PERSONAL.
As a boy, Whittier grew up slender, delicate, and shy, with dark hair
and dark eyes; his nature silent and brooding, gentle, compassionate,
religious, and sensitive to the beauty of the external world. He is of
the nervous temperament, and his health has never been robust. Indeed,
in later life the state of his health has often been precarious, and his
plans for work have been at the mercy of his nerves. As a young man, and
crowned Laureate of Freedom, Whittier must have presented a striking
appearance, with his raven hair, and glittering black eyes flashing with
the inspiration of a great cause. Mr. J. Miller McKim, a member with
Whittier of the famous Anti-Slavery Convention held in Philadelphia in
1833, thus describes the poet:--
"He wore a dark frock-coat with standing collar, which, with his
thin hair, dark and sometimes flashing eyes, and black
whiskers,--not large, but noticeable in those unhirsute days,--gave
him, to my then unpractised eye, quite as much of a military as a
Quaker aspect. His broad, square forehead and well-cut features,
aided by his incipient reputation as a poet, made him quite a
noticeable feature in the convention."
Frederika Bremer, in her "Sketches of American Homes," gives an outline
portrait of Whittier as he appeared when forty years of age:--
"He has a good exterior, a figure slender and tall, a beautiful head
with refined features, black eyes full of fire, dark complexion, a
fine smile, and lively but very nervous manner. Both soul and spirit
have overstrained the nervous cords and wasted the body. He belongs
to those natures who would advance with firmness and joy to
martyrdom in a good cause, and yet who are never comfortable in
society, and who look as if they would run out of the door every
moment. He lives with his mother and sister in a country-house to
which I have promised to go. I feel that I should enjoy myself with
Whittier, and could make him feel at ease with me. I know from my
own experience what this nervous bashfulness, caused by the
over-exertion of the brain, requires, and how persons who suffer
therefrom ought to be met and treated."
* * * * *
George W. Bungay, in his "Crayon Sketches" of distinguished Americans,
published in 1852, gives the following picture of Whittier: "His
temperament is nervous-bilious; [he] is tall, slender and straight
as an Indian; has a superb head; his brow looks like a white cloud
under his raven hair; eyes large, black as sloes, and glowing with
expression,-- ... those star-like eyes dashing under such a magnificent
forehead."
* * * * *
A writer in the _Democratic Review_ for August, 1845, speaks of "the
fine intellectual beauty of his expression, the blending brightness and
softness of the clear dark eye, the union of manly firmness and courage
with womanly sweetness and tenderness alike in countenance and
character."
* * * * *
Mr. David A. Wasson says that Whittier is of the Saracenic or Hebrew
prophet type: "The high cranium, so lofty, especially in the dome,--the
slight and symmetrical backward slope of the _whole_ head,--the powerful
level brows, and beneath these the dark, deep eyes, so full of shadowed
fire,--the Arabian complexion,--the sharp-cut, intense lines of the
face,--the light, tall, erect stature,--the quick, axial poise of the
movement,"--all these traits reveal the fiery Semitic prophet.
* * * * *
The long backward and upward slope of the head, alluded to by Mr.
Wasson, is very striking. It is the head of Walter Scott or of Emerson.
Whittier is now an old man, somewhat hard of hearing, and with the fixed
sadness of time upon his pleasant face. But ever and anon, as you
converse with him, his countenance is irradiated by a sudden smile,
sweet and strange and full of benignity,--like a waft of perfume from a
bed of white violets, or a glint of rich sunlight on an April day. His
is one of those Emersonian natures that everybody loves at first sight.
The very mole under the right eye seems somehow the birth-mark or
sign-manual of kindliness. The quaint grammatical solecisms of the
Quaker and the New England farmer--the "thee's" and the omission of the
_g_'s from present participles and other words ending in
"ing"--give to the poet's conversation a certain slight piquancy and
picturesqueness.[17] About half-past nine every morning, when at
Amesbury, Mr. Whittier walks down for the mail and the news, and perhaps
has a chat with some neighbor on the street, or with the country editor
who is setting up in type his own editorials while he grimly rolls his
quid of tobacco in his cheek. In the spring and early summer the poet's
dress will be after this fashion: black coat and vest, gray pantaloons,
cinnamon-colored overcoat, drab tile hat, and perhaps a small gray
tippet around his neck. As he walks, he salutes those whom he meets with
a little jerky bow. A forty years' residence in Amesbury has made him
acquainted with almost everybody, and he might, therefore, very properly
be somewhat economical of exertion in his salutations. But his abrupt
bow is really the expression of that unbending rectitude and noble pride
in individual freedom that made him the reformer and the poet of
liberty. As a single instance of Whittier's kind-heartedness, take the
following incident, narrated by an anonymous writer in the _Literary
World_ for December, 1877: "When I was a young man trying to get an
education, I went about the country peddling sewing-silk to help myself
through college; and one Saturday night found me at Amesbury, a stranger
and without a lodging-place. It happened that the first house at which I
called was Whittier's, and he himself came to the door. On hearing my
request he said he was very sorry that he could not keep me, but it was
quarterly meeting and his house was full. He, however, took the trouble
to show me to a neighbor's, where he left me; but that did not seem to
wholly suit his idea of hospitality, for in the course of the evening he
made his appearance, saying that it had occurred to him that he could
sleep on a lounge, and give up his own bed to me,--which it is, perhaps,
needless to say, was not allowed. But this was not all. The next morning
he came again, with the suggestion that I might perhaps like to attend
meeting, inviting me to go with him; and he gave me a seat next to
himself. The meeting lasted an hour, during which there was not a word
spoken by any one. We all sat in silence that length of time, then all
arose, shook hands and dispersed; and I remember it as one of the best
meetings I ever attended."
[Footnote 17: The writer remembers once speaking with a laborer whom Mr.
Whittier had employed. The good fellow could not conceal his admiration
for the poet, "Why," he said, "you wouldn't think it, would you, but he
talks just like common folks. We was talkin' about the apples one day,
and he said, 'Some years they ain't wuth pickin','--just like anybody,
you know; ain't stuck up at all, and yet he's a great man, you know. He
likes to talk with farmers and common folks; he don't go much with the
bigbugs;--one of the nicest men, and liberal with his money, too."]
* * * * *
Dom Pedro II., Emperor of Brazil, is a reader of Mr. Whittier's poems,
and an ardent admirer of his genius. He has exchanged letters with him,
both in regard to poetry and to the emancipation of slaves.[18] When
his Majesty was in this country, in 1876, he expressed a wish to meet
Mr. Whittier, and on Wednesday evening, June 14, a little reception was
arranged by Mrs. John T. Sargent at her Chestnut Street home, a few
prominent persons having been invited to be present. "When the Emperor
arrived, the other guests had already assembled. Sending up his card,
his Majesty followed it with the quickness of an enthusiastic
school-boy; and his first question, after somewhat hastily paying his
greetings, was for Mr. Whittier. The poet stepped forward to meet his
imperial admirer, who would fain have caught him in his arms and
embraced him warmly, with all the enthusiasm of the Latin race. The
diffident Friend seemed somewhat abashed at so demonstrative a greeting,
but with a cordial grasp of the hand drew Dom Pedro to the sofa, where
the two chatted easily and with the familiarity of old friends.
[Footnote 18: The Emperor has translated Whittier's "Cry of a Lost Soul"
into Portuguese, and has sent to the poet several specimens of the
Amazonian bird whose peculiar note suggested the poem.]
"The rest of the company allowed them to enjoy their _tete-a-tete_ for
some half hour, when they ventured to interrupt it, and the Emperor
joined very heartily in a general conversation."
As the Emperor was driving away, he was seen standing erect in his open
barouche, and "waving his hat, with a seeming hurrah, at the house which
held his venerable friend."[19]
[Footnote 19: Mrs. Sargent's "Sketches and Reminiscences of the Radical
Club," pp. 301, 302.]
* * * * *
As a specimen of Mr. Whittier's genial and winning epistolary style, it
is permissible to quote here a letter of his, addressed to Mrs. John T.
Sargent, and included by her in her sketches of the Radical Club:--
"AMESBURY, Wednesday Eve.
"MY DEAR MRS. SARGENT,--Few stronger inducements could be held out
to me than that in thy invitation to meet Lucretia Mott and Mary
Carpenter. But I do not see that I can possibly go to Boston this
week. None the less do I thank thee, my dear friend, in thinking of
me in connection with their visit.
"My love to Lucretia Mott, and tell her I have never forgotten the
kind welcome and generous sympathy she gave the young abolitionist
at a time when he found small favor with his 'orthodox' brethren.
What a change she and I have lived to see! I hope to meet Miss
Carpenter before she leaves us. For this, and for all thy kindness
in times past, believe me gratefully thy friend,
"JOHN G. WHITTIER."
The modesty and shyness of the poet have already been more than once
alluded to. They form his most distinctive personal or constitutional
peculiarity. It is unnecessary to quote from his writings to illustrate
what is patent to everybody who reads his books, or knows anything about
him.
The poet's personal friends know well that he has a good deal of genial,
mellow humorousness in his nature. To get an idea of it, read his
charming prose sketches of home and rural life, and such poems as the
whimsical, enigmatical "Demon of the Study," as well as "The Pumpkin,"
"To My Old Schoolmaster," and the "Double-Headed Snake of Newbury."
These poems almost equal Holmes's for rich and _riant_ humor.
It is not so well known as it ought to be that the author of
"Snow-Bound" has as deep a love of children as had Longfellow. Before
the Bearcamp House was burned to the ground in 1880, Mr. Whittier used
sometimes to come up from Amesbury with a whole bevy of little misses
about him, and at the hotel the wee folk hailed him as one of those dear
old fellows whom they always love at sight. It is said that Edward
Lear--the friend of Tennyson, and author of "Nonsense Verses" for
children--used to make a hobby-horse of himself in the castles of
Europe, and treat his little friends to a gallop over the carpet on his
back. If Mr. Whittier never got quite so far as this in juvenile
equestrianism, he has at least equally endeared himself to the children
who have had the good fortune to look into his loving eyes and enjoy the
sunshine of his smile. When sitting by the fireside, or stretched at
ease on the fragrant hay in the barn or field, or walking among the
hills, nothing pleases him better than to have an audience of young
folks eagerly listening to one of his stories. If they are engaged in a
game of archery, he will take a hand in the sport, and no one is better
pleased than he to hit the white. His unfailing kindness in answering
the many letters addressed to him by young literary aspirants, or by
others who desire his advice and help, is something admirable: no one
knows how to win hearts better than he.
* * * * *
To these notes of personal traits it only remains to add a list of the
offices of dignity and honor which have been held by Mr. Whittier.
Besides his various editorial, secretarial, and legislative positions,
he served as Overseer of Harvard College from 1858 to 1863. He was a
member of the Electoral College in 1860 and in 1864. The degree of
Master of Arts was bestowed upon him by Harvard College in 1860, and the
same degree by Haverford College in the same year. He was elected a
resident member of the American Philosophical Society in 1864, but never
accepted the honor, notwithstanding the fact that his name appeared for
two or three years on the Society's roll. In 1871 he was made a Fellow
of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
PART II.
