such is not the natural state of man, I contrive to quiet myself by the
assurance that such is the best state For bachelors. What disembodied
comforter of Job suggests such things?
Yr friend,
G.W.C.
P.S. If you loved some one ardently who wonderfully resembled personally
some one you hated ardently what would you do? It is not my case, but a
question some evil genius whispered to make me perspire in these torrid
days.
XXVIII
CONCORD, _Sept. 14, 1845._
My dear Friend,--I returned last week from a long and beautiful visit to
the mountains, among which I had never been before. I went in the middle
of July to Berkshire, and returned home for two or three days to set off
for the White Hills, and back again through the length of Berkshire. In
all about seven weeks. The garden served us very well. We had weeded so
faithfully that weeds did not trouble us, and Burrill stayed in Concord a
part of the time I was in New Hampshire.
When I first came towards the mountains it was twilight, and they looked
very cold and grim; their outline traced against the sky, and seemingly
made of some other material than earth or sky--too dense for the one and
too ethereal for the other. But when I came to them in broad day, they had
lost their terror, as any other night phantom would have done. When I
could scale them with my eye, and stand upon their highest peak, I seemed
to have subdued them. But as I retreated, and looked back, they resumed
their twilight majesty; and I could not realize I had been so proud among
them. Yet, after all, they did not command me as the sea does. The charm
of that is not robbed by being in it or upon it. All night and all day its
murmur sounds an infinite bass to all that is done and said; and in the
night, when you awake, it holds you still in thrall. Like the song of the
locust in a summer noon, which fills the air with music and intensifies
the heat, so the sound of the sea constantly draws thought and life to its
depth and sweetness. Among the hills I was haunted with the vague desire
of some corresponding sound. They were like a dumb Apollo, a thunderless
Jupiter.
In Berkshire they are less grand than in New Hampshire, but high enough to
cease to be hills, and wooded quite to the summit. They give an endless
variety to the landscape, and are full everywhere of beautiful places and
commanding prospects through the openings. The aspect of the country and
the character of the people were so different from the country and people
near a city, that it seemed to be more recently created.
Frank Parley is there in Stockbridge, and seems to be very happy. At
Williamstown, the northern town in the county, we saw George Wells. He has
only changed to become more entirely a collegian, but retains the same
cordiality and carelessness that made us love him at Brook Farm. I have so
many things to say about my wanderings that I cannot write any more, for I
mean to come to Brook Farm and see you some day during the autumn. In the
late autumn we are going to New York to pass the winter.
Give my love to Mrs. Ripley and the Archon, and to the two Charleses, and
believe me, as always, your friend,
G.W.C.
On the next page I write a little song, which you shall print if you think
it worth the space. Nameless and dateless if you please.
AUTUMN SONG
The gold corn in the field
And the asters in the meadow,
And the heavy clouds that yield
To the hills a crown of shadow,
Mark the ending of the Summer,
And the Autumn coming in,
A crimson-eyed new-comer,
Whose voice is cold and thin,
As he whispers to the flowers,
"Lo, all this time is ours."
I remember, long ago,
When the soft June days were wasted,
That the Autumn and the snow
In the after-heats were tasted;
For the sultry August weather
Burned the freshness from the trees,
And the woods and I, together,
Mourned the Winter, that must freeze
The silver singing streams
Which fed our Summer dreams.
Through the yellow afternoon
Rolls the wagon harvest-laden,
And beneath the harvest moon
At the husking sings the maiden;
While without the winds are flowing
Like long aerial waves,
And their scythe-sharp breath is mowing
The flowers upon the graves.
When the husking is all o'er
The maiden sings no more.
To ----
Thy spirit was a flexile harp, whereon
The moonlight fell like delicatest air,
Thro' thee its beauty flowing into tone
Which charmed the silence with a sound as rare.
Thou peaceful maid! the music then I heard,
Whose influence had moulded thy soft eyes
To their deep tone of tenderness: O! bird,
Whose life is fed with thine own melodies.
