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LITERARY SHRINES

FIFTH EDITION

* * * * * *

_BY DR. WOLFE_

Uniform with this volume

A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE AMONG THE HAUNTS OF SOME FAMOUS BRITISH AUTHORS

_Treating descriptively and reminiscently of the homes and resorts of English writers from the time of Chaucer to the present, and of the scenes commemorated in their works_

262 pages. Illustrated with four photogravures. $1.25

A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE AND LITERARY SHRINES

Two volumes in a box, $2.50

* * * * * *

LITERARY SHRINES

The Haunts of Some Famous American Authors

by

THEODORE F. WOLFE M.D. PH.D.

Author of A Literary Pilgrimage etc.

J. B. Lippincott Company Philadelphia. MDCCCXCV

Copyright, 1895, By Theodore F. Wolfe.

Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U.S.A.

TO

MY WIFE,

MY SYMPATHETIC AND APPRECIATIVE COMPANION IN PILGRIMAGES TO MANY

LITERARY SHRINES

IN THE NEW WORLD AND THE OLD, THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.

PREFACE

For some years it has been the delightful privilege of the writer of the present volume to ramble and sojourn in the scenes amid which his best-beloved authors erst lived and wrote. He has made repeated pilgrimages to most of the shrines herein described, and has been, at one time or another, favored by intercourse and correspondence with many of the authors adverted to or with their surviving friends and neighbors. In the ensuing pages he has endeavored to portray these shrines in pen-pictures which, it is hoped, may be interesting to those who are unable to visit them and helpful and companionable for those who can and will. If certain prominent American authors receive little more than mention in these pages, it is mainly because so few objects and places associated with their lives and writings can now be indisputably identified: in some instances the writer has expended more time upon fruitless quests for shrines which proved to be non-existent or of doubtful genuineness than upon others which are themes for the chapters of this booklet.

T. F. W.

CONTENTS

THE CONCORD PILGRIMAGE PAGE I. A VILLAGE OF LITERARY SHRINES.

_Abodes of Thoreau--The Alcotts--Channing--Sanborn--Hudson--Hoar-- Wheildon--Bartlett--The Historic Common--Cemetery--Church_ 17

II. THE OLD MANSE.

_Abode of Dr. Ripley--The Emersons--Hawthorne--Learned Mrs. Ripley--Its Famed Study and Apartments--Grounds--Guests--Ghosts-- A Transcendental Social Court_ 28

III. A STORIED RIVER AND BATTLE-FIELD.

_Where Zenobia Drowned--Where Embattled Farmers Fought--Thoreau's Hemlocks--Haunts of Hawthorne--Channing--Thoreau--Emerson, etc._ 39

IV. THE HOME OF EMERSON.

_An Intellectual Capitol and Pharos--Its Grounds, Library, and Literary Workshop--Famous Rooms and Visitants--Relics and Reminiscences of the Concord Sage_ 45

V. THE ORCHARD HOUSE AND ITS NEIGHBORS.

_Ellery Channing--Margaret Fuller--The Alcotts--Professor Harris--Summer School of Philosophy--Where Little Women was written and Robert Hagburn lived--Where Cyril Norton was slain_ 52

VI. HAWTHORNE'S WAYSIDE HOME.

_Sometime Abode of Alcott--Hawthorne--Lathrop--Margaret Sidney-- Storied Apartments--Hawthorne's Study--His Mount of Vision--Where Septimius Felton and Rose Garfield dwelt_ 58

VII. THE WALDEN OF THOREAU.

_A Transcendental Font--Emerson's Garden--Thoreau's Cove--Cairn--Beanfield--Resort of Emerson--Hawthorne--Channing-- Hosmer--Alcott, etc._ 68

VIII. THE HILL-TOP HEARSED WITH PINES.

_Last Resting-Place of the Illustrious Concord Company--Their Graves beneath the Piny Boughs_ 75

IN AND OUT OF LITERARY BOSTON

IN BOSTON

_A Golden Age of Letters--Literary Associations--Isms--Clubs--Where Hester Prynne and Silas Lapham lived--The Corner Book-store--Home of Fields--Sargent--Hilliard--Aldrich--Deland--Parkman--Holmes-- Howells--Moulton--Hale--Howe--Jane Austin, etc._ 83