ANALYSIS OF HIS GENIUS AND WRITINGS.
CHAPTER I.
THE MAN.
_"Not by the page word-painted
Let life be banned or sainted:
Deeper than written scroll
The colors of the soul."_
MY TRIUMPH.
To analyze and describe the _poetry_ of Whittier is a comparatively easy
task, for it is all essentially lyrical or descriptive, and is
resolvable into a few simple elements. His poetry is not profound; but
it is sweet and melodious,--now flashing with the fire of freedom and
choked with passionate indignation, and now purling and rippling through
the tranquil meadows of legend and song. Such a poem as Emerson's
"Sphinx," groaning with its weight of mystical meaning, Whittier never
wrote, nor could write. Neither is he dramatic, nor skilled in the
subtile harmonies of rhythm and metre. As an artist he is easily
comprehensible. But to fathom the _man_,--to drop one's plummet into
the infinite depths of the human mind, to peer about with one's little
candle among the dusty phantoms and spent forces of the past, and
through the endlessly crossing and interblending meshes trace
confidently up all the greater and the finer hereditary influences that
have moulded a human character,--and then discover and weigh the
post-natal forces that have acted upon that character through a long and
varied life,--this is a very difficult task, and demands in him who
would undertake it a union of historic imagination with caution and
modesty.
* * * * *
The moral in Whittier predominates over the aesthetic, the reformer over
the artist. "I am a man, and I feel that I am above all else a man."
What is the great central element in our poet's character, if it is not
that deep, never-smouldering moral fervor, that unquenchable love of
freedom, that--
"Hate of tyranny intense,
And hearty in its vehemence,"
which, mixed with the beauty and melody of his soul, gives to his pages
a delicate glow as of gold-hot iron; which crowns him the Laureate of
Freedom in his day, and imparts to his utterances the manly ring of the
prose of Milton and Hugo and the poetry of Byron, Swinburne, and
Whitman,--all poets of freedom like himself?
[Illustration: Handwriting: John G. Whittier]
And what is love of freedom but the mainspring of Democracy? And what is
Democracy but the rallying-cry of the age, the one word of the present,
the one word of the future, the word of all words, and the white,
electric beacon-light of modern life?
At the apex of modern Democracy stands Jesus of Nazareth; at its base
stand the poets and heroes of freedom of the past hundred years.
Christian Democracy has had its revolutions, its religious ferments and
revolts, and its emancipations of slaves. Quakerism is one of its
outcomes. Democracy produced George Fox; George Fox produced Quakerism;
Quakerism produced Whittier; Whittier helped destroy slavery. He could
not help doing so, for with slavery both Democracy and Quakerism are
incompatible. Whittier fought slavery as a Quaker, he has lived as a
Quaker, and written as a Quaker; he has never fully emancipated himself
from the shackles of the sect. To understand him, therefore, we must
understand his religion.
* * * * *
The principles of the sect are all summed up in the phrases _Freedom_
and the _Inner Light_. Historically considered, Quakerism is a product
of the ferment that followed the civil war in England two centuries ago.
Considered abstractly, or as a congeries of principles, it has a
sociological and a philosophical root, both of these running back into
the great tap-root, love of freedom, whose iron-tough, writhen fibres
enwrap the dark foundation rocks of human nature itself.
Sociologically speaking, Quakerism is pure democracy, an exaltation of
the majesty of the individual and of the mass of the people. It is the
pure precipitate of Christianity. It is a protest against the hypocrisy,
formalism, tyranny, of priestcraft, king-craft, and aristocracy.
Philosophically, its theory of the Inner Light is identical with the
doctrine of idealism or innate ideas, held by Descartes, Fichte,
Schelling, Cousin. It means individualism, a return to the primal
sanities of the soul. "I think, therefore I am." My thinking soul is the
ultimate source of ideas and truth. In that serene holy of holies
full-grown ideas leap into being,--subjective, _a priori_, needing no
sense-perception for their genesis.
But Transcendentalism differed from Quakerism in this: the former held
that the illumination of the mind was a natural process; but Quakerism
maintains that it is a supernatural process, the work of the "Holy
Ghost." And herein Quakerism is inferior to Transcendentalism. But it is
superior to it in that it does not believe in the infallibility of
individual intuitions, but considers the true criterion of truth to be
the universal reason, the "consensus of the competent." Yet the great
danger that pertains to all moonshiny, or subjective, systems of
philosophy is that their individualism will spindle out into wild
extravagances of theory, and foolish eccentricities of manner and dress;
and we shall find that, practically, Quakerism has as Quixotic a record
as Transcendentalism. To say that both systems have performed noble and
indispensable service in the development of mind is but to utter a
truism.
* * * * *
We may now consider a little more closely the peculiarities of doctrine
and life which characterize the Friends. The doctrine of the Inner
Light, or pure spirituality, resulted in such tenets as these: the
freedom of conscience; the soul the fountain of all truth, worthlessness
of tradition and unsanctified learning; the conscience or voice within
the judge of the Bible or Written Word; disbelief in witchcraft, ghosts,
and other superstitions; love of friends and enemies, the potency of
moral suasion, moral ideas, and as a consequence the wickedness of war,
and a belief in human progress as the result of peaceable industry;
universal enfranchisement, every man and woman may be enlightened by the
Inner Light,--hence equality of privilege, no distinction between clergy
or laity or between sex and sex,--the right of woman to develop her
entire nature as she sees fit. In the principles which define the
attitude of the Quaker toward social conventions, we find a queer jumble
of the doctrines of primitive Christianity with the ideas of individual
independence innate in the Germanic mind, and especially in the popular
mind.[20] The Christian gospel of love forbids the Quakers to
countenance war, capital punishment, imprisonment for debt, slavery,
suppressment of the right of free speech and the right of petition.
Their doctrine of equality in virtue of spiritual illumination forbids
them to remove their hats in presence of any human being, even a king;
leads them to avoid the use of the plural "you," as savoring of
man-worship, and to refuse to employ a hired priesthood. Their doctrine
of pure spirituality is inconsistent with sacerdotal rites and
mummeries, such as baptism, the eucharist, forms of common prayer, etc.
Music, poetry, painting, and dancing also have a worldly savor and tend
to distract the mind from its spiritual life. So do rich and gaudy
robes: we must therefore have simplicity of dress. Hear William Penn on
this subject:[21]--
"I say, if sin brought the first coat, poor Adam's offspring have
little reason to be proud or curious in their clothes.... It is all
one as if a man who had lost his nose by a scandalous distemper,
should take pains to set out a false one, in such shape and splendor
as should give the greater occasion for all to gaze upon him; as if
he would tell them he had lost his nose, for fear they would think
he had not. But would a wise man be in love with a false nose,
though ever so rich, and however finely made?"
[Footnote 20: The same sterling material that went to the making of the
Quaker went also to the making of the Puritan farmer-and-artisan victors
of Naseby, and Worcester, and Marston Moor. The same faults
characterized each class. In stiff-backed independence and scorn of the
gilt-edged poetry of conventional manners, and in the absurd extreme to
which they carried that independence and scorn, the Quaker and the
Puritan were alike. Only the Quaker out-puritaned the Puritan,--was much
more consistent in his fanatical purism, scrawny asceticism, and
contempt for distinguished manners and the noble imaginative arts.]
[Footnote 21: In his work "No Cross, No Crown."]
* * * * *
A natural corollary of the Friends' doctrine of inward supernatural
illumination is their habit of silent worship, or silent waiting.[22]
It is probable that this feature of their religious gatherings has done
much to cultivate that peculiar tranquillity of demeanor which
distinguishes them.[23] They meet the burdens, bereavements, and
disappointments of life with a placid equanimity in strong antithesis to
the often passionate grief and rebellion of other classes of religious
people. Finally, we may add to the list of their characteristics their
great moral sincerity. "With calm resoluteness they tell you your faults
face to face, and without exciting your ill-will."
[Footnote 22: Their ideas on this subject are very well stated in the
following words taken from a Quaker pamphlet by Mary Brook: "Solomon
saith, 'The preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the
tongue, are from the Lord.' If the Lord alone can prepare the heart,
stir it up, or incline it towards unfeigned holiness, how can any man
approach him acceptably, till his heart be prepared by him?--and how can
he know this preparation except he wait in silence to feel it?"]
[Footnote 23: See Appendix I.]
The objections to the Quakerism of our day are that it is retractile,
stationary, negative; it is selfish, narrow, ascetic, tame; it has no
iron in its blood; it rarely adds anything to the world's thought. The
Quakers are a hopelessly antiquated sect, a dying branch almost wholly
severed from connection with the living forces of the tree of modern
society. There are, it is true, a goodly number of liberal Quakers, who,
in discarding the peculiar costume of the time of Charles II., which
many of them even yet wear, have also thrown off the intellectual
mummy-robes of the sect. Many adopt the tenets of Unitarianism, or make
that religious body the stepping-stone to complete emancipation from an
obsolete system of thought. But the mass of them are immovable. They
have been characterized substantially in the following words by Mr. A.
M. Powell, himself a Quaker by birth, and an unwilling witness to the
faults of a system of doctrines in which he sees much to admire:--
"In its merely sectarian aspect, Quakerism is as uninteresting,
narrow, timid, selfish, and conservative as is mere sectarianism
under any other name. The Quakers have little comprehension of the
meaning of Quakerism beyond a blind observance of the peculiarities
of dress and speech and the formality of the Meeting. They cling to
the now meaningless protests of the past. They are inaccessible to
new conceptions of truth. They have dishonored the important
fundamental principle [of the Inner Light] and tarnished the
Society's good name by subordinating it to narrow views of religion,
to commercial selfishness, and to the prevalent palsying
conservatism of the outside world."[24]
[Footnote 24: Mrs. John T. Sargent's "Sketches and Reminiscences of the
Radical Club."]
* * * * *
In all that is said in these pages by way of criticism of the Quakers,
reference is had solely to their doctrines as a system of thought. Of
their sweet and beautiful _lives_ it is hardly necessary to speak at
length. Volumes might be filled with instances of their large-hearted
benevolence and personal self-sacrifice in care for others. The
loveliness of their lives is like a beautiful perfume in the society in
which they move. As you see the Quaker women of Philadelphia, with their
pure, tranquil faces, and plain, immaculate dress, moving about among
the greedy and vile-mannered non-Quaker _canaille_ of that democratic
city, they seem like Christian and Faithful amid the crowds of Vanity
Fair. Their faces are like a benediction, and you thank heaven for them.
The liberal Friends in America have many great and noble names on their
roll of honor. And surely a sect that has produced such characters as
Lucretia Mott, John Bright, and John G. Whittier, must win our
intellectual respect. But it is only because these persons, like Milton,
were in most respects above their sect that we admire them. There are
proofs manifold, however, throughout the prose and poetry of Whittier
that he has nominally remained within the pale of Quakerism all his
days. Doubtless such a course was essential to the very existence in him
of poetic inspiration. His genius is wholly lyrical. A song or lyric is
the outgushing of pure emotion. Especially in the case of the religious
and ethical lyrist is faith life, and doubt death. Doubt, in Whittier's
case, would have meant the cessation of his songs. To break away
entirely from the faith of his fathers would have chilled his
inspiration. He has not, it is true, escaped the conflict with doubt. As
we shall see, no man has had a severer struggle to reconcile his faith
with the terror and mystery of life. But, although his religious views
have been liberalized by science, yet he has never ceased to retain a
hearty sympathy with, and belief in, the Quaker principles of the Inner
Light, silent waiting, etc.
