LATER DAYS.
About a mile westward from the village of Danvers, Mass., a grassy road,
named Summer Street, branches off to the right and north. It is a
pleasant, winding road, bordered by picturesque old stone fences and
lined with barberry and raspberry bushes and gnarled old apple-trees. On
either side are cultivated fields. Oak Knoll, the winter residence of
Whittier, is the second house on the left, some half a mile up the road.
This fine old estate had been occupied for half a century by a man of
wealth and taste. About the year 1875 it passed into the hands of Col.
Edmund Johnson, of Boston, whose wife was Whittier's cousin.
It was planned that the poet should be a member of the household; rooms
were set apart and arranged for him, and he gave the estate its present
name.
It is a spot full of traditions, and well suited to any poet's
residence, most of all for one so versed in New England legends. It is
the very spot once occupied by the Rev. George Burroughs, a clergyman
who was hung for witchcraft in 1692, on the charge, among other things,
of "having performed feats of extraordinary physical strength." He could
hold out a gun seven feet long, tradition says, by putting his finger in
the muzzle, and could lift a barrel of molasses in the same way by the
bung-hole. For acts like these--deemed unclerical, at least, if not
unnatural--he was convicted and hanged; and a well on the premises of
Oak Knoll is still known as the "witch well."
Here, in the home of relatives, the poet has lived since 1876. A
lovelier and more poetical place it would be difficult to imagine. The
extensive, carefully kept grounds, and the antique elegance of the
house, give to the estate the air of an old English manor, or
gentleman's country hall. The house is approached by a long,
upward-sweeping lawn, diversified with stately forest trees, clumps of
evergreens and shrubs and flowers. Down across the road stands a large
and handsome barn, which is as neat as paint and care can make it. In
front of the house the eye ranges downward over an extensive landscape,
as far as to the town of Peabody, in the direction of Salem. Indeed, on
every side of the estate there are broad and distant views of the blue
hills of Essex and Middlesex.
[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE PORCH AT OAK KNOLL, DANVERS, MASS.]
In the summer, as you ascend the carriage-road that winds through the
grounds, your eye is captured by the rare beauty of the scene. Yonder is
a tall living wall of verdure, with an archway cut through it. To the
left the grounds sweep gently down to a deep ravine, where a little
rivulet, named Beaver Brook, creeps leisurely out and winds seaward
through green and marish meadows. It is in this portion of the grounds
that the fine oak-trees grow which give to the place its name. Here,
too, is a large grove of pines, with numerous seats within it. There are
trees and trees at Oak Knoll,--smooth and shapely hickories, glistering
chestnuts with cool foliage, maples, birches, and the purple beech. Add
to the picture the rural accessories of bee-haunted clover-fields, apple
and pear orchards, and beds of tempting strawberries. The house is of
wood, salmon-colored, with tall porches on each side, up-propped by
stately Doric columns. In front, with wide sweep of closely cropped
grass intervening, is the magnificent Norway spruce that Oliver Wendell
Holmes, a year or two before Mr. Whittier's death, on one of those
periodical visits to his brother poet that so delighted their two souls,
named "The Poets' Pagoda." A luxuriant vine clusters about the eaves of
the house. On the long porch a mocking-bird and a canary-bird fill the
green silence with gushes of melody, and near at hand, in his study in
the wing of the building, sits one with a singing pen and listens to
their song. To their song and to the murmur of the tall pines by his
window he listens, then looks into his heart and writes,--this
sweet-souled magician,--and craftily imprisons between the covers of his
books, echoes of bird and tree music, bits of blue sky, glimpses of
green landscape, winding rivers, and idyls of the snow,--all suffused
and interfused with a glowing atmosphere of human and divine love, such
as the poet found in this home of his choosing at Oak Knoll. It will not
perhaps be intruding upon the privacies of home to say that the members
of the cultured household at Oak Knoll ever, found in their happy
circle, their highest pleasure in ministering to all needs, social or
otherwise, of their loved cousin the poet. Three sisters dispense the
hospitalities of the house, and a young daughter of Mrs. Woodman's adds
the charm of girlhood to the family life.
* * * * *
Readers of Whittier, who know how deeply his writings are tinged with
the scenery, legendary lore and folk-life of his native Merrimack
Valley, will not wonder that a certain _Heimweh_, or home-sickness,
draws him northward, when
"Flows amain
The surge of summer's beauty."
and
"Pours the deluge of the heat
Broad northward o'er the land."
