you how my new household works,
here in the very bosom of terrible civilization, which yet keeps me very
warm? A long wet day like this, when I have been gloriously imprisoned by
dropping diamonds, tries well the power of my new solitary life to charm
me. It has not failed. It is going away now through the dark, still
midnight, but it bears the image of my smile. A long wet day, with my
books and fire and Burrill for external, long thoughts for internal,
company. After a morning service prolonged far beyond the hour of matins,
led by the sweet and solemn Milton, I read Miss Martineau's last tale,
founded upon the history of Toussaint L'Ouverture, in whom I have been
interested. I have just read Victor Hugo's "Bug Jargal," his first novel,
and also based upon the insurrection of St. Domingo. I feel that Miss
Martineau's picture is highly colored, but the features must be correct. A
strong, sad, long-suffering, far-seeing man, finally privately murdered by
one who had been the idol of his manhood. The interest is individual
throughout, which is necessary, yet fatal to the novel. I followed the
Hero away from St. Domingo to his grave, and afterwards the thought of the
remaining negroes came very faintly back. We read what Napoleon said of
his own conduct in the matter; but with the abolitionist Miss Martineau on
one side, and the doubtful Man of Destiny on the other, the pure fact grew
very attenuated, and I am not now sure that I have seen it. The moment
your curiosity is really aroused about an historical circumstance, the
glasses through which you have been viewing so varied and wide a landscape
become suddenly very opaque. History is a gallery of pictures so
individually unexpressive that you must know the artist to know their
meaning. Very few men relate with cold precision what occurs daily, so
much are their feelings enlisted; and no less daily experiences are the
recorded events of the past to the man whose days are devoted to them, and
he too must infuse himself into them. He is a Guelph or a Ghibelline, not
a judge of the struggle, wiser by five or six centuries of experience. In
Carlyle's book "that shall be" the "Cromwell," I feel there will be so
much stress laid upon the gravity and prompt, sturdy heroism of the man
that much else will be shoved out of sight. It will be the history of
Cromwell as a strong man, for Carlyle loves strong men; but if there are
other things to be said, we shall not hear so much about them. So in
Emerson's "Napoleon." He commences with saying that Napoleon is the
Incarnate Democrat, the representative of the 19th century, and the
lecture is an illustration of that position, but most comprehensive and
eloquent.
Let history and great men fade from our sight. Lately I have grown to be a
sad rhymer, and shall end my letter with hints of a life sweeter than
these records of mine. More and more I feel that my wine of letters is
poured by the poets, not handed as cold sherbet by the philosophers. Some
day I may speak more fully upon these things. Meanwhile, secretly and
constantly, I turn over pebble after pebble upon the shore, not uncheered
by the hope that one day a pearl may glitter in my hands. Even this smacks
of history, for Clio had claimed this page.
LADY JANE GREY
Meek violet of History! there flows
A modest fragrance from thy maiden fame
Touched with the coolness of the chaste repose
Which broods o'er Plato's name.
No Wanderer through the dimly arched hall
Which Time has reared between thy date and ours
Meeting thy form, but sees that on its pall
Are broidered Grecian flowers.
Thy shrinking virgin fame is wed with one
Whose calm celestial teaching was thy King;
When sitting in that cloistered nook alone
Thou heardst the rude shout ring.
To thee that rabble shout foretold a scene
Of tearful splendor faded in its birth--
The melancholy mockery of a Queen--
And virgin dust to earth.
Ah! Princess of that golden classic hoard,
Thy need was other than an earthly crown;
But ours was such, for else couldst thou have poured
Through time thy pure renown?
For us thy blood was spilled; the whetted edge
Of that keen axe gave us one jewel more,
As a stream-drifted lily by chance sedge
Is held beside the shore.
Good-night. Let the remembrance of the
flowers still hold mine fast, and my solemn sweet
Milton shall sing my vespers too.
May you "move
In perfect Phalanx to the Dorian mood
Of flutes and soft Recorders...."
Your aff.
G.W.C.
XXV
CONCORD, _May 3, '45.
I am weary of these winds, which have blown so constantly through the
spring; and would so gladly exchange their long wail to-night for some of
your music. And yet they are musical, and when I feel vexed at their
persistency they seem to fade and breathe against my face with a low sigh,
like one who shouts a secret which I cannot understand, and then mourns
softly that I cannot. In spite of the wind we went to a new pond near us
(new to us) this afternoon. There we separated, and Burrill went roaming
over the hills and along the shore; and I sat down with Bettine upon the
margin. That is the best workbook that I know. I read it for the first
time in the Brook Farm pine-woods on a still Sunday; but to-day, as I
followed her vanishing steps through Fairyland, the wind that rustled and
raged around was like the tone of her nature interpreting to my heart,
rather than to my mind, what I read. She was intellectual, spiritual more
than poetical. She was such a glancing, dancing, joyous, triumphant child.