XXIX
CONCORD, _Oct. 25, 1845._
My dear Friend,--My Concord days are numbered, but before I go I should
like to write you again, although it is not impossible that I may come
here again next year. The autumn since I saw you has fulfilled the promise
of the day I left Brook Farm--bright, clear, and cool. On Wednesday, the
day was so remarkably beautiful that, having nothing especial to do, and
seeing that Ole Bull was to give another concert, we walked to Boston and
heard him once more, I fear for the last time; and walked back again the
next morning. The air was very still and bright, and cold enough to spur
us on, without an unpleasant chill.
I was very glad to part with Ole Bull having my first impressions deepened
and strengthened. The wonder with which I heard him in New York had
subsided, and I gave myself, or rather he drew me, wholly to his music. It
seems as if he improvised with the orchestra as a poet would at the piano.
The music is full of every sort of movement and variety, but has great
unity of character, and constantly suggests beautiful and distinct images
rather than pictures. I thought of glorious young gladiators leaping into
the lists, of fleecy clouds sweeping over starlight skies, and the
beach-line of the sea. Every image was of the graceful, vigorous, and
entirely healthy character of his person, which I suppose is only a fair
expression of his soul. The music should not be criticised as a work of
art, but only as the articulate reveries of Genius, for it is such as only
he should play, because it is so entirely individual. It is full of
delicate tenderness, and each piece is much like a gentle, strong child
wandering in Fairyland, melted now by the sweets of child-deep piety in
the Adagio Religioso, now leaping down the Polacca Guerricra like a young
angel down a ladder from heaven, and roaming wistful and silent and amazed
in the solitude of the Prairie, at times leaping and running and shouting,
and then sighing and weeping and losing its voice in aerial cadences,
until the smiles make rainbows through the tears again.
All these things whirled through my mind as I sat listening to him, with
my eyes closed to preserve the realm of vision unassailed, last Saturday
evening. But there is no end to such stuff. Music is so fully suggestive;
and, after all, if you abandon yourself to that you are very apt to find
yourself only among corresponding images. The adagio of the Fifth Symphony
reminds me in one part of majestic waves, black and crowned with creamy
foam; and they swell as if the whole sound of the ocean thundered in each,
and when they have almost gained a height through which the sun may shine
and reveal the long-haired mermaids, and the splendid colors which hide so
much, then they fall upon themselves and stream backward into the sea, the
foam uppermost like a shroud. But when I considered this one evening I
found it was only the image of the sound transformed to a visible object.
It is like watching the clouds and seeing their palaces and mountains. It
is easy to sport with the symbol, and shows the greatness of the composer
when he arouses the thought of the sea and sky for an echo; but that is
only the sensuous influence of his music, and further we cannot go in
words, for good music is so because it is inexpressible in words. There is
always correspondence but not identity. And the impression of the same
object in a poem, painting, or statue should be as different as the
different necessities which constituted those arts and the differing
direction of the various genius which so expresses itself.
Ole Bull's last concert (that I heard) was a cheap one, and the audience
was very cheap. I felt at once the want of sympathy between that and him,
and that destroyed the unity of the impression, which is so pleasant. The
music which he played was of the best and played in the best way, but was
played apart from the sympathy of the hearers to the soul of his art. When
he was encored he came and showed his mastery of the violin as a juggler
his power over cards. I should have been sorry to have seen it in any one
but a true artist; but while he satisfied every just claim in the style
and selection of the music of the concert, he permitted the rabble to hear
what they had paid fifty cents to hear. He could not be accused of
lowering or pampering the popular taste, for the music that he played was
elevating, and the gymnastics not music at all.
I was glad to see Mrs. Ripley last Monday, and to hear from her the result
of your Sunday meeting. I was a little sceptical, because I think
permanent forms of worship spring from a very deep piety, and the pious
persons whom I know I could count on my hands. Such themes are too good
for heel-taps to a letter, and I shall wait the issue of your movement
with a great deal of interest. Give my love to Mrs. Ripley, and tell her I
hope the whole winter will not pass without my hearing from her.
I feel sorry to go from Concord, which we shall do in about a fortnight,
for it is a quiet place, full of good people and pleasant spots. But I
have found the same everywhere, so
"To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new."
Your friend,
G.W.C.
