CONCORD, March 5, 1856.
FRIEND RICKETSON,--I have been out of town, else I should have
acknowledged your letter before. Though not in the best mood for
writing, I will say what I can now. You plainly have a rare, though a
cheap, resource in your shanty. Perhaps the time will come when every
country-seat will have one,--when every country-seat will _be one_. I
would advise you to see that shanty business out, though you go
shanty-mad. Work your vein till it is exhausted, or conducts you to a
broader one; so that Channing shall stand before your shanty, and say,
"That is your house."
This has indeed been a grand winter for me, and for all of us. I am
not considering how much I have enjoyed it. What matters it how happy
or unhappy we have been, if we have minded our business and advanced
our affairs? I have made it a part of my business to wade in the snow
and take the measure of the ice. The ice on one of our ponds was just
two feet thick on the first of March; and I have to-day been surveying
a wood-lot, where I sank about two feet at every step.
It is high time that you, fanned by the warm breezes of the Gulf
Stream, had begun to "_lay_" for even the Concord hens have, though
one wonders where they find the raw material of egg-shell here. Beware
how you put off your laying to any later spring, else your cackling
will not have the inspiring early spring sound.
I was surprised to hear the other day that Channing was in New
Bedford. When he was here last (in December, I think), he said, like
himself, in answer to my inquiry where he lived, "that he did not know
the name of the place;" so it has remained in a degree of obscurity to
me. As you have made it certain to me that he is in New Bedford,
perhaps I can return the favor by putting you on the track to his
boarding-house there. Mrs. Arnold told Mrs. Emerson where it was; and
the latter thinks, though she may be mistaken, that it was at a Mrs.
Lindsay's.
I am rejoiced to hear that you are getting on so bravely with him and
his verses. He and I, as you know, have been old cronies,[68]--
"Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill,
Together both, ere the high lawns appeared
Under the opening eyelids of the morn,
We drove afield, and both together heared," etc.
"But O, the heavy change," now he is gone. The Channing you have seen
and described is the real Simon Pure. You have seen him. Many a good
ramble may you have together! You will see in him still more of the
same kind to attract and to puzzle you. How to serve him most
effectually has long been a problem with his friends. Perhaps it is
left for you to solve it. I suspect that the most that you or any one
can do for him is to appreciate his genius,--to buy and read, and
cause others to buy and read, his poems. That is the hand which he has
put forth to the world,--take hold of that. Review them if you
can,--perhaps take the risk of publishing something more which he may
write. Your knowledge of Cowper will help you to know Channing. He
will accept sympathy and aid, but he will not bear questioning, unless
the aspects of the sky are particularly auspicious. He will ever be
"reserved and enigmatic," and you must deal with him at arm's length.
I have no secrets to tell you concerning him, and do not wish to call
obvious excellences and defects by far-fetched names. I think I have
already spoken to you more, and more to the purpose, on this theme,
than I am likely to write now; nor need I suggest how witty and poetic
he is, and what an inexhaustible fund of good fellowship you will find
in him.
As for visiting you in April, though I am inclined enough to take some
more rambles in your neighborhood, especially by the seaside, I dare
not engage myself, nor allow you to expect me. The truth is, I have my
enterprises now as ever, at which I tug with ridiculous feebleness,
but admirable perseverance, and cannot say when I shall be
sufficiently fancy-free for such an excursion.
You have done well to write a lecture on Cowper. In the expectation of
getting you to read it here, I applied to the curators of our
Lyceum;[69] but, alas, our Lyceum has been a failure this winter for
want of funds. It ceased some weeks since, with a debt, they tell me,
to be carried over to the next year's account. Only one more lecture
is to be read by a Signor Somebody, an Italian, paid for by private
subscription, as a deed of charity to the lecturer. They are not rich
enough to offer you your expenses even, though probably a month or two
ago they would have been glad of the chance.
However, the old house has not failed yet. That offers you lodging for
an indefinite time after you get into it; and in the meanwhile I offer
you bed and board in my father's house,--always excepting hair pillows
and new-fangled bedding.
Remember me to your family.