OUT OF BOSTON

I. CAMBRIDGE: ELMWOOD: MOUNT AUBURN.

_Holmes's Church-yard--Bridge--Smithy, Chapel, and River of Longfellow's Verse--Abodes of Lettered Culture--Holmes-- Higginson--Agassiz--Norton--Clough--Howells--Fuller-- Longfellow--Lowell--Longfellow's City of the Dead and its Precious Graves_ 103

II. BELMONT: THE WAYSIDE INN: HOME OF WHITTIER.

_Lowell's Beaver Brook--Abode of Trowbridge--Red Horse Tavern-- Parsons and the Company of Longfellow's Friends--Birthplace of Whittier--Scenes of his Poems--Dwelling and Grave of the Countess--Powow Hill--Whittier's Amesbury Home--His Church and Tomb_ 117

III. SALEM: WHITTIER'S OAK-KNOLL AND BEYOND.

_Cemetery of Hawthorne's Ancestors--Birthplace of Hawthorne and his Wife--Where Fame was won--House of the Seven Gables-- Custom-House--Where Scarlet Letter was written--Main Street and Witch Hill--Sights from a Steeple--Later Home of Whittier-- Norman's Woe--Lucy Larcom--Parton, etc.--Rivermouth--Thaxter_ 128

IV. WEBSTER'S MARSHFIELD: BROOK FARM, ETC.

_Scenes of the Old Oaken Bucket--Webster's Home and Grave--Where Emerson won his Wife--Home of Miss Peabody--Parkman--Miss Guiney--Aldrich's Ponkapog--Farm of Ripley's Community--Relics and Reminiscences_ 141

IN BERKSHIRE WITH HAWTHORNE

I. THE GRAYLOCK AND HOOSAC REGION.

_North Adams and about--Hawthorne's Acquaintances and Excursions-- Actors and Incidents of Ethan Brand--Kiln of Bertram the Lime-Burner--Natural Bridge--Graylock--Thoreau--Hoosac Mountain--Deerfield Arch--Williamstown--Bryant_ 155

II. LENOX AND MIDDLE BERKSHIRE.

_Beloved of the Littérateurs--La Maison Rouge--Where The House of the Seven Gables was written--Wonder-Book and Tanglewood Scenes-- The Bowl--Beecher's Laurel Lake--Kemble--Bryant's Monument Mountain--Stockbridge--Catherine Sedgwick--Melville's Piazza and Chimney--Holmes--Longfellow--Pittsfield_ 176

A DAY WITH THE GOOD GRAY POET

_Walk and Talk with Socrates in Camden--The Bard's Appearance and Surroundings--Recollections of his Life and Work--Hospital Service--Praise for his Critics--His Literary Habit, Purpose, Equipment, and Style--His Religious Bent--Readings_ 201

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

The Wayside, Concord _Frontispiece._

The Thoreau-Alcott House,--Present Appearance 21

The Grave of Emerson 78

Where Longfellow lived 108

THE CONCORD PILGRIMAGE

I. A Village of Literary Shrines II. The Old Manse III. Storied River and Battle-field IV. The Home of Emerson V. Alcott's Orchard House, etc. VI. Hawthorne's Wayside Home VII. The Walden of Thoreau VIII. The Hill-top Hearsed with Pines

I

A VILLAGE OF LITERARY SHRINES

_Abodes of Thoreau--The Alcotts--Channing--Sanborn--Hudson--Hoar-- Wheildon--Bartlett--The Historic Common--Cemetery--Church._

If to trace the footsteps of genius and to linger and muse in the sometime haunts of the authors we read and love, serve to bring us nearer their personality, to place us _en rapport_ with their aspirations, and thus to incite our own spiritual development and broaden and exalt our moral nature, then the Concord pilgrimage should be one of the most fruitful and beneficent of human experiences. Familiarity with the physical stand-point of our authors, with the scenes amid which they lived and wrote, and with the objects which suggested the imagery of their poems, the settings of their tales, and which gave tone and color to their work, will not only bring us into closer sympathy with the writers, but will help us to a better understanding of the writings.