That he has remained within the pale of Quakerism has been an injury to
him as well as a help. It makes him obtrude his sectarianism too
frequently, especially in his prose writings. By the very nature of the
creed, he must either be blind to its faults, or constantly put on the
defensive against the least assault, from whatever quarter it may come.
When he dons the garb of the sectary, he naturally becomes weakened, and
loses his chief charm. We see then that he is a man hampered by a creed
which forbids a catholic sympathy with human nature. He is shut up in
the narrow field of sectarian morals and religion. He cannot, for
example, enter, by historical imagination, into poetical sympathy with
the gorgeous ritual and dreamy beauty of a European cathedral service.
And yet so pure, gentle, and sweet is his nature that it is hard to
censure him for this peculiarity. It is regret rather than censure that
we feel, regret that he has been so bound by circumstances that
prevented his breaking wholly away from hampering limitations, and to be
always, what he so often is, the strong and sweet-voiced spokesman of
the heart of humanity.
Let us hear his gentle confessions of faith. In the autobiographical
poem, "My Namesake," we read:--
"He worshipped as his fathers did,
And kept the faith of childish days,
And, howsoe'er he strayed or slid,
He loved the good old ways.
The simple tastes, the kindly traits,
The tranquil air, and gentle speech,
The silence of the soul that waits
For more than man to teach."
In "The Meeting" he has given us an "Apologia pro Vita Sua,"--a defence
of his religious habits. He says he is accustomed to meet with the
Friends twice a week in the little "Meeting" at Amesbury, chiefly for
two reasons: first, because in the silent, unadorned house, with
"pine-laid floor," his religious communings are not distracted by
outward things as they would be if he worshipped always amid the
solitudes of nature; and, secondly, he finds in "The Meeting" a
heart-solace in the memories of dear ones passed away, who once sat by
his side there. He says, in reference to the Quaker service:--
"I ask no organ's soulless breath
To drone the themes of life and death,
No altar candle-lit by day,
No ornate wordsman's rhetoric-play,
No cool philosophy to teach
Its bland audacities of speech,
* * * * *
No pulpit hammered by the fist
Of loud-asserting dogmatist."
In "Memories" he says:--
"Thine the Genevan's sternest creed,
While answers to my spirit's need
The Derby dalesman's simple truth.
For thee, the priestly rite and prayer,
And holy day and solemn psalm;
For me, the silent reverence where
My brethren gather slow and calm."
There are two epochs in the religious or philosophical development of
Whittier. The first--that of simple piety unclouded by doubt, the epoch
of unhesitating acceptance of the popular mythology--seems to have
lasted until about 1850, or the period of early Darwinism and
Spencerianism,--the most momentous epoch in the religious history of
the world. This pivotal point is very well marked by the publication, in
1853, of "The Chapel of the Hermits" and "Questions of Life." It is now
that harrowing doubt begins, and restless striving to retain the faith
amid new conditions and a vastly widened mental horizon.
Transcendentalism, too, had just passed the noon meridian of its
splendor. Emerson had written many of his exquisite philosophical poems,
and Parker had blown his clear bugle-call to a higher religious life. It
is evident that Whittier was--as, indeed, he could not help
being--profoundly moved by the new spirit of the times.
With Transcendentalism he must have had large sympathy, owing to the
similarity of its principles to those of Quakerism. And that he was
profoundly agitated by the revelations of science his poetry shows. In
"My Soul and I" (a poem remarkable for its searching subjective
analysis), and in the poem "Follen," he had given expression to
religious doubt, over which, as always in his case, faith was
triumphant. But it is in "The Chapel of the Hermits" and succeeding
poems that he first gave free and full utterance to the doubt and
struggle of soul that was not his alone, but which was felt by all
around him. In respect of doubt "My Soul and I" and "Questions of Life"
resemble "Faust," as well as Tennyson's "Two Voices" and the "In
Memoriam."
"Life's mystery wrapped him like a cloud;
He heard far voices mock his own,
The sweep of wings unseen, the loud,
Long roll of waves unknown.
The arrows of his straining sight
Fell quenched in darkness; priest and sage
Like lost guides calling left and right,
Perplexed his doubtful age.
Like childhood, listening for the sound
Of its dropped pebbles in the well,
All vainly down the dark profound
His brief-lined plummet fell."
_My Namesake_
The "Questions of Life" are such as these:--
"I am: but little more I know!
Whence came I? Whither do I go?
A centred self, which feels and is;
A cry between the silences."
* * * * *
"This conscious life,--is it the same
Which thrills the universal frame?"
* * * * *
"Do bird and blossom feel, like me,
Life's many-folded mystery,--
The wonder which it is _To Be_?
Or stand I severed and distinct,
From Nature's chain of life unlinked?"
Such questions as these he confesses himself unable to answer. He
shrinks back terrified from the task. He will not dare to trifle with
their bitter logic. He will take refuge in faith; he will trust the
Unseen; let us cease foolish questioning, and live wisely and well our
present lives. He comes out of the struggle purified and chastened,
still holding by his faith in God and virtue. A good deal of the old
Quakerism is gone,--the belief in hell, in the Messianic and atonement
machinery, in local and special avatars, etc. Again and again, in his
later poems, he asserts the humanity of Christ and the co-equal divinity
of all men: see "Miriam," for example. His opinion about hell he
embodies in the sweet little poem, "The Minister's Daughter," published
in "The King's Missive." In short, his religion is a simple and
trustful theism. But there is no evidence that he has ever incorporated
into his mind the principles of the development-science,--the evolution
of man, the correlation of forces, the development of the universe
through its own inner divine potency; or, in fine, any of the
unteleological, unanthropomorphic explanations of things which are
necessitated by science, and admitted by advanced thinkers, both in and
out of the Churches.
As witnesses to his trustful attitude, we may select such a cluster of
stanzas as this:--
"Yet, sometimes glimpses on my sight,
Through present wrong, the eternal right;
And, step by step, since time began,
I see the steady gain of man;
That all of good the past hath had
Remains to make our own time glad,--
Our common daily life divine,
And every land a Palestine.
* * * * *
Through the harsh noises of our day
A low, sweet prelude finds its way;
Through clouds of doubt, and creeds of fear,
A light is breaking calm and clear."
_Chapel of the Hermits_
"Yet, in the maddening maze of things,
And tossed by storm and flood,
To one fixed stake my spirit clings;
I know that God is good!
* * * * *
"I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care."
_The Eternal Goodness._
"When on my day of life the night is falling,
And in the winds from unsunned spaces blown,
I hear far voices out of darkness calling
My feet to paths unknown,
Thou who hast made my home of life so pleasant,
Leave not its tenant when its walls decay;
O love divine, O Helper ever present,
Be Thou my strength and stay!"
_At Last._
"Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways!
Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise."
_The Brewing of Soma._
But Whittier is as remarkable for his faith in man as for his faith in
God. He is in the highest degree patriotic, American. He loves America
because it is the land of freedom. It has been charged against him that
he is no true American poet, but a Quaker poet. The American, it is
said, is eager, aggressive, high-spirited, combative; the Quaker,
subdued and phlegmatic. The American is loud and boastful and daring and
reckless; the Quaker, cautious, timid, secretive, and frugal. This is
undoubtedly true of the classes as types, but it is far from being true
of Whittier personally. He has blood militant in him. He comes of
Puritan as well as Quaker stock. The Greenleafs and the Batchelders were
not Quakers. The reader will perhaps remember the Lieutenant Greenleaf,
already mentioned, who fought through the entire Civil War in
England.[25] But his writings alone furnish ample proof of his martial
spirit. The man and the Quaker struggle within him for the mastery; and
the man is, on the whole, triumphant. Whenever his Quakerism permits, he
stands out a normal man and a genuine American. As Lowell says:--
"There is Whittier, whose swelling and vehement heart
Strains the strait-breasted drab of the Quaker apart,
And reveals the live Man still supreme and erect
Underneath the bemummying wrappers of sect."
[Footnote 25: Hear Whittier himself on the subject:--
"Without intending any disparagement of my peaceable ancestry for many
generations, I have still strong suspicions that somewhat of the old
Norman blood, something of the grim Berserker spirit, has been
bequeathed to me. How else can I account for the intense childish
eagerness with which I listened to the stories of old campaigners who
sometimes fought their battles over again in my hearing? Why did I, in
my young fancy, go up with Jonathan, the son of Saul, to smite the
garrisoned Philistines of Michmash, or with the fierce son of Nun
against the cities of Canaan? Why was Mr. Greatheart, in Pilgrim's
Progress, my favorite character? What gave such fascination to the grand
Homeric encounter between Christian and Apollyon in the valley? Why did
I follow Ossian over Morven's battle-fields, exulting in the
vulture-screams of the blind scald over his fallen enemies? Still,
later, why did the newspapers furnish me with subjects for hero-worship
in the half-demented Sir Gregor McGregor, and Ypsilanti at the head of
his knavish Greeks? I can account for it only on the supposition that
the mischief was inherited,--an heirloom from the old sea-kings of the
ninth century."--_Prose Works, II._, 390, 391.]
If anybody will take the trouble to glance over the complete works of
Whittier, he or she will find that one of the predominant
characteristics of his writings is their indigenous quality, their
national spirit. Indeed, this is almost too notorious to need mention.
He, if any one, merits the proud title of "A Representative American
Poet." His whole soul is on fire with love of country. As in the case
of Whitman, his country is his bride, and upon it he has showered all
the affectional wealth of his nature. The Quaker may be too obtrusive in
his prose writings, but it is not so in the greater and better portion
of his poetry. When the rush and glow of genuine poetical inspiration
seize him, he invariably rises in spirit far above the weltering and
eddying dust-clouds of faction and sect into the serene atmosphere of
genuine patriotism. Read his "Last Walk in Autumn," where he says:--
"Home of my heart! to me more fair
Than gay Versailles or Windsor's halls,
The painted, shingly town-house where
The freeman's vote for Freedom falls!"
Read his "Eve of Election":--
"Not lightly fall
Beyond recall
The written scrolls a breath can float;
The crowning fact,
The kingliest act
Of Freedom is the freeman's vote!"
Or take "After Election," a poem that cannot be read without a thrill of
the nerves and a leaping of the heart. You have concentrated in that
wild lyric burst the purest essence of democratic patriotism,--the
trembling anxiety and yearning of a mother-heart. It is a poem
celebrating a victory of peace with all the fiery energy of a war-ode (a
significant fact that the advocates of gory war, as a source of poetic
inspiration, would do well to ponder):--
"The day's sharp strife is ended now,
Our work is done, God knoweth how!