I imagine great dark eyes, sparkling to the centre, and heavy locks
overhanging--pine-trees drooping over diamonds, deepest brilliancy, with
splendor, and a low singing sadness like the wind again, for her position
is sad. The ardent, bursting, seeking-ripe girl, and the calm old man,
wise and cold, not harsh. A sense of singular unfitness, a sweet-brier and
an oak, a feeling as if some string in the great harp had slipped from its
harmony, always strikes me when I read Bettine. Will you say no youthful
lover would have inspired such a gush of the tenderest and profoundest
girlishness? But it was no more than the bursting out of an irrepressible
fountain, and it would have flowed as clearly and sweetly through a new
wood conduit of to-day as through the polished golden channel which lay
there for it. She must love, and love the best, and if only the best had
been younger, fitter! Would not the steady massiveness of Goethe's nature
have been splendidly adorned by the arabesques and intricately graceful
woof of Bettine's? Now it was spring flowers on an old brow, with all the
sweetness, but not the freshness, of youth. The imperial Goethe, supreme
in wisdom and age, smelling a violet! Ah! though the flowers and the
laughter and the dance and the sparkle are for the child, but sadly
serious autumnal wreaths for the old man; but the world does the best it
knows how to do with the poets, so did Goethe with his young lover.
Friendly, cool, gentle, never flattering, Bettine asks him half sadly, as
if for once those world-roving eyes were still: Do I speak to you or only
speak in your presence? She answered her question by asking it.
She speaks much of music. It is beauty impersonized to her; she pours out
gems and flowers of words, and sketches grotesquely exquisite shapes dimly
all over the landscape, coins all the beautiful fancies that crowd her
brain, throws them to Goethe sparkling in the sunlight, and says: This is
music, and finds at last that music is God. That is the most orthodox
Pantheism.
The year has piloted us into the flowery haven of May, but I lay so
languidly charmed with the beauty, and looking to see if I cannot this
time see the goddess whose smiles I feel, that it will be June and summer
before I know it. I treat the season as I do poetry. Sometimes I dissect a
line which has fascinated me, or a poem, to expose the secret. But it
folds and fades and changes under my glance as a cloud at twilight; and
the beauty of the spring is as elusive as the foam upon a wave. In the
midst of summer, the summer that we anticipated in January seems farther
off. It sinks constantly into itself. The deep solitude of rest, the
murmurous silence of woods at noon, these are as real in winter as when we
are melting in June. The senses will have their share. It is melancholy
that a man with the stomach-ache cannot enjoy Shakespeare; and that this
wild, wayward, glowing, and glorious Bettine must disappear in the Frau
von Arnim, wearing caps and taking snuff, and instead of these pine-trees,
false curls, cut from the last criminal, perhaps, and then croaking and
child-bearing and nursing and diapering! things so beautiful for many, but
not for her. She is not yet a woman, but belongs to us and the woods and
the waters and the midnight. A child singing wonderful songs in the
starlight, serenading with tender, passionate love-songs the old man who
waves his hand and breathes down a kiss which is chilled by the night air,
and falls like a snow-flake into her hot bosom, not as a star upon her
brow.
We had some May-baskets left for us by unknown hands upon May-day. The
flowers drooped over the sides, as if they would not meet my eye to tell
the secret; but a group of smiling girls next morning were not so
inexorable, and I thanked nature for such almoners of her gifts. These
beautiful tributes are touching if one is serious. They are hung upon our
wall, which is adorned with the Urania and sketches from Michel Angelo,
and one or two drawings of Burrill's.
Mrs. Brown (Mrs. Emerson's sister) wishes Charles Newcomb to return some
letters he has about little Waldo's death. Will you speak to him and say
that Mrs. Brown will like them by the first opportunity?
I hope my name is down as a subscriber to the Paper. When shall we see it?
Mr. Emerson read us a part of your letter.
Here is another of the unconscionable epistles; not to mention answering,
it is too audacious to demand that they shall be read.
Ever yr
G.W.C.
XXVI
CONCORD, _May 31, '45, Saturday morning._
My dear Friend,--Mr. Hosmer just tells me that he is going to Brook Farm,
and I must say a word of regret that I could not come at this time, as Mr.
Ripley, whom I saw in Boston, asked me to do. I have no doubt that the
essence of all good things which are said, I shall gather from you some
day, somehow. I send my subscription to the Harbinger. Almira is well, and
would send you love and flowers if she knew that Mr. Hosmer was going.
I am fairly launched in "Consuelo," which I must read as fast as I can,
for Mr. Hedge is to take it to Maine. Already it interests me as a new
life, and, if I could, I would have it developing all summer; but I must
feed upon the remembrance.
Will you say to Mr. Keith, the postmaster at West Roxbury, that we have
despatched sundry messages to Messrs. Greeley and McElrath to have our
_Tribune_ come to Concord and not to West Roxbury, and that to-day, upon
receipt of his note, we have written a very concise letter upon that
subject to the publishers.
Tell Mrs. Ripley that she must not fail to come this summer; and how soon
are you coming to have a vacation in civilization?--not a day or two in
winter, but a week for summer rambles.
Give my love to the Eyrie, for I believe all my friends are there save
Miss Russell; and forgiving me for using you so unsparingly with messages,
believe me always,
G.W.C.