XXX
NEW YORK, _December 22, 1845._
A merry Christmas and happy New Year to you, if you are still alive, for
since small-pox has joined your Phalanx I am not sure but his ambition for
the supreme power has swept you all away. Yet every Saturday's _Harbinger_
is a missive from Brook Farm which tells of other things than the
cosmogonies, etc., of which it ostensibly discourses. I shall be glad to
smuggle myself in for a share of the commendation bestowed upon those who
have increased your list with the new volume, but my New York friends are
pale at Greeley's _Tribune_, and would christen your sheet "An Omen Ill"
instead of _Harbinger_.
Individually I am grateful for your article upon De Meyer. It gives me an
idea of his exhilarating impression, which I had dimly supposed from what
I heard of him. I wait eagerly for his reappearance here, and cannot
discover why he tarries so long in Boston. Privately I have heard very
much good music since I have been here, mainly Mendelssohn and Spohr, with
singing of Schubert and "Adelaide," etc. Publicly I have heard Huber, the
German opera, and Mendelssohn's "St. Paul," a rich, melodious oratorio,
squeezing the utmost drop from the power of the orchestra, and uniform at
a point of the most luminous delicacy, refinement, and grace. I missed the
heavy choruses of the Handel and Haydn, for, particularly, "Stone him to
death," and "Lovely are the messengers," and "Oh, be gracious, ye
Immortals" are magnificent. From what I have heard I prefer Mendelssohn to
Spohr, as being the most original and luxuriant genius, although I hear
that I shall not maintain that opinion when I have heard Spohr more.
Rossini and Donizetti are the Musical Gods here; now and then you meet a
person who really loves what is better, but in mixed societies and at all
concerts, particularly in fashionable circles, where music is a fashion
now, the merest exercises for the voice and the fingers elicit the
most--rapturous bravoes and tapping of white gloves. Last evening I was at
one of my musical friends', who, with another girl, plays the symphonies,
etc., and is a most wonderful performer. She has the grand-piano which
Miss Gserty (?) owned. For an hour we had the "Fingal's Cave," Schubert's
"Wanderer" by Liszt, and Quatuors of Spohr; then entered "our fashionable
friends" (for my musical lady is in such a sphere), and songs from
Donizetti's operas and Thalberg's "Moses in Egypt," and the "Marche
Maracaire," which seems nothing or very little without De Meyer, followed;
and two mortal hours of such followed. I am always a little angry that my
friends don't do something better on such occasions; but why cast pearls
before swine? Yet I have no right to complain. They willingly play good
music when they have good listeners.
Literature I serve quite faithfully. I have read the "Aminta," and am deep
in "Hell." In German I am reading the second part of "Faust," with scraps
from Novalis. English reading is Swedenborg and "Festus" and "Cromwell,"
with dips into the dramatists. I am sorry such good men have no better
reader at this present, but trust they find some somewhere. The weather is
vile. We are pinched with "nipping" airs which do not remain clear and
steady, but unbend themselves in a dirty slush called snow in the papers.
And just now I have no business to write you a letter, for I am torn every
way by longings and doubts, not at all of a moral nature. This copy of
verses, written last summer, is somewhat harmonious with my present mood,
and shall be printed if you approve.
I have seen Cranch several times, and his pictures. Some I like very much,
but they have his faults. I went with him to the Art Union Gallery the
other day, and some beautiful landscapes that I saw of his and others made
my heart "babble of green fields" to itself for some days afterwards. One
does not fully realize the value of art until he is in the city, as away
from home you realize the worth of a mother's portrait. A great charm of a
picture-gallery is the perfect stillness which belongs to the paintings,
and which they suggest. My overcoat seemed superfluous, for I was full of
sultry noontide feeling, gathered not from any special picture, but the
atmosphere of so many portraits of trees and waters and hills.
In New York I feel how life is a glorious opportunity wasted. A halo seems
forever to float over our heads everywhere, even on the tips of the hair,
which might crown us with glory and honor; but no man is yet crowned. The
richest and grandest music of the world is hitherto in a minor key. But,
indeed, every sigh is a waste of so much energy that I try to turn my
stone towards the erection of the infinite temple without grieving that it
was not long since built. I used to despise justice as a shabby virtue,
but now it seems to me the only lack. We are unjust in our treatment and
in our opinion of persons. In the first we are too sweet, in the last too
severe. For we eternally measure men by a standard suggested by our
individuality, instead of sympathizing so fully that we stretch them on
their own line. But here of all places there can be no sham. If we are not
just in our own thought we cannot pretend to be, since only we are the
persons concerned, and no man ever cheated himself.