A plain, straggling village, set in a low country amid a landscape devoid of any striking beauty or grandeur, Concord yet attracts more pilgrims than any other place of equal size upon the continent, not because it holds an historic battle-field, but because it has been the dwelling-place of some of the brightest and best in American letters, who have here written their books and warred against creeds, forms, and intellectual servitude. It is another Stratford, another Mecca, to which come reverent pilgrims from the Old World and the New to worship at its shrines and to wander through the scenes hallowed by the memories of its illustrious _littérateurs_, seers, and evangels. To the literary prowler it is all sacred ground,--its streets, its environing hills, forests, lakes, and streams have alike been blessed by the loving presence of genius, have alike been the theatres and the inspirations of noble literary achievement.

Our way lies by historic Lexington, and thence, through a pleasant country and by the road so fateful to the British soldiery, we approach Concord. It is a placid, almost somnolent village of villas, abounding with delightful lawns and gardens, with great elms shading its old-fashioned thoroughfares and drooping their pliant boughs above its comfortable homes.

Elizabeth Hoar has said, "Concord is Thoreau's monument, adorned with inscriptions by his hand;" of the circle of brilliant souls who have given the town its world-wide fame, he alone was native here; he has left his imprint upon the place, and we meet some reminder of him at every turn. By the historic village Common is the quondam home of his grandfather, where his father was reared, and where the "New England Essene" himself lived some time with the unmarried aunt who made the ample homespun suit he wore at Walden. The house of his maternal grandmother, where Henry David Thoreau was born, stood a little way out on a by-road to Lexington, and a daughter of this home--Thoreau's winsome aunt Louisa Dunbar--was ineffectually wooed by the famous Daniel Webster. At the age of eight months the infant Thoreau was removed to the village, in which nearly the whole of his life was passed. Believing that Concord, with its sylvan environment, was a microcosm "by the study of which the whole world could be comprehended," this wildest of civilized men seldom strayed beyond its familiar precincts. Alcott declared that Thoreau thought he dwelt in the centre of the universe, and seriously contemplated annexing the rest of the planet to Concord.

On the south side of the elm-shaded Main street of the village we find a pleasant and comfortable, old-fashioned wooden dwelling,--the home which, in his later years, the philosopher, poet, and mystic shared with his mother and sisters. About it are great trees which Thoreau planted; a stairway and some of the partition walls of the house are said to have been erected by him. In the second story of an extension at the back of the main edifice, some of the family worked at their father's trade of pencil-making. In the large room at the right of the entrance, afterward the sitting-room of the Alcotts, some of Thoreau's later writing was done, and here, one May morning of 1862, he breathed out a life all too brief and doubtless abbreviated by the storms and drenchings endured in his pantheistic pursuits. In this house Thoreau's "spiritual brother," John Brown of Osawatomie, was a welcome guest, and more than one wretched fugitive from slavery found shelter and protection. From his village home Thoreau made, with the poet Ellery Channing, the journey described in his "Yankee in Canada," and several shorter "Excursions,"--shared with Edward Hoar, Channing, and others,--which he has detailed in the delightful manner which gives him a distinct position in American literature.

After the removal of Sophia, the last of Thoreau's family, his friend Frank B. Sanborn occupied the Thoreau house for some years, and then it became the home of the Alcott family. Here Mrs. Alcott, the "Marmee" of "Little Women," died; here Bronson Alcott was stricken with the fatal paralysis; here commenced the malady which contributed to the death of his illustrious daughter Louisa; here lived "Meg," the mother of the "Little Men" and widow of "John Brooke" of the Alcott books; and here now lives her son, while his brother, "Demi-John," dwells just around the corner in the next street. In the room at the left of the hall, fitted up for her study and workshop, Louisa Alcott wrote some of the tales which the world will not forget. An added apartment at the right of the sitting-room was long the sick-room of the Orphic philosopher and the scene of Louisa's tender care. Here the writer saw them both for the last time: Alcott helpless upon his couch, his bright intelligence dulled by a veil of darkness; the daughter at his bedside, sedulous of his comfort, devoted, hopeful, helpful to the end. A cherished memento of that interview is a photograph of the Thoreau-Alcott mansion, made by one of the "Little Men," and presented to the writer, with her latest book, by "Jo" herself. The front fence has since been removed, and the illustration shows the present view.