As on the thronged, unrestful town
The patience of the moon looks down,
I wait to hear, beside the wire,
The voices of its tongues of fire.
Slow, doubtful, faint, they seem at first:
Be strong, my heart, to know the worst!
Hark!--there the Alleghanies spoke;
That sound from lake and prairie broke,
That sunset gun of triumph rent
The silence of a continent!
That signal from Nebraska sprung,
This, from Nevada's mountain tongue!
Is that thy answer, strong and free,
O loyal heart of Tennessee?
What strange, glad voice is that which calls
From Wagner's grave and Sumter's walls?
From Mississippi's fountain-head
A sound as of the bison's tread!
There rustled freedom's Charter Oak!
In that wild burst the Ozarks spoke!
Cheer answers cheer from rise to set
Of sun. We have a country yet!"
To sum up now our analysis of the poet's character. We have seen that
the central trait of his mind is love of freedom. (Even his religion,
which is so profound an element in his nature, and so all-pervasive in
his writings, will be found, on a deep analysis, to be a yearning for
freedom from the trappings of sense and time, in order to attain to a
spiritual union with the Infinite.) This love of freedom, this hatred of
oppression, intensified by persecution, both ancestral and personal,
stimulated by contact with Puritan democracy, as well as by the New
England Transcendental movement, and flowering out luxuriantly in the
long struggle against slavery,--this noble sentiment, and that long
self-sacrificing personal warfare in behalf of the oppressed, form the
true glory of Whittier's character. Shy, timid, almost an invalid,
having a nervous horror of mobs and personal indignities, he yet forgot
himself in his love of Man, overcame and underwent,--suffered social
martyrdom for a quarter of a century, never flinching, never holding
his peace for bread's sake or fame's sake, not stopping to count the
cost, taking his life in his hand, and never ceasing to express his
high-born soul in burning invective and scathing satire against the
oppressor, or in words of lofty hope and cheer for the suffering
idealist and lover of humanity, whoever and wherever he was. Whittier is
a hero as well as a poet. He will be known to posterity by a few
exquisite poems, but chiefly by his moral heroism and patriotism. As a
thinker and a poet he belongs, with Bryant and Longfellow, to the
pre-scientific age. The poetry of the future (of the new era of
self-consciousness) will necessarily differ widely from that of the
first half of this century. It will not be distinctively the poetry of
Wordsworth, or Cowper, or Byron, or Longfellow, or Whittier. When the
present materialistic and realistic temper of mind disappears from
literature, and really noble ideal poetry returns, it will be vast in
its scope and range, robust in its philosophy, unfettered by petty
rhymes and classicisms, but powerfully rhythmic and harmonious. The
writings of Shakspere, Goethe, Jean Paul, Hugo, Tennyson, Whitman, and
Emerson are the magnificent proem to it. It will be built upon a
scientific and religious cosmism. It will not discuss Apollo and Luna
and Neptune, and the nymphs and muses, but will draw its imagery from
the heaven-staining red-flames of the sun, the gulfs of space, the
miracles of organic and inorganic life, and human society. It will draw
its inspiration not more from the storied past than from the storied
future foreseen by its prophetic eye. It will idealize human life and
deify nature. It will fall in the era of imagination. (After it will
come another age of criticism.) It will fall in the age of splendid
democracies. And in that age men will look back with veneration, not so
much, perhaps, to the scholar-poets as to the hero-poets, like Whittier,
who put faith in the rights of man and woman, who did believe in divine
democracy, and were not ashamed of it, but nursed it patiently through
its puling infancy, well assured of its undying grandeur when it should
come to man's estate.
We subjoin fittingly to this chapter a characteristic letter of Mr.
Whittier's, in which he speaks lovingly of Robert Burns, that other
poet of freedom and independence of thought for all men.
At the Burns festival in Washington, 1869, the following letter from
John G. Whittier was read:
"AMESBURY, 1st month, 18th day, 1869.
"DEAR FRIEND,--I thank the club represented by thee for remembering
me on the occasion of its annual festival. Though I have never been
able to trace my ancestry to the Land o' Cakes, I have--and I know
it is saying a great deal--a Scotchman's love for the poet whose
fame deepens and broadens with years. The world has never known a
truer singer. We may criticise his rustic verse and compare his
brief and simple lyrics with the works of men of longer scrolls and
loftier lyres; but after rendering to Wordsworth, Tennyson and
Browning the homage which the intellect owes to genius, we turn to
Burns, if not with awe and reverence, [yet] with a feeling of
personal interest and affection. We admire others; we love him. As
the day of his birth comes round, I take down his well-worn volume
in grateful commemoration, and feel that I am communing with one
whom living I could have loved as much for his true manhood and
native nobility of soul as for those wonderful songs of his which
shall sing themselves forever.
"They know little of Burns who regard him as an aimless
versifier--'the idle singer of an idle lay.' Pharisees in the
Church, and oppressors in the State, knew better than this. They
felt those immortal sarcasms which did not die with the utterer,
but lived on to work out the divine commission of Providence. In
the shout of enfranchised millions, as they lift the untitled
Quaker of Rochdale into the British Cabinet, I seem to hear the
voice of the Ayrshire poet:--
"'For a' that and a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that;
That man to man the world o'er
Shall brothers be for a' that.'
"With hearty sympathy and kind greetings for the Burns Club of
Washington,
"I am, very truly, thy friend,
"JOHN G. WHITTIER."
CHAPTER II.
THE ARTIST.
The title of this chapter is almost a misnomer; for the style, or
technique, of the poet whose works we are considering is so very simple
and unoriginal that he can hardly be said to have a distinctive style of
his own,--unless a few persistent mannerisms establish a claim to it.
His diction, however, is always pictorial, and glows with an intense
Oriental fervor. Fused in this interior vital heat, his thoughts do not
sink, like powerful Jinn, into the deep silence-sphere of the mind, to
fetch thence sparkling treasures, rich and strange: rather, they run to
and fro with lightning swiftness amid the million surface-pictures of
the intellect; rearranging, recombining, and creatively blending its
images, and finally pouring them out along the page to charm our fancy
and feeling with old thoughts and scenes painted in fresh colors and
from new points of view. There is more of fancy than of creative
imagination in Whittier.
* * * * *
The artistic quality, or tone, of his mind is a fusion of that of
Wordsworth and that of Byron. In his best ballads and other lyrics you
have the moral sincerity of Wordsworth and the sweet Wordsworthian
simplicity (with a difference); and in his reform poems you have the
Byronic indignation, and scorn of Philistinism and its tyrannies. As a
religious poet, he reveals the quiet piety and devoutness of Cowper; and
his rural and folk poems show that he is a debtor to Burns.
* * * * *
He has been a diligent reader,--"a close-browed miser of the scholar's
gains,"--and his writings are full of bookish allusions. But, if the
truth must be told, his doctor's gown does not often sit gracefully upon
his shoulders. His readers soon learn to know that his strength lies in
his moral nature, and in his power to tell a story melodiously, simply,
and sweetly. Hence it is, doubtless, that they care little for his
literary allusions,--think, perhaps, that they are rather awkwardly
dragged in by the ears, and at any rate hasten by them impatiently that
they may inhale anew the violet-freshness of the poet's own soul. What
has just been said about bookish allusions does not apply to the
beautiful historical ballads produced by Whittier in the mellow maturity
of his powers. These fresh improvisations are as perfect works of art as
the finest Greek marbles. In them Whittier at length succeeds in freeing
himself completely from the shackles of didacticism. Such ballads as
"The Witch's Daughter" and "Telling the Bees" are as absolutely
faultless productions as Wordsworth's "We are Seven" and his "Lucy
Gray," or as Uhland's "Des Saenger's Fluch," or William Blake's "Mary."
There is in them the confident and unconscious ease that marks the work
of the highest genius. A shower of lucid water-drops falls in no truer
obedience to the law of perfect sphericity than flowed from the pen of
the poet these delicate creations in obedience to the law of perfect
spontaneity. Almost all of Whittier's lyrics have evidently been rapidly
written, poured forth in the first glow of feeling, and not carefully
amended and polished as were Longfellow's works. And herein he is at
fault, as was Byron. But the delicate health of Whittier, and his
toilsome early days, form an excuse for his deficiency in this respect.
His later creations, the product of his leisure years, are full of pure
and flawless music. They have no harmony or rhythmic volume of sound, as
in Tennyson, Swinburne, Milton, and Shakspere; but they set themselves
to simple melodious airs spontaneously. As you read them, your feet
begin to tap time,--only the music is that of a good rural choir rather
than that of an orchestra.
* * * * *
The thought of each poem is generally conveyed to the reader's
understanding with the utmost lucidity. There is no mysticism, no
obscurity. The story or thought unfolds itself naturally, and without
fatigue to our minds. A great many poems are indeed spun out at too
great length; but the central idea to be conveyed is rarely lost sight
of.
* * * * *
To the list of his virtues as an artist, it remains to add his frequent
surprising strength. This is naturally most marked in the anti-slavery
poems. When he wrote these, he was in the flush of manhood, his soul at
a white heat of moral indignation. He is occasionally nerved to almost
super-human effort: it is the battle-axe of Richard thundering at the
gates of Front de Boeuf. For nervous energy, there is nothing in the
Hebrew prophets finer than such passages as these:--
"Strike home, strong-hearted man!
Down to the root
Of old oppression sink the Saxon steel."
_To Ronge._
"Maddened by Earth's wrong and evil,
'Lord!' I cried in sudden ire,
'From thy right hand, clothed with thunder,
Shake the bolted fire!'"
_What the Voice Said._
"Hands off! thou tithe-fat plunderer! play
No trick of priestcraft here!
Back, puny lordling! darest thou lay
A hand on Elliott's bier?
Alive, your rank and pomp, as dust,
Beneath his feet he trod:
He knew the locust-swarm that cursed
The harvest-fields of God.
"On these pale lips, the smothered thought
Which England's millions feel,
A fierce and fearful splendor caught,
As from his forge the steel.
Strong-armed as Thor,--a shower of fire
His smitten anvil flung;
God's curse, Earth's wrong, dumb Hunger's ire,--
He gave them all a tongue!"
_Elliott._
"And Law, an unloosed maniac, strong,
Blood-drunken, through the blackness trod,
Hoarse-shouting in the ear of God
The blasphemy of wrong."
_The Rendition._
"All grim and soiled, and brown with tan,
I saw a Strong One, in his wrath,
Smiting the godless shrines of man
Along his path."
_The Reformer._
As Whittier has grown older, and the battles of his life have
become (as he expressed it to the writer) like "a remembered
dream," his genius has grown mellow and full of graciousness. His
art culminated in "Home Ballads," "Snow-Bound," and "The Tent on
the Beach." He has kept longer than most poets the lyric glow; only
in his later poems it is "emotion remembered in tranquillity."
If asked to name the finest poems of Whittier, would not the
following instinctively recur to the mind: "Snow-Bound," "Maud
Muller," "Barbara Frietchie," "The Witch's Daughter," "Telling the
Bees," "Skipper Ireson's Ride," "King Volmer and Elsie," and "The
Tent on the Beach"?