It is but one hour's ride by cars from Danvers to Amesbury; and part of
the time in the latter place, and part of the time at the Isles of
Shoals, and in the beautiful lake and mountain region of New Hampshire,
Mr. Whittier passes the warm season. For many years it was his custom to
spend a portion of each summer at the Bearcamp River House, in West
Ossipee, N. H., some thirty miles north of Lake Winnipiseogee. The hotel
was situated on a slight eminence, commanding a view of towering "Mount
Israel" and of "Whittier Mountain," named after the poet. It is a region
full of noble prospects, being just in the out-skirts of the White
Mountain group. Several of the poems of Whittier were inspired by this
scenery, notably "Among the Hills," "Sunset on the Bearcamp," and "The
Seeking of the Waterfall." In the first of these we read how--
"Through Sandwich notch the west-wind sang,"
and--
"Above his broad lake Ossipee,
Once more the sunshine wearing,
Stooped, tracing on that silver shield
His grim armorial bearing."
"Sunset on the Bearcamp" contains a stanza considered by some to be one
of the poet's finest:--
"Touched by a light that hath no name,
A glory never sung,
Aloft on sky and mountain wall
Are God's great pictures hung.
How changed the summits vast and old!
No longer granite-browed,
They melt in rosy mist; the rock
Is softer than the cloud;
The valley holds its breath; no leaf
Of all its elms is twirled:
The silence of eternity
Seems falling on the world."
The Bearcamp River House (now no more) was a hostelry whose site,
antique hospitality, and eminent guests were every whit as worthy to be
embalmed in lasting verse as were those of the Wayside Inn of Sudbury.
Before the red, crackling flames of its huge fireplace such literary
characters as Whittier, Gail Hamilton, Lucy Larcom, and Hiram Rich used
to gather on chill summer evenings for the kind of talks that only a
wood fire can inspire. The Quaker poet is a charming conversationalist,
and can _tell_ a story as capitally as he can write one. He has a
goodly _repertoire_ of ghost tales and legends of the marvellous. One of
his best stories is about a scene that took place in Independence Hall
in Philadelphia, when the court remanded a negro to slavery. The poet
says that an old sailor who was present became so infuriated by the
spectacle that he made the air blue with oaths uttered in seven
different languages.[16]
[Footnote 16: For these details about days on the Bearcamp, the writer
is indebted to Dr. Robert R. Andrews, an acquaintance of the poet.]
* * * * *
December 17, 1877, was the poet's seventieth birthday, and the occasion
was celebrated in a twofold manner, namely, by a Whittier Tribute in the
_Literary World_, and by a Whittier Banquet given at the Hotel
Brunswick, in Boston, by Messrs. H. O. Houghton and Co., the publishers
of Whittier's works. The _Literary World_ tribute contained poems by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Bayard Taylor, E. C. Stedman, O. W. Holmes,
William Lloyd Garrison, and others. Mr. Longfellow's poem, "The Three
Silences," is one of unusual beauty.
THE THREE SILENCES OF MOLINOS.
"Three Silences there are: the first of speech,
The second of desire, the third of thought;
This is the lore a Spanish monk, distraught
With dreams and visions, was the first to teach.
These Silences, commingling each with each
Made up the perfect Silence, that he sought
And prayed for, and wherein at times he caught
Mysterious sounds from realms beyond our reach.
O thou, whose daily life anticipates
The life to come, and in whose thought and word
The spiritual world preponderates,
Hermit of Amesbury! thou too hast heard
Voices and melodies from beyond the gates,
And speakest only when thy soul is stirred!"
There were letters from the poet Bryant, the historian George Bancroft,
Colonel T. W. Higginson, and Mrs. H. B. Stowe; and there was a pleasant
description of the Danvers home by Charles B. Rice. Mr. Whittier's
"Response" was published in the January number of the paper:--
"Beside that milestone where the level sun,
Nigh unto setting, sheds his last, low rays
On word and work irrevocably done,
Life's blending threads of good and ill outspun,
I hear, O friends! your words of cheer and praise,
Half doubtful if myself or otherwise.
Like him who, in the old Arabian joke,
A beggar slept and crowned Caliph woke."
The anniversary of the founding of the _Atlantic Monthly_ happening to
be synchronous with Whittier's birthday, the publishers determined to
make a double festival of the occasion. The gathering at the Hotel
Brunswick was a brilliant one, and the invitations were not limited by
any clique or any sectional lines.
In this same month the admirers of Mr. Whittier in Haverhill,
Newburyport, and neighboring towns, formed a Whittier Club, its annual
meetings to be held on December 17.
The ladies of Amesbury presented to the poet on his birthday a richly
finished Russia-leather portfolio, containing fourteen beautiful
sketches in water-colors of scenes in and about Amesbury, by a talented
Amesbury artist. The subjects of the sketches are those scenes which he
has immortalized in his poems, and include his home, birthplace, the old
school-house, old Quaker Meeting-House, Rivermouth Rocks, etc. The
portfolio was presented to him at Oak Knoll, accompanied by a basket of
exquisite flowers.
Since taking up his residence in Danvers, the poet has published "The
Vision of Echard, and Other Poems,"--including the beautiful ballad,
"The Witch of Wenham,"--and "The King's Missive, and Other Poems."