If Geo. Wells is or shall be at Brook Farm, tell him that Almira and the
rest of the Concordians are waiting to see him.
XXVII
CONCORD, _June 24th, 1845._
My dear Friend,--I finished "Consuelo" some time since, though I have not
yet read the "Countess." I read what you said in the _Harbinger_, and am
waiting for the promised continuation. Meanwhile you shall hear something
of the impression she made upon me.
Consuelo is a natural, not a pious person. She lives in the world like a
flower, not like a flame; and though you feel that nothing is beyond her,
since beauty and fidelity comprehend all, yet she does not directly
suggest those personal relations with the Invisible which a saint always
does. She sings as a bird, with her whole soul; and though she consents to
relinquish the profession if she marries Albert, you feel very well that
it will not be so. Porhora constantly urges the art upon her attention,
but she grows in that by instinct. She is always in that to which he
exhorts her, and the difference between her life and singing is no more
perceived than in the life and singing of a bird. She is one of the
persons from whom the rules of the art are drawn, because in her they are
so clearly but unconsciously expressed. It is a character which fuses
everything which it attracts to itself, and in whose outline no seam or
crevice is visible. She is entirely impulsive, and every impulse is an
inspiration. She leaves the castle of the Giants as soon as it occurs to
her to do so, and the perfect submission to her impulse indicates the
power and depth of her nature. Therefore, too, though she seems always
right, she is free from all self-discipline. In meeting her one should not
feel especially that she was a good person. She is not virtuous, for she
has no moral struggle; nor pious, for she is too impersonal; and even her
love, at least to the end of "Consuelo," is not a life. Her regard for
Anzoleto you feel will pass. It is a personal relation, necessary among
the flowers and music and moonlight of Venice. It is not the sentiment
which love is to such a nature, nor could Anzoleto ever awaken that. With
Albert it is much the same in another way. The waters do not at once flow
to a level. She is consolation to him, but he is not life and hope to her.
Music is, but she is too human to be satisfied so. A character like hers
is always seeking for its completeness the strengthening sympathy of love,
although its relations are very far from personal. Thus she seems as if
she ought to love Albert, and that she will at last. Her life is too
self-poised and true to allow you a moment's anxiety. The waves of
circumstance roll and break at her feet, and she walks queen-like over the
waters. The characters are grouped around her as friends or courtiers; and
so she preserves the unity of the book as the figures of Jesus in the old
paintings. It is the memoirs of the court of Queen Consuelo.
As in life such a person would make every scene in which she was an actor
impressive and graceful, so the strong conception of the character makes
the book so. I was thirsting for music when I read it, and it satisfied me
like a strain of the sweetest and best; like a beautiful picture or a
flower, it left nothing to be asked, although suggesting a general and not
an individual beauty and satisfaction like itself. The graceful Venetian
life wrought of song and fragrance fades so suddenly into the sombre
Bohemian forest where the careless girl who dabbles in the water with
Anzoleto becomes the mistress of the destiny of the morbid Albert, and all
shifts again into the clear, vigorous friendship with Hadyn and the sunny
journey where the woman of the castle becomes a girl again, as cheerful
but so much wiser than the Venetian girl, singing and saddening and
sleeping in barns and leaping abbey walls, that it was like lying on a
hillside under the shades and sunlight of the April sky. There is an
indirect developing of the character throughout which is very fine as it
makes the harmonies more intricate and profound. It is like the reflection
of the moon in the water to one who has cast his eyes down from the sky,
as where Hadyn silently conquers the love which she has inspired, because
in her mien and tone he reads her love for another. That is a golden key
to her character.
It was pleasant just after reading it to make a trip to Wachusett with Mr.
Hawthorne and Mr. Bradford. We had soft, warm weather, and a beautiful
country to pass. From the mountain the prospect was very grand. It is not
too high to make the landscape indistinct, but enough so to throw the line
of the level country on the east back into the misty horizon and so leave
a sea-like impression. To the north was Monadnock, lonely and grim and
cold. A solitary lover he seemed, of the rough Berserkir sort, of the
round and virgin-delicate Wachusett. Towards the northwest the lower part
of the Green mountain range built a misty wall beyond which we could not
have seen had it been away. Nearer were smaller hills and ponds and woods.
On the mountain we found the pink azalia and the white _Patenlila
tridenta_. It was a fine episode in the summer.
About the 12th of July Burrill and I mean to go into Berkshire, and if
possible to reach the White Mountains before the autumn catches us. This
last is doubtful. But I felt when I came down from Wachusett as if I
should love to go on from mountain to mountain until winter stopped me.
Last Sunday Father Taylor preached here. All the heretics went to church.
In the evening he preached temperance. After the afternoon service we
tea'd with him at Mr. Emerson's. He is a noble man, truly the Christian
apostle of this time. It is impossible to pin him anywhere. He is like the
horizon, wide around, but impossible to seize. I know no man who thrills
so with life to the very tips, nor is there any one whose eloquence is so
thrilling to me. I have found that one of the best things of living in
Concord is that we have here the types of classes of men and in society
generally only the members of the class. The types are magnetic to each
other and draw each into their vicinity.