To these one would like to add several exquisite hymns and short
secular lyrics. But the poems mentioned would probably be regarded
by most critics as Whittier's finest works of art. They merit this
distinction certainly; and they furnish remarkable instances for
those who desire to study the poet's greater versatility in the
ballad line, as they are all good representatives of his
wonderfully long range.
* * * * *
The foregoing remark must be our cue for beginning to pass in
review the artistic deficiencies of Whittier. He has three crazes
that have nearly ruined the mass of his poetry. They are the reform
craze, the religious craze, and the rhyme craze. Of course, as a
man, he could not have a superfluity of the first of these; but, as
a poet, they have been a great injury to him. We need not deny that
he has taken the manlier course in subordinating the artist to the
reformer and preacher; but in estimating his poetic merits we ought
to regard his work from an absolute point of view. Let us not be
misunderstood. It is gladly and freely conceded that the theory
that great poetry is not necessarily moral, and that the aim of
poetry is only to please the senses, is a petty and shallow one,
and that the true function of the great poet is also to bear
witness to the ideal and noble, to the moral and religious. Let us
heartily agree with Principal Shairp when he says that the true end
of the poet "is to awaken men to the divine side of things; to bear
witness to the beauty that clothes the outer world, the nobility
that lies hid, often obscured, in human souls; to call forth
sympathy for neglected truths, for noble but oppressed persons, for
downtrodden causes, and to make men feel that through all outward
beauty and all pure inward affection God himself is addressing
them." We may admit all this, and yet find fault with the
moralizations and homilies of Whittier. The poetry of Dante and
Milton is full of ethical passion, and occasionally a little sermon
is wedged in; yet they do not treat us to endless broadsides of
preaching, as Whittier does in his earlier poems, and in some of
his later ones. But there is this distinction: the moral in Dante
and Milton and Shakspere and Emerson is so garnitured with beauty
that while our souls are ennobled our imaginations are gratified.
But in many of Whittier's poems we have the bare skeleton of the
moral, without the rounded contour and delicate tints of the living
body of beauty. His reform poems have been called stump-speeches in
verse. His anti-slavery poems are, with a few exceptions, devoid of
beauty. They should have been written in the manner he himself
commends in a review of Longfellow's "Evangeline": he should have
depicted the truth strongly and attractively, and left to the
reader the censure and the indignation. Mr. Whittier seems to know
his peculiar limitations as well as his critics. He speaks of
himself as one--
"Whose rhyme
Beat often Labor's hurried time,
Or Duty's rugged march through storm and strife,"
and he has once or twice expressed himself in prose in a way that
seems to show that he recognizes the artistic mistake in the
construction of his earlier poems. The omission of the moral
_envoi_ from so many of his maturer creations strengthens one in
this surmise. In 1867 Whittier published the following letter in
the New York _Nation_:
"TO THE EDITOR OF THE NATION:
"I am very well aware that merely personal explanations are not
likely to be as interesting to the public as to the parties
concerned; but I am induced to notice what is either a
misconception on thy part, or, as is most probable, a failure on my
own to make myself clearly understood. In the review of 'The Tent
on the Beach' in thy paper of last week, I confess I was not a
little surprised to find myself represented as regretting my
life-long and active participation in the great conflict which has
ended in the emancipation of the slave, and that I had not devoted
myself to merely literary pursuits. In the half-playful lines upon
which this statement is founded, if I did not feel at liberty to
boast of my anti-slavery labors and magnify my editorial
profession, I certainly did not mean to underrate them, or express
the shadow of a regret that they had occupied so large a share of
my time and thought. The simple fact is that I cannot be
sufficiently thankful to the Divine Providence that so early called
my attention to the great interests of humanity, saving me from the
poor ambitions and miserable jealousies of a selfish pursuit of
literary reputation. Up to a comparatively recent period my
writings have been simply episodical, something apart from the real
object and aim of my life; and whatever of favor they have found
with the public has come to me as a grateful surprise rather than
as an expected reward. As I have never staked all upon the chances
of authorship, I have been spared the pain of disappointment and
the temptation to envy those who, as men of letters, deservedly
occupy a higher place in the popular estimation than I have ever
aspired to.
"Truly thy friend,
"John G. Whittier.
"AMESBURY, 9th, 3d mo., 1867."
One is reminded by this letter that Wordsworth once said to Dr. Orville
Dewey, of Boston, that, "although he was known to the world only as a
poet, he had given twelve hours' thought to the condition and prospects
of society for one to poetry." In a letter read at the third decade
meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia, Mr.
Whittier said: "I am not insensible to literary reputation; I love,
perhaps too well, the praise and good-will of my fellow-men; but I set a
higher value on my name as appended to the Anti-Slavery Declaration of
1833 than on the title-page of any book."
In his earlier years our poet was wholly ignorant of the fact that an
artist should love beauty for its own sake. The simple-hearted Quaker
and Puritan farmer-youth thought it almost a sin to spend his time in
the cultivation of the beautiful. In his dedication of the
"Supernaturalism of New England" to his sister, he says:--
"And knowing how my life hath been
A weary work of tongue and pen,
A long, harsh strife with strong-willed men,
Thou wilt not chide my turning,
To con, at times, an idle rhyme,
To pluck a flower from childhood's clime,
Or listen, at Life's noon-day chime,
For the sweet bells of Morning!"
"Poor fellow!" we say at first. And yet there is something refreshing
and noble in such a spirit. It is with difficulty that the Germanic mind
can bring itself to the study of the beautiful as something of co-equal
worth with the moral. Let us leave that, says the Teuton, to the nation
whose word for love of art is "virtue." How Whittier would have abhorred
in his youth and early manhood the following sentiment by one of the
Latin race:--
"The arts require idle, delicate minds, not stoics, especially not
Puritans, easily shocked by dissonance, inclined to sensuous
pleasure, employing their long periods of leisure, their free
reveries, in harmoniously arranging, and with no other object but
enjoyment, forms, colors, and sounds." (Taine's _English
Literature_, II. 332.)
Or the following from the same work:--
"The Puritan destroys the artist, stiffens the man, fetters the
writer, and leaves of artist, man, writer, only a sort of abstract
being, the slave of a watchword. If a Milton springs up among them,
it is because, by his wide curiosity, his travels, his comprehensive
education, and by his independence of spirit, loftily adhered to
even against the sectarians, Milton passes beyond sectarianism." (I.
397, 398.)
Here is another passage from Whittier on this same subject. It is almost
a pity to give it, since the author has apparently repudiated the
sentiment by omitting the lines from his complete works. In the
introduction to "Supernaturalism of New England" he says:--
"If in some few instances, like Burns in view of his national
thistle, I have--
'Turned my weeding-hook aside,
And spared the symbol dear,'
I have been influenced by the comparatively innocent nature and
simple poetic beauty of the traditions in question; yet not even for
the sake of poetry and romance would I confirm in any mind a
pernicious credulity, or seek to absolve myself from that stern duty
which the true man owes to his generation, to expose error whenever
and wherever he finds it."
One more instance. In one of his sketches he is describing an old custom
called "Pope Night," which has been kept up in the Merrimack Valley in
unbroken sequence from the time of the Guy Fawkes plot. The plot is
commemorated by bonfires and effigies of the Pope and others, and
Whittier quotes these lines of a song which is sung on the occasion:--
"Look here! from Rome
The Pope has come,
That fiery serpent dire;
Here's the Pope that we have got,
The old promoter of the plot;
We'll stick a pitchfork in his back,
And throw him in the fire."
Mr. Whittier was so broad-minded in regard to all matters pertaining to
true growth, and withal so conscientious a student of the best
versification, that is, the most natural, that we soon find him
striving, at least, to free himself from all these minor faults.
Consequently his mannerisms more and more drop away. He is a born
preacher. And presently we see in him a decided advance toward the
delineation of what is simply true and beautiful, without the
appreciable pause by the way, "to point a moral and adorn a tale." For a
preacher is not a poet; and true poetic fire must be dimmed at once,
and the divine afflatus be a lack-lustre thing, when appeals by pious
exhortation are brought in to fill out rhyme and metre. Many of
Whittier's purely religious poems are the most exquisite and beautiful
ever written. The tender feeling, the warm-hearted trustfulness, and the
reverent touch of his hymns speak directly to our hearts. The
prayer-hymn at the close of "The Brewing of Soma" ("Dear Lord and Father
of mankind," etc.), and such poems as "At Last" and "The Wish of
To-day," are unsurpassed in sacred song. Some one has said that in
Whittier's books we rarely meet with ideas expressed in such perfection
and idiosyncrasy of manner that ever afterward the same ideas must recur
to our minds in the words of this author and no other; that is to say,
there are few dicta, few portable and universally-quoted passages in his
writings. But exception must be made in favor of his best hymns. Their
stanzas haunt the mind with their beauty, and you are obliged to learn
them by heart before you can have peace. These purely religious
productions show Whittier's work at high-water mark, and as long as the
English language is spoken, they will be employed by those who require a
vehicle for thought, by which the true worship may be served. There is
only one poet in the world whose works will not suffer by reading his
entire poetical productions in consecutive perusal, and that is
Shakspere. Poetry should be read solely for the refreshment and
elevation of the mind, and only when one's mood requires it.
Unquestionably, if so read, all mannerisms that Mr. Whittier might have
been accused of at an early stage in his authorship would not appear so
conspicuous.
One of the mannerisms of our poet is his inclination toward the
four-foot line with consecutive or alternate rhymes. Almost all of
Burns's poetry is written as just described; and it is evident Mr.
Whittier's ear was naturally inclined to it, from his early love for
Burns, his patron saint, as it were, in those then untrodden fields. An
ear educated by Tennyson, and the other Victorian poets, might be unable
to grasp even the beauty of thought unless conveyed by their especial
methods. One is pleased when rhymes are so masked, so subtly
intertwined, and parted by intervening lines, that each shall seem like
a delicate echo of that which preceded it,--the assonance just
remembered, and no more.
* * * * *
A minor mannerism of Whittier is his frequent use of the present
participle in ing, with the verb _to be_; "is flowing," "is shining,"
etc. The jingle of the _ing_ evidently caught the poet's rhyme-loving
ear, and sometimes it really has a very pretty effect. Certain it is he
has used it with great skill, and given his readers insight into another
of his versatile gifts.
As to the originality of our poet there is this to be said: He has a
distinctively national spirit or vision; he is democratic in his
feelings, and treats of indigenous subjects. His vehicle, his poetic
forms and handling, he has treated as minor subjects for thought. He is
democratic, not so powerfully and broadly as Whitman, but more
unaffectedly and sincerely. He has not the magnificent prophetic vision,
or Vorstellungskraft, of Whitman, any more than he has the crushing
mastodon-steps of Whitman's ponderous rhythm. But he has thrown himself
with trembling ardor and patriotism, into the life of his country. It is
this fresh, New-World spirit that entitles him to be called original: he
is non-European. He has not travelled much, nor mingled in the seething
currents of Western and Southern life; but his strong sympathy has gone
forth over the entire land. He also reflects faithfully the quiet scenes
of his own Merrimack Valley. From his descriptions of these scenes we
receive the impression of freshness and originality; and we recognize a
master hand that can so portray them as to make us see the same places,
though only on the printed page.