I should be very glad to hear from you, for, knowing how busy you are, I
have learned to value your letters. Remember me most kindly to Mrs.
Ripley, and believe me always Yr friend,
G.W.C.
DIRGE
Time laid within an early grave
Those hopes, so delicate and sweet,
I wondered not I could not save,
But that they did sooner fleet.
Life has its fading summer dream,
Its hope is crowned with one full hour,
And yet its best deservings seem
Buds all unworthy such a flower.
How well that happy hour is bought
By an after-life of sorrow!
The golden sunset yields a thought
Which adorns the dreary morrow.
We meet no more as we have met;
Thy heart made music once with mine,
Which now is still, and we forget
The art that made our youth divine.
One glance reaps beauty, nevermore
It wears a lustre as at first;
We come again--the harvest o'er
To no new flow'ring can be nursed.
XXXI
N.Y., _April 12th, 1846._
My dear Friend,--I meant to have given you some verses when you were here
as you asked, but I forgot it. Now I send this. It is so different from
Wentworth Higginson's that I do not feel as if the same road had been run
over by us[1]. And as each Phalanx will be a centre of innumerable
railroads in the age of harmony, why not its paper of paper railroads now?
This was written in Concord some time since.
[Footnote 1: This refers to a poem by T.W. Higginson with the same title,
which had been printed in the _Harbinger,_ a few weeks previously.]
Since you went I have done little but study French and Italian. We meet
Cranch, and his wife of course, three times a week at that, and I drop
into his studio now and then. To-day I was there, and he was hard at work
upon a sunset composition, which he hopes to finish for the exhibition of
the Boston Athenaeum. He has sent the large landscape, "The Summer
Shower," and "The Old Mill with the Bridge and Ducks," to the National
Academy, which exhibition opens this week. He has sold one in Washington
to a member of Congress for $100, and if he can continue to improve as
rapidly as he has for a year or two past he will be a fine painter.
These soft, gushing spring days make me yearn for the country. I shall
hope to be emancipated from Masters and Mistresses by the first or middle
of May and take my place with the other cattle in the pastures. When I do
not exactly know. Let me hear from you and about the Farm and its
prospects. Burrill's eyes have given out again. He is bound head and foot,
for his ankle has a habit of breaking down occasionally. Rest and warm
weather and the country may strengthen them all. Give my love
"und vergiss nicht euer treur,"
G.W.C.
THE RAILROAD
A bright November day. The morning light
Shone through the city's mist against my eyes,
Soft, chiding them from sleep. Unfolding them
They raised their lids and--gave me a new day.
A day not freshly breaking on the fields,
And waking with a morning kiss the streams
That slept beneath the vapor, but on streets,
Piles of great majesty and human skill,
Stone veins where human passion swiftly runs.
Thereon I gazed with tenderness and awe,
Remembering the heavy debt I owed
To the dim arches of the dingy bricks,
Which sternly smiled upon my youngest years
And gravely greeted now, as through the crowd
By all unknown and knowing none, I passed.
The warning whistle thrilled the misty air,
And stately forth we rode into the morn,
Subduing airy distance silently;
The shadow glided by us on the grass,
The sole companion of our lonely speed,
And all the landscape changing as we went,
A shifting picture, of like hues and forms
But ever various, trees, rocks, and hills,
Rising sublime and stretching pastoral--
How like a noble countenance which shows
Endless expression and eternal charm.
I leaned against the window as we went.
And saw the city mist recede afar,
And lost the busy hum which haunts the mind
As a voice inarticulate, the tone
Of many men whose mouths speak distinct words
Which blend in grim confusion, till the sound
Like a vague aspiration climbs the sky.
The muffled murmur of the iron wheels,
And the sharp tinkle of the hurried bell,
And a few words between were all the sounds
Which peopled that else silent morning air.
A busy city darting o'er the plains
Across the turnpikes and through hawthorne lanes,
O'er wide morasses and profound ravines--
Through stately woods where red deer only run,
And grassy lawn and farmer's planted field--
Was that swift train that flashed along the hills,
And smoked through sloping valleys, and surprised
The mild-eyed milk-maid with her morning pail.