In Thoreau's time, a modest dwelling, with a low roof sloping to the rear,--now removed to the other side of the street,--stood directly opposite his home, and was for some time the abode of his friend and earliest biographer, the sweet poet William Ellery Channing. Thoreau thought Channing one of the few who understood "the art of taking walks," and the two were almost constant companions in saunterings through the countryside, or in idyllic excursions upon the river in the boat which Thoreau kept moored to a riverside willow at the foot of Channing's garden. The beneficent influence of their comradeship is apparent in the work of both these recluse writers, and many of the most charming of Channing's stanzas are either inspired by or are poetic portrayals of the scenes he saw with Thoreau,--the "Rudolpho" and the "Idolon" of his verse. Thoreau's last earthly "Excursion" was with this friend to Monadnoc, where they encamped some days in 1860. To this home of Channing came, in 1855, Sanborn, who was welcomed to Concord by all the literary galaxy, and quickly became a familiar associate of each particular star. To go swimming together seems to have been, among these earnest and exalted thinkers, the highest evidence of mutual esteem, and so favored was Sanborn that he is able to record, "I have swum with Alcott in Thoreau's Cove, with Thoreau in the Assabet, with Channing in every water of Concord."

In this home Sanborn entertained John Brown on the eve of his Virginia venture; here escaping slaves found refuge; here fugitives from the Harper's Ferry fight were concealed; here Sanborn was arrested for supposed complicity in Brown's abortive schemes, and was forcibly rescued by his indignant neighbors. This modest dwelling gave place to the later residence of Frederic Hudson, the historian of journalism, who here produced many of his contributions to literature. Professor Folsom, of "Translations of the Four Gospels," and the popular authoress Mrs. Austin have also lived in this neighborhood.

For some years Sanborn had a famous select school on a street back of Thoreau's house, not far from the recent hermit-home of his friend Channing, at whose request Hawthorne sent some of his children to this school, in which Emerson's daughter--the present Mrs. Forbes--was a beloved pupil, and where, also, the daughters of John Brown were for some time placed.

A few rods westward from his former dwelling we find Sanborn in a tasteful modern villa,--spending life's early autumn among his books. He abounds with memories of his friends of the by-gone time, and his reminiscences and biographies of some of them have largely employed his pen in his pleasant study here.

Some time ago the sweet singer Channing suffered in his hermitage a severe illness, which prompted his appreciative friend Sanborn to take him into his own home; so we find two surviving witnesses or participants in the moral, intellectual, and political renaissance dwelling under the same roof. In the kindly atmosphere of this home, the shy poet--who in his age is more recluse than ever, and scarce known to his neighbors--so far regained physical vigor that he has resumed his frequent visits to the Boston library, long time a favorite haunt of his. The world refused to listen to this exquisite singer, and now "his songs have ceased." He has been celebrated by Emerson in the "Dial," by Thoreau in his "Week," by Hawthorne in "Mosses" and "Note-Books," by the generous and sympathetic Sanborn in many ways and places; but even such poems as "Earth-Spirit," "Poet's Hope," and "Reverence" found few readers,--the dainty little volumes fewer purchasers.

Below the Thoreau-Alcott house on the village street was a prior home of Thoreau, from which he made, with his brother, the voyage described in his "Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers," and from which, in superb disdain of "civilization" and social conventionalities, he went to the two years' hermitage of "Walden."

Nearly opposite the earlier residence of the stoic is the home of the Hoars, where lived Thoreau's comrade Edward Hoar, and Edward's sister,--styled "Elizabeth the Wise" by Emerson, of whom she was the especial friend and favorite, having been the _fiancée_ of his brother Charles, who died in early manhood. The adjacent spacious mansion was long the home of Wheildon, the historian, essayist, and pamphleteer. Nearer the village Common lived John A. Stone, dramatist of "The Ancient Briton" and of the "Metamora" in which Forrest won his first fame. In this part of the village the eminent correspondent "Warrington," author of "Manual of Parliamentary Law," was born and reared; and in Lowell Street, not far away, lives the gifted George B. Bartlett, of the "Carnival of Authors,"--poet, scenic artist, and local historian.