* * * * *
One regrets using a critical pen at all in discussing such a writer. It
would be ungracious to call to a severe account one who places the most
modest estimate upon his own work, and who has distinctly stated that,
up to "about the year 1865, his writings were simply episodical,
something apart from the real object and aim of [his] life." It is hard
to criticise severely one who is unjust to himself through excess of
diffident humility. In the exquisite Proem to his complete poems he
would fain persuade us that he cannot breathe such notes as those of--
"The old melodious lays
Which softly melt the ages through,
The songs of Spenser's golden days,
Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase,
Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning dew."
But not so, O gentle minstrel of Essex! There are poems of thine which
thousands prefer to the best of Spenser's or Sidney's, and which will
continue to exist as long as beauty is its own excuse for being. Thou
too hast been in Paradise, to fetch thence armfuls of dewy roses for our
delight; not mounting thither by the "stairway of surprise," but along
the common highway of daily duty and noble endeavor, unmindful of the
dust and heat and chafing burdens, but singing aloud thy songs of lofty
cheer, all magically intertwined with pictures of wayside flowers, and
the homely beauty of lowliest things. And thou hast imparted to us the
"groping of the keys of the heavenly harmonies," that no one who loves
thy songs, ever loses from his life.
CHAPTER III.
POEMS SERIATIM.
Among the three or four critical papers on Whittier that have up to this
time been published, there is one that is marked by exceptional vigor;
namely, the admirable philosophical analysis by Mr. David A. Wasson,
published in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for March, 1864. The author gladly
acknowledges his indebtedness to this paper for several things,--chiefly
for its keen _apercu_ into the nature of Whittier's genius, and the
proper psychological grouping of his poems. Mr. Wasson's classification
can hardly be improved upon in its general features. He divides the
literary life of the poet into three epochs,--The Struggle for Life, The
Culture Epoch, and The Epoch of Poetic Realism; and between each of
these he places transitional periods. The lines of his classification,
however, are too sharply drawn, and the epochs seem too minutely
subdivided. Moreover, the present writer would add an introductory or
preparatory period; in other respects it seems to him that the grouping
is as correct as such mathematical measurements of a poet's development
can be. Suppose we group and name the poet's mental epochs as follows:--
FIRST PERIOD.--INTRODUCTORY. 1830-1833.
During this quiet, purely literary epoch, Whittier published
"Legends of New England" and "Moll Pitcher," and edited the
"Literary Remains of Brainard."
SECOND PERIOD.--STORM AND STRESS. 1833-1853.
The beginning of this period was marked by the publication of
"Justice and Expediency," and during its continuance were written
most of the anti-slavery productions, the Indian poems, many
legendary lays and prose pieces, religious lyrics, and "Songs of
Labor." The latter, being partially free from didacticism, leads
naturally up to the third period.
THIRD PERIOD.--TRANSITION. 1853-1860
This Mr. Wasson calls the epoch of culture and religious doubt, the
central poems of which are "Chapel of the Hermits" and "Questions
of Life." We now begin to see a love of art for art's sake, and
there are fewer moral stump-speeches. The indignation of the
reformer is giving place to the calm repose of the artist. And such
ballads as "Mary Garvin" and "Maud Muller" form the introduction to
the culminating (or fourth) epoch in the poet's creative life.
FOURTH PERIOD.--RELIGIOUS AND ARTISTIC REPOSE. 1860-
During this time have been written nearly all the author's great
works, namely, his beautiful ballads, as well as "Snow-Bound" and
"The Tent on the Beach." The literary style is now mature. The
beautiful is sought for its own sake, both in nature and in lowly
life. It is a season of trust and _naive_ simplicity.
The works produced during the Introductory period have already been
discussed in the biographical portion of this volume.
Before passing rapidly in review some of the more important detached
poems of the three latter periods (reserving a number of poems for
consideration by groups), we must be allowed to offer a few criticisms
on the earlier poems in general, meaning by this the ones published
previous to the "Songs of Labor" in 1850. These earlier productions are
to be commended chiefly for two things: (1) the subjects are drawn from
original and native sources, and (2) the slavery poems are full of moral
stamina and fiery indignation at oppression. There are single poems of
great merit and beauty. But the style of most of them is unoriginal,
being merely an echo of that of the English Lake School. Whittier's
poetical development has been a steady growth. His genius matured late,
and in his early poems there is little promise of the exquisite work of
his riper years, unless it is a distinct indication of his rare power of
telling a story in verse. It must be remembered that when Whittier began
to write, American literature had yet to be created. There was not a
single great American poem, with the exception of Bryant's
"Thanatopsis." The prominent poets of that time--Percival, Brainard,
Trumbull, Joel Barlow, Hillhouse, Pierpont, Dana, Sprague--are all
forgotten now. The breath of immortality was not upon anything they
wrote. A national literature is a thing of slow growth. Every writer is
insensibly influenced by the intellectual tone of his neighbors and
contemporaries. Judged in the light of his early disadvantages, and
estimated by the standard of that time, Whittier's first essays are
deserving of much credit, and they have had a distinct aesthetic and
moral value in the development of American literature and the American
character. But their deficiencies are very grave. There is a good deal
of commonplace, and much extravagance of rhetoric. There are a great
many "Lines" called forth by circumstances not at all poetical in their
suggestions. Emotion and rhyme and commonplace incident are not enough
to make a poem. One cannot embalm the memory of all one's friends in
verse. In casting about for an explanation of the circumstance that our
poet has so often chosen tame and uninspiring themes for his poems, we
reach the conclusion that it is due to his solitary and uneventful
life, and to the subdued and art-chilling atmosphere of his Quaker
religion. You get, at any rate, no true impression of the intellectual
breadth of the poet's mind from many of the productions of the period we
are considering: the theme is too weak to support the poetical structure
reared upon it. The poems and essays are written by one untoughened and
unvitalized by varied and cheerful intercourse with men and affairs, a
state of mind that was changed considerably as Mr. Whittier emerged from
his semi-obscurity into a larger comprehension of his own powers.
A minor fault of this period is the too frequent interruption of
explanatory notes, that break and mar the free-flowing melody of
versified thought. We find the same blemish in Longfellow's early work.
* * * * *
At the opening of the complete poetical works of Whittier stand two long
Indian poems, with their war-paint and blood--like scarlet maples at the
entrance of an aboriginal forest. The first of these poems, "Mogg
Megone," is every way inferior to the second, or "The Bridal of
Pennacook." "Mogg Megone" was published in 1836, and "The Bridal of
Pennacook" in 1848. Mr. Whittier half apologizes for retaining the
former of these in his complete works. There is, amongst much that,
eliminated, might not be missed, a certain fresh and realistic diction,
or nomenclature. It is picturesque, in portions somewhat dramatic and
thrilling, and now is valuable as a link between the early stage of his
authorship and the advanced culture of later years. In style it is an
echo of Scott's "Lady of the Lake" or "Marmion."
In "The Bridal of Pennacook" we have an Indian idyl of unquestionable
power and beauty, a descriptive poem full of the cool, mossy sweetness
of mountain landscapes, and although too artificial and subjective for a
poem of primitive life, yet saturated with the imagery of the wigwam and
the forest. A favorite article of food with the Indians of Northern Ohio
was dried bear's-meat dipped in maple syrup. There is a savor of the
like ferity and sweetness in this poem. It is almost wholly free from
the strongly-marked faults of "Mogg Megone," and (that test of all
tests) it is pleasant reading. Its two cardinal defects are lack of
simplicity of treatment, and tenuity or triviality of the subject, or
plot. The story is sometimes lost sight of in a jungle of verbiage and
description. In contrasting such a poem with "Hiawatha," we see the
wisdom of Longfellow in choosing an antique vehicle, or rhythmic style.
Aborigines have a dialect of their own; the sentences of an Indian brave
being as abrupt and sharp as the wild screams of an eagle. The set
speeches of the North American Indians are always full of divers stock
metaphors about natural scenery, wild animals, totems, and spirits, and
are so different from those of civilized life that an expert can
instantly detect a forgery or an imitation, so that all incongruities
that attribute the complex and refined emotions of civilized life to the
savage, seriously mar the pleasure of the reader. The descriptions of
natural scenery in these Indian legends of Mr. Whittier's are fine, as
all such writing by his facile pen was ever felicitous. And by virtue of
this descriptive power, these idyls will be held long in grateful
remembrance.
In plan the poem is like the "Decameron," the "Princess," the
"Canterbury Tales," and "Tales of a Wayside Inn." The different portions
are supposed to be related by five persons,--a lawyer, a clergyman, a
merchant and his daughter, and the poet,--who are all sight-seeing in
the White Mountains. The opening description, in blank verse, conveys a
vague but not very powerful impression of sublimity. The musical
nomenclature of the red aborigines is finely handled, and such words as
Pennacook, Babboosuck, Contoocook, Bashaba, and Weetamoo chime out here
and there along the pages with as silvery a sweetness as the Tuscan
words in Macaulay's "Lays." At the wedding of Weetamoo we have--
"Pike and perch from the Suncook taken,
Nuts from the trees of the Black Hills shaken,
Cranberries picked from the Squamscot bog,
And grapes from the vines of Piscataquog:
And, drawn from that great stone vase which stands
In the river scooped by a spirit's hands,
Garnished with spoons of shell and horn,
Stood the birchen dishes of smoking corn."
The following stanza on the heroine, Weetamoo, is a fine one:--
"Child of the forest!--strong and free,
Slight-robed, with loosely flowing hair,
She swam the lake, or climbed the tree,
Or struck the flying bird in air.
O'er the heaped drifts of winter's moon
Her snow-shoes tracked the hunter's way;
And, dazzling in the summer noon,
The blade of her light oar threw off its shower of spray!"
The "Song of Indian Women," at the close of "The Bridal of Pennacook,"
is admirable for melody, weird and wild beauty, and naturalness. It is a
lament for the lost Weetamoo, who, unfortunate in her married life, has
committed suicide by sailing over the rapids in her canoe:--
"The Dark Eye has left us,
The Spring-bird has flown;
On the pathway of spirits
She wanders alone.
The song of the wood-dove has died on our shore,--
_Mat wonck kunna-monee!_--We hear it no more!
* * * * *
O mighty Sowanna!
Thy gateways unfold,
From thy wigwams of sunset
Lift curtains of gold!
Take home the poor Spirit whose journey is o'er,--
_Mat wonck kunna-monee!_--We see her no more!"
There are two minor Indian poems by Whittier that have the true ring;
namely, the "Truce of Piscataqua" and "Funeral Tree of the Sokokis." The
latter well-known poem is pitched in as high and solemn a key as
Platen's "Grab im Busento," a poem similar in theme to Whittier's:--
"They heave the stubborn trunk aside,
The firm roots from the earth divide,--
The rent beneath yawns dark and wide.
And there the fallen chief is laid,
In tasselled garbs of skins arrayed,
And girded with his wampum-braid."
_Whittier._
"In der wogenleeren Hoehlung wuehlten sie empor die Erde,
Senkten tief hinein den Leichnam, mit der Ruestung auf dem Pferde.