I dreamed my dreams until the village lay
White in the morning light, and holding up
Its modest steeples in the crystal air.
A moment, and the picture changed no more,
But wore a serious constancy and showed
Its bare-boughed trees immovable. I rose,
And stepping from the train, it glided on,
Sweeping around the hill; the whistle shrill
Rang through the stricken air. A moment more
It rolled along the iron out of sight.
XXXII
NEW YORK, _Thursday, May 14th, 1846._
My dear Friend,--You will of course have supposed that I did not receive
your letter of the 2d May, or it would have been more promptly answered.
On that very day I responded to a most urgent invitation from Mrs. Cranch
to go up the river and make a visit with Burrill, at her father's house
upon the Hudson. I have only returned to-day, and hasten to send you this,
bidding you to come, for the Choral Symphony is to be played, and there
are to be various preparatory rehearsals of the orchestra and the chorus.
This I know from the papers, but I will to-morrow inquire of Herr Timm the
particulars of the concert. If I had not thought of remaining I would
certainly do so if you will come. I am only sorry that there is no room
fit for such a performance; it will be hard to get far enough away.
Immediately that I have ascertained what particulars are ascertainable I
will write again, although you must not wait for that, but come as soon as
you can.
And now, what shall I say to you of the serene, sparkling splendors of the
Spring which upon the Hudson have been flowing around me, so that my few
days swelled into a fortnight almost, consecrated like a long song to
romance and beauty. The tender young green upon the riversides and upon
the mountains behind, which receive into their deep, dark mass of foliage
the light, golden, smooth, colored fields which rise backward from the
ample river, and (at Mr. Downing's at Newburg, opposite, a brother-in-law,
and the author of fruit treatises, etc.) the splendid magnolias, which
resemble deepest-dyed beakers, whence the fragrance arose almost palpable,
it was so strong and sweet, and I looked to see rainbow-colored clouds
floating from out the flowers--these, with the white blossoms of the
orchards and the spray-like, snowy beauty of the Dogwood; in the early
morning the sunlight, streaming down the mountains into the bosom of the
river, kisses flashing and fiery, yet most gentle and tender, and at night
the round moon, rising suddenly, almost without any preluding splendor
over the same line of hills, and threw a yellow brightness all over the
landscape like the throbbing heart of the night whose life is mysterious
beauty fed by that mysterious light. What could I do but roam and wonder
and smile and sing in the moonlight till midnight sent me to lie in a bed
whence I looked out from under the plain white curtains through the
branches of the trees without upon the sleeping river so wide and deep and
still, and the line of hills fading in the night beyond. It was one of
those seeds whose flower does not come at once, but which will show a
tinge of Spring beauty wherever it unfolds. How have I earned the
privilege of such enchantment, and is there not some condition of fairy
which I do not yet see, but which some day must be paid?
The city is hot and hard after those fields and mountains, yet there are
sweet smiles here, and I found three letters from friends, which was a
fine welcome. Mrs. Dunlap and her sister are here, and I shall hear some
singing; but they can give no music like the panorama I have seen. I have
been choking all day, as I always do when I leave any place or person that
is specially beautiful. When I am in the midst of the greatest beauty I
remind myself that it is so, but I do not seem to touch the very heart;
but when I have left it behind then its heart overflows itself in the
remembrance, and so the past becomes more beautiful than any possible
present, as when you would see a distant, almost indistinct, star you must
look just at one side and not directly upon the object. The present must
be as really worthy, but time and distance have a character of their own
which they impart to all circumstances, as distance in space makes green
and rugged mountains soft and purple like the hue of a fruit.
I long to leave the city, but I shall yet stay some time, for I shall not
see my Father and Mother much during the Summer, and we shall sail
probably by the first of August. Perhaps I can arrange so as to return
with you if you come. I meant to have passed two or three days at Brook
Farm. I could write till you were tired, but I have no time or paper.
Cranch is well and sketching. He says something of coming to Boston during
the Summer. Come immediately, and believe me as ever,
G.W.C.
XXXIII
NEW YORK, _Saturday, May 16, '46._