In the public library we find copies of the printed works of the many Concord authors, and portraits or busts of most of the writers. Among the treasures of the institution are priceless manuscripts of Curtis, Motley, Lowell, Holmes, Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and others.

Among the thickly-strewn graves on the hill-side above the Common repose the ashes of Emerson's ancestors; about them lie the fore-fathers of the settlement,--some of them asleep here for two centuries, reckless alike of the resistance to British oppression and of the later struggle for freedom of thought which their townsmen have waged. A tree on the Common is pointed out as that beneath which Emerson made an address at the dedication of the soldiers' monument, and Bartlett records the tradition that the grandfather of the Concord sage stood on the same spot a hundred years before to harangue the "embattled farmers" on the morning of the Concord fight.

Near by is the ancient church where Emerson's ancestors preached, and within whose framework the Provincial Congress met. Of the religious services here Emerson was always a supporter, often an attendant; here he sometimes preached in early manhood; here his children were christened by the elder Channing,--"the first minister he had known who was as good as they;" here Emerson's daughter is a devout worshipper.

The comparatively few of the transcendental company who prayed within a pew came to this temple, but here all were brought at last for funeral rites: here lay Thoreau among his thronging townsmen while Emerson and Bronson Alcott made their touching eulogies and Ellery Channing read a dirge in a voice almost hushed with emotion; here James Freeman Clarke, who had married Hawthorne twenty-two years before, preached his funeral sermon above the lifeless body which bore upon its breast the unfinished "Dolliver Romance;" before the pulpit here lay the coffined Emerson,--"his eyes forever closed, his voice forever still,"--while a vast concourse looked upon him for the last time, and his neighbor Judge Hoar pronounced one of the most impressive panegyrics that ever fell from human lips, and the devoted Alcott read a sonnet.

II

THE OLD MANSE

_Abode of Dr. Ripley--The Emersons--Hawthorne--Learned Mrs. Ripley--Its Famed Study and Apartments--Grounds--Guests--Ghosts--A Transcendental Social Court._

Northward from the village Common, a delightful stroll along a shaded highway, less secluded now than when Hawthorne "daily trudged" upon it to the post-office or trundled the carriage of "baby Una," brings us to the famous "Old Manse" about which he culled his "Mosses."

This antique mansion was first tenanted by Ralph Waldo Emerson's grandsire, and next by Dr. Ezra Ripley, who married the previous occupant's widow and became guardian of her children,--born under its roof,--of whom Emerson's father was one. When his father died Emerson found a secondary home here with Dr. Ripley. The Manse was again the abode of Emerson and his mother in 1834-35, when he here wrote his first volume. In 1842, the year following the demise of the good Dr. Ripley, the Manse was profaned by its first lay occupant, Nathaniel Hawthorne. He brought here his bride, lovely Sophia Peabody (who, with the gifted Elizabeth and Mrs. Horace Mann, formed a famous triune sisterhood), and for four years lived here the ideal life of which his "Note-Books" and "Mosses" give us such delicious glimpses. Hawthorne's landlord, Samuel Ripley, was related to the George Ripley with whom Hawthorne had recently been associated at Brook Farm. He was uncle of Emerson, and preached his ordination sermon; was himself reared in the old Manse, and succeeded Hawthorne as resident there. His widow, born Sarah Bradford, and celebrated as "the most learned woman ever seen in New England," the close friend of Emerson and of the brilliant Concord company, survived here until 1876. She made a valuable collection of lichens, and sometimes trained young men for Harvard University. Conway records that a _savant_ called here one day and found her hearing at once the lesson of one student in Sophocles and that of another in Differential Calculus, while rocking her grandchild's cradle with one foot and shelling peas for dinner. The place is now owned by her daughters, who reside in Cambridge, and is rented in summer.

It is little changed since the time Emerson's ancestor hurried thence to the gathering of his parishioners by his church-door before the Concord battle,--still less changed since the halcyon days when the great wizard of romance dwelt--the "most unknown of authors"--within its shades. It is still the unpretentious Eden, "the El Dorado for dreamers," which so completely won the heart of the sensitive Hawthorne.