Deckten dann mit Erde wieder ihn und seine stolze Habe."
_Platen._
In the empty river-bottom hurriedly they dug the death-pit,
Deep therein they sank the hero with his armor and his war-steed,
Covered then with earth and darkness him and all his splendid
trappings.
When the reader, who has worked gloomily along through Whittier's
anti-slavery and miscellaneous poems, reaches the "Songs of Labor," he
feels at once the breath of a fresher spirit,--as a traveller who has
been toiling for weary leagues through sandy deserts bares his brow with
delight to the coolness and shade of a green forest through whose thick
roof of leaves the garish sunlight scarcely sifts. We feel that in these
poems a new departure has been made. The wrath of the reformer has
expended itself, and the poet now returns, with mind elevated and more
tensely keyed by his moral warfare, to the study of the beautiful in
native themes and in homely life. "The Shipbuilders," "The Shoemakers,"
"The Fishermen," and "The Huskers" are genuine songs; and more shame to
the craftsmen celebrated if they do not get them set to music, and sing
them while at their work. One cannot help feeling that Walt Whitman's
call for some one to make songs for American laborers had already been
met in a goodly degree by these spirited "Songs of Labor." What workman
would not be glad to carol such stanzas as the following, if they were
set to popular airs?
"Hurrah! the seaward breezes
Sweep down the bay amain;
Heave up, my lads, the anchor!
Run up the sail again!
Leave to the lubber landsmen
The rail-car and the steed:
The stars of heaven shall guide us,
The breath of heaven shall speed."
_The Fishermen._
"Ho! workers of the old time styled
The Gentle Craft of Leather!
Young brothers of the ancient guild,
Stand forth once more together!
Call out again your long array,
In the olden merry manner!
Once more, on gay St. Crispin's day,
Fling out your blazoned banner!
Rap, rap! upon the well-worn stone
How falls the polished hammer!
Rap, rap! the measured sound has grown
A quick and merry clamor.
Now shape the sole! now deftly curl
The glossy vamp around it,
And bless the while the bright-eyed girl
Whose gentle fingers bound it!"
_The Shoemakers._
The publication of "The Chapel of the Hermits" and "Questions of Life,"
in 1853, marks (as has been said) the period of culture and of
religious doubt,--doubt which ended in trust. In this period we have
such genuine undidactic poems as "The Barefoot Boy."
"Blessings on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face,
Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace."
Also, such fine poems as "Flowers in Winter" and "To My Old
Schoolmaster;" as well as the excellent ballads, "Maud Muller,"
"Kathleen," and "Mary Garvin."
The period in Whittier's life from about 1858 to 1868 we may call the
Ballad Decade,[26] for within this time were produced most of his
immortal ballads. We say immortal, believing that if all else that he
has written shall perish, his finest ballads will carry his name down to
a remote posterity. "The Tent on the Beach" is mainly a series of
ballads; and "Snow-Bound," although not a ballad, is still a narrative
poem closely allied to that species of poetry, the difference between a
ballad and an idyl being that one is made to be sung and the other to be
read: both narrate events as they occur, and leave to the reader all
sentiment and reflection.
[Footnote 26: The beginning of this decade nearly coincides with the
fourth or final period in our classification, upon the consideration of
which we shall now enter.]
* * * * *
The finest ballads of Whittier have the power of keeping us in
breathless suspense of interest until the _denouement_ or the
catastrophe, as the case may be. The popularity of "Maud Muller" is well
deserved. What a rich and mellow translucence it has! How it appeals to
the universal heart! And yet "The Witch's Daughter" and "Telling the
Bees" are more exquisite creations than "Maud Muller": they have a
spontaneity, a subtle pathos, a sublimated sweetness of despair that
take hold of the very heart-strings, and thus deal with deeper emotions
than such light, objective ballads as "Maud Muller" and "Skipper
Ireson's Ride." But the surface grace of the two latter have of course
made them the more popular, just as the "Scarlet Letter" finds greater
favor with most people than does "The House of the Seven Gables,"
although Hawthorne rightly thought the "Seven Gables" to be his finest
and subtlest work.
* * * * *
Mark the Chaucerian freshness of the opening stanzas of "The Witch's
Daughter":--
"It was the pleasant harvest time,
When cellar-bins are closely stowed,
And garrets bend beneath their load,
And the old swallow-haunted barns--
Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams
Through which the moted sunlight streams.
And winds blow freshly in, to shake
The red plumes of the roosted cocks,
And the loose hay-mow's scented locks--
Are filled with summer's ripened stores,
Its odorous grass and barley sheaves,
From their low scaffolds to their eaves."
A companion ballad to "The Witch's Daughter" is "The Witch of Wenham," a
poem almost equal to it in merit, and like it ending happily. These
ballads do not quite attain the almost supernatural simplicity of
Wordsworth's "Lucy Gray" and "We are Seven"; but they possess an equal
interest, excited by the same poetical qualities. "Telling the Bees,"
however, seems to the writer as purely Wordsworthian as anything
Wordsworth ever wrote:--
"Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence!
Mistress Mary is dead and gone!"
How the tears spring to the eyes in reading this immortal little poem!
The bee-hives ranged in the garden, the sun "tangling his wings of fire
in the trees," the dog whining low, the old man "with his cane to his
chin,"--we all know the scene: its every feature appeals to our
sympathies and associations.
* * * * *
"The Double-headed Snake of Newbury" is a whimsical story, in which the
poet waxes right merry as he relates how--
"Far and wide the tale was told,
Like a snowball growing while it rolled.
The nurse hushed with it the baby's cry;
And it served, in the worthy minister's eye,
To paint the primitive serpent by.
Cotton Mather came galloping down
All the way to Newbury town,
With his eyes agog and his ears set wide,
And his marvellous inkhorn at his side;
Stirring the while in the shallow pool
Of his brains for the lore he learned at school,
To garnish the story, with here a streak
Of Latin, and there another of Greek:
And the tales he heard and the notes he took,
Behold! are they not in his Wonder-Book?"
A word about Whittier's "Prophecy of Samuel Sewall." It seems that old
Judge Sewall made the prophecies of the Bible his favorite study. One of
his ideas was that America was to be the site of the New Jerusalem.
Toward the end of his book entitled "Phenomena Quaedam Apocalyptica; ...
or ... a Description of the New Heaven as it makes to those who stand
upon the New Earth" (1697), he gives utterance to the triumphant
prophecy that forms the subject of Whittier's poem. His language is so
quaint that the reader will like to see the passage in Sewall's own
words:--
"As long as Plum Island shall faithfully keep the commanded post,
notwithstanding till the hectoring words and hard blows of the
proud and boisterous ocean; as long as any salmon or sturgeon shall
swim in the streams of Merrimac, or any perch or pickerel in Crane
Pond; as long as the sea-fowl shall know the time of their coming,
and not neglect seasonably to visit the places of their
acquaintance; as long as any cattle shall be fed with the grass
growing in the meadows, which do humbly bow down themselves before
Turkey Hill; as long as any sheep shall walk upon Old-Town Hills,
and shall from thence pleasantly look down upon the River Parker,
and the fruitful marshes lying beneath; as long as any free and
harmless doves shall find a white oak or other tree within the
township, to perch, or feed, or build a careless nest upon, and
shall voluntarily present themselves to perform the office of
gleaners after barley-harvest; as long as Nature shall not grow old
and dote, but shall constantly remember to give the rows of Indian
corn their education by pairs; so long shall Christians be born
there, and being first made meet, shall from thence be translated to
be made partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light."
Moses Coit Tyler, in his "History of American Literature," II., p. 102
(note), says: "Whittier speaks of Newbury as Sewall's 'native town,' but
Sewall was born at Horton, England. He also describes Sewall as an 'old
man,' propped on his staff of age when he made this prophecy; but Sewall
was then forty-five years old."
There are two or three other ballads in which Whittier is said to have
made historical blunders. It really does not seem of much importance
whether he did or did not get the precise facts in each case. The
important point is that he made beautiful ballads. But it will be right
to give, in brief, the objections that have been brought against
"Skipper Ireson's Ride" and "Barbara Frietchie." "The King's Missive"
will be discussed in another place.
* * * * *
Apropos of Skipper Ireson, Mr. John W. Chadwick has spoken as follows in
_Harper's Monthly_ for July, 1874:--
"In one of the queerest corners of the town [Marblehead], there
stands a house as modest as the Lee house was magnificent. So long
as he lived it was the home of 'Old Flood Oirson,' whose name and
fame have gone farther and fared worse than any other fact or fancy
connected with his native town. Plain, honest folk don't know about
poetic license, and I have often heard the poet's conduct in the
matter of Skipper Ireson's ride characterized with profane severity.
He unwittingly departed from the truth in various particulars. The
wreck did not, as the ballad recites, contain any of 'his own
town's-people.' Moreover, four of those it did contain _were_ saved
by a whale-boat from Provincetown. It was off Cape Cod, and not in
Chaleur Bay, that the wreck was deserted; and the desertion was in
this wise: It was in the night that the wreck was discovered. In the
darkness and the heavy sea it was impossible to give assistance.
When the skipper went below, he ordered the watch to lie by the
wreck till 'dorning'; but the watch wilfully disobeyed, and
afterward, to shield themselves, laid all the blame upon the
skipper. Then came the tarring and feathering. The women, whose
_role_ in the ballad is so striking, had nothing to do with it. The
vehicle was not a cart, but a dory; and the skipper, instead of
being contrite, said, 'I thank you for your ride.' I asked one of
the skipper's contemporaries what the effect was on the skipper.
'Cowed him to death,' said he, 'cowed him to death.' He went skipper
again the next year, but never afterward. He had been dead only a
year or two when Whittier's ballad appeared. His real name was not
Floyd, as Whittier supposes, but Benjamin, 'Flood' being one of
those nicknames that were not the exception, but the rule, in the
old fishing-days. For many years before his death the old man earned
a precarious living by dory-fishing in the bay, and selling his
daily catch from a wheelbarrow. When old age and blindness overtook
him, and his last trip was made, his dory was hauled up into the
lane before his house, and there went to rot and ruin.... The hoarse
refrain of Whittier's ballad is the best-known example of the once
famous Marblehead dialect, and it is not a bad one. To what extent
this dialect was peculiar to Marblehead it might be difficult to
determine. Largely, no doubt, it was inherited from English
ancestors. Its principal delight consisted in pronouncing _o_ for
_a_, and _a_ for _o_. For example, if an old-fashioned Marbleheader
wished to say he 'was born in a barn,' he would say, he 'was barn in
a born.' The _e_ was also turned into _a_, and even into _o_, and
the _v_ into _w_. 'That vessel's stern' became 'that 'wessel's
starn,' or 'storn.' I remember a school-boy declaiming from
Shakspere, 'Thou little walliant, great in willany.' There was a
great deal of shortening. The fine name Crowninshield became
Grounsel, and Florence became Flurry, and a Frenchman named
Blancpied found himself changed into Blumpy. Endings in _une_ and
_ing_ were alike changed into _in_. Misfortune was misfartin', and
fishing was always fishin'. There were words peculiar to the place.
One of these was planchment for ceiling. Crim was another, meaning
to shudder with cold, and there was an adjective, crimmy. Still
another was _clitch_, meaning to stick badly, surely an
onomatopoetic word that should be naturalized before it is too late.
Some of the swearing, too, was neither by the throne nor footstool,
such as 'Dahst my eyes!' and 'Godfrey darmints.' The ancient
dialect in all its purity is now seldom used. It crops out here and
there sometimes where least expected, and occasionally one meets
with some old veteran whose speech has lost none of the ancient
savor."
Now for "Barbara Frietchie." The incident of the poem was given to
Whittier by the novelist, Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, whose letter we
append. The philanthropist, Dorothea Dix, investigated the case in
Frederick, and she says that Barbara did wave the flag, etc. An army
officer also made affidavit of the truth of the lines. A young Southern
soldier has declared that he was present, and that his was one of the
shots that hit the flagstaff!
On the other side are Samuel Tyler and Jacob Engelbrecht, the latter an
old and greatly respected citizen of Frederick, and living directly
opposite Barbara's house. Jacob wrote to the Baltimore _Sun_, saying
that Stonewall Jackson's corps marched through another street, and did
not approach Dame Frietchie's house at all. Lee's column did pass it, he
says; but he, who stood watching at his window, saw no flag whatever at
_her_ window.
He says that when ten days later General McClellan passed through the
town she did exhibit a flag.
Finally, General Jubal Early comes upon the witness stand, and testifies
that as the Southern troops passed through Frederick, there were only
two cases of waving of Union flags; one of these was by a little girl,
about ten years old, who stood on the platform of a house and waved
incessantly a little "candy flag," and cried in a dull, monotonous
voice: "Hurrah for the Stars and Stripes! Down with the Stars and Bars!"
No one molested her. The other case was that of a coarse,
slovenly-looking woman, who rushed up to the entrance of an alley and
waved a dirty United States flag.
* * * * *
"The Pipes at Lucknow" is a poem full of martial fire and lyric
rush,--the subject a capital one for a poet. A little band of English,
besieged in a town in the heart of India, and full of despair, hear in
the distance the sweetest sound that ever fell upon their ears, namely,
the shrill pibroch of the MacGregor Clan; and--
"When the far-off dust-cloud
To plaided legions grew,
Full tenderly and blithesomely
The pipes of rescue blew!"
Another group of ballads comprises "Cobbler Keezar's Vision," "Amy
Wentworth," and "The Countess."
In the first of these, old Cobbler Keezar, of the early Puritan times,
by virtue of a mystic lapstone, sees a vision of our age of religious
tolerance, and wonders greatly thereat:--
"Keezar sat on the hillside
Upon his cobbler's form,
With a pan of coals on either hand
To keep his waxed-ends warm.
And there, in the golden weather,
He stitched and hammered and sung;
In the brook he moistened his leather,
In the pewter mug his tongue."
The ballad of "Amy Wentworth" treats of the same subject as "Among The
Hills," namely, a superior woman, of the white-handed caste, falling in
love with and marrying a broad-shouldered, brown-handed hero, with a
right manly heart and brain.
Many and many a poem of Whittier's is spoiled by its too great
length,--a thing that is fatal in a lyric. The long prelude to "Amy
Wentworth" should have been omitted.
* * * * *
The scene of the lovely poem entitled "The Countess" is laid in Rocks
Village, a part of East Haverhill, and lying on the Merrimack, where--
"The river's steel-blue crescent curves
To meet, in ebb and flow,
The single broken wharf that serves
For sloop and gundelow.
With salt sea-scents along its shores
The heavy hay-boats crawl,
The long antennae of their oars
In lazy rise and fall.
Along the gray abutment's wall
The idle shad-net dries;
The toll-man in his cobbler's stall
Sits smoking with closed eyes."
Whittier dedicates his poem to his father's family physician, Elias
Weld, of Rocks Village. The story which forms the subject of the poem is
a romantic one, and exquisitely has our poet embalmed it in verse. From
a sketch by Rebecca I. Davis, of East Haverhill, the following facts
relating to the personages that figure in the poem have been culled:--
The Countess was Miss Mary Ingalls, daughter of Henry and Abigail
Ingalls, of Rocks Village. She was born in 1786, and is still remembered
by a few old inhabitants as a young girl of remarkable beauty. She was
of medium height, had long golden curls, violet eyes, fair complexion,
and rosy cheeks, and was exceedingly modest and lovable. It was in the
year 1806 that a little company of French exiles fled from the Island of
Guadaloupe on account of a bloody rebellion or uprising of the
inhabitants. Among the fugitives were Count Francis de Vipart and Joseph
Rochemont de Poyen. The company reached Newburyport. The two gentlemen
just mentioned settled at Rocks Village, and both married there. Mary
Ingalls was only a laborer's daughter, and of course her marriage with
the count created a sensation in the simple, rustic community. The
count was a pleasant, stately man, and a fine violinist. The bridal
dress, says Miss Davis, was of a pink satin, with an overdress of white
lace; her slippers also were of white satin. The count delighted to
lavish upon her the richest apparel, yet nothing spoiled the sweet
modesty of her disposition. After one short year of happy married life
the lovely wife died. Assiduous attention to a sick mother had brought
on consumption. In the village God's-acre her gray tombstone is already
covered with moss.
The count returned to his native island overwhelmed with grief. In after
years, however, he married again. When he died he was interred in the
family burial-place of the De Viparts at Bordeaux. He left several
children.
* * * * *
Mr. Stedman, in his fine synthetic survey of American poetry, published
in _The Century_, has remarked that most of our early poetry and
painting is full of landscape. The loveliest season in America is the
autumn, when, as Whittier beautifully says, the woods "wear their robes
of praise, the south winds softly sigh,"--
"And sweet, calm days in golden haze
Melt down the amber sky."
We have plenty of idyls of autumn color, like Buchanan Read's "Closing
Scene," and portions of Longfellow's "Hiawatha." But American winter
landscapes are as poetical as those of autumn.[27] It is probable that
the scarcity of snow-idyls hitherto is due to the supposed cheerlessness
of the snow. But with the rapid multiplication of winter comforts, our
nature-worship is cautiously broadening so as to include even the stern
beauty of winter. There are already a good many signs of this in
literature. We have had, of late, lovely little snow-and-winter
vignettes in prose by John Burroughs of New York, and Edith Thomas of
Ohio; and there is plenty of room for further study of winter in other
regions of the United States. The most delicate bit of realistic winter
poetry in literature is Emerson's "Snow-Storm." Mr. Whittier is an
ardent admirer of that writer--as what poet is not?--and his own
productions show frequent traces of Emersonianisms. He has prefixed to
"Snow-Bound" a quotation from the "Snow-Storm," and there can scarcely
be a doubt that to the countless obligations we all owe Emerson must be
added this: that he inspired the writing of Whittier's finest poem, and
the best idyl of American rural life. It is too complex and diffusive
fully to equal in artistic purity and plastic proportion the "Cotter's
Saturday Night" of Burns; but it is much richer than that poem in
felicitous single epithets, which, like little wicket doors, open up to
the eye of memory many a long-forgotten picture of early life.
[Footnote 27: What is the subtle fascination that lurks in such bits of
winter poetry as the following, collected by the writer out of his
reading?
"Yesterday the sullen year
Saw the snowy whirlwind fly."--_Gray._
"All winter drives along the darkened air."--_Thomson._
"High-ridged the whirled drift has almost reached
The powdered keystone of the churchyard porch;
Mute hangs the hooded bell; the tombs lie buried."--_Grahame._
"Alas! alas! thou snow-smitten wood of
Troy, and mountains of Ida."--_Sophocles._
"O hard, dull bitterness of cold."--_Whittier._
"And in the narrow house o' death
Let winter round me rave."--_Burns._
"The mesmerizer, Snow,
With his hand's first sweep
Put the earth to sleep."--_Robert Browning._
"And the caked snow is shuffled
From the plough-boy's heavy shoon."--_Keats._]
"Snow-Bound" was published in 1860, and was written, Mr. Whittier has
said, "to beguile the weariness of a sick-chamber." The poet has obeyed
the canon of Lessing, and instead of giving us dead description wholly,
has shown us his characters in action, and extended his story over three
days and the two intervening nights,--that is to say, the main action
covers that time: the whole time mentioned in the poem is a week. It is
unnecessary to give here any further account of the idyl than has
already been furnished in the account of Whittier's boyhood.
"The Tent on the Beach" is a cluster of ballads. In accordance with a
familiar fiction, they are supposed to be sung, or told, by several
persons, in this case three, namely, the poet himself, "a lettered
magnate" (James T. Fields), and a traveller (Bayard Taylor). All of the
poems are readable, and many of them are to be classed among Whittier's
best lyrics. "The Wreck of Rivermouth," "The Changeling," and
"Kallundborg Church" are masterpieces in the line of ballads. In "The
Dead Ship of Harpswell" we have the fine phrase,--
"O hundred-harbored Maine!"
Whittier has now become almost a perfect master of verbal melody.
Hearken to this:--
"Oho!" she muttered, "ye're brave to-day!
But I hear the little waves laugh and say,
'The broth will be cold that waits at home;
For it's one to go, but another to come!'"
There is a light and piquant humor about some of the interludes of the
"Tent on the Beach." The song in the last of these contains a striking
and original stanza concerning the ocean:--
"Its waves are kneeling on the strand,
As kneels the human knee,
Their white locks bowing to the sand,
The priesthood of the sea!"
"Among the Hills" is a little farm-idyl, or love-idyl, of the New
Hampshire mountain land, and bearing some resemblance to Tennyson's
"Gardener's Daughter." It is an excellent specimen of the poems of
Whittier that reach the popular heart, and engage its sympathies. In the
remotest farm-houses of the land you are almost sure to find among their
few books a copy of Whittier's Poems, well-thumbed and soiled with use.
The opening description of the prelude to "Among the Hills" could not be
surpassed by Bion or Theocritus. In this poem a fresh interest is
excited in the reader by the fact that the city woman falls in love with
a manly farmer, thus happily reversing the old, old story of the city
man wooing and winning the rustic beauty. The farmer accuses the fair
city maid of coquetry. She replies:
"'Nor frock nor tan can hide the man;
And see you not, my farmer,
How weak and fond a woman waits
Behind this silken armor?
'I love you: on that love alone,
And not my worth, presuming,
Will you not trust for summer fruit
The tree in May-day blooming?'
Alone the hangbird overhead,
His hair-swung cradle straining,
Looked down to see love's miracle,--
The giving that is gaining."
In "Lines on a Fly-Leaf," the author of "Snow-Bound" gives in his hearty
adherence to that movement for the elevation of woman, and the securing
of her rights as a human being, which is perhaps the most significant
and important of the many agitations of this agitated age.
* * * * *
The poem "Miriam," like "The Preacher," is one of those long sermons, or
meditations in verse, which Whittier loves to spin out of his mind in
solitude. It contains in "Shah Akbar" a fine Oriental ballad.
* * * * *