Part 16

Yesterday evening out in a sleigh and four horses, with seven ladies and one youth, making nine in all, to Jamaica Plain, four miles off. I was put into a buffalo skin, which indeed was desirable, though it was not very cold. Sleighs, you know, are all open; some are like great barges, carrying thirty people inside, sitting all round, drawn by perhaps eight horses.

There is living here in Cambridge a Greek named Evangelinus Sophocles, who was bred up in a monastery, I think, on Mount Athos, and afterwards in a branch of it at Alexandria. What strange recollections he must have!

February 4.

Sleep as much as you can, eat plentifully, but don’t drink wine or spirits much. Such is the rule they give for New England living.

I don’t think I shall ever do much work alone, not from laziness, but really from having no proper rest to go to after it. I feel as if I had a good deal of work in me, but it takes time to bring it out; and the mere drudgery of the Plutarch, though not disagreeable, takes a deal of time.

I am, I know, sometimes carried away into a world of abstraction when I write or study, or so forth. I believe my ambition also, such as I have (it is only lately that I have begun to believe that it exists in my composition at all), tends in that direction. Yet I am always so glad to come away from it. It is odd how much better I like this Plutarch than I do anything which requires distinct statement of opinion. Yet it bothers me a good deal, for mending up an old translation seems often like putting new wine into old bottles. They would hardly allow time, or else I could almost believe it would be best even for my own sake to spend time in translating it myself.

I, I am sure, have always been inclined to believe in the good of the world, and have always acted on that belief, except for a brief interval (just when I was in London), and even then it was partly that I was afraid lest I should be trusting my own vague hopefulness too unreasonably. Turn the thing over as we will, we can’t _make_ sure; but doubt as we will about things in particular, we can, for the whole, _feel_ sure.

Fires of wood are the pleasantest one sees here: there is anthracite coal and another coal, which I burn mixed. In many houses the rooms are heated only by the furnace, which is found in almost all houses--a great stove down below in the cellar, with pipes sent through the various rooms, and what are called registers. What impairs the beauty and youthfulness of the American women is, I believe, their hot fires and furnaces, and the dryness of the heat given by the anthracite coal. But Mrs. Longfellow looks as youthful as possible.

February 9.

Look in the ‘Fraser’ of this month for some verses about Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington; Napoleon’s dying words ‘Tête d’armée.’ The Duke didn’t say anything, did he? I went on that supposition. It has been beautifully bright and sunny here to-day: there is always that advantage here. The thermometer is down to 6° or 7° to-night, I dare say.

I think I must have been getting into a little mysticism lately. It won’t do: twice two are four, all the world over, and there’s no harm in its being so; ’tisn’t the devil’s doing that it is; il faut s’y soumettre, and all right. Some of my companions are too much in the religiose vein to be always quite wholesome company. This climate also is, I think, mystical.

February 10.

Only ten pages of Plutarch done to-day. But at twelve Emerson appeared, and after sitting awhile with me took me off to dine in town with him. He is just come back from the West. I go to stay Sunday with him, week after next. I dined at his hotel, and sat in his room with him talking till a quarter to five, and then came home to Plutarch.

Drive deep the furrow in the sluggish soil, E’en to the rock force in the labouring share; Earth, that with starveling ears mocks niggard toil, To pain and strife will golden harvests bear.

This Plutarch is not a religious subject, fortunately. I have rather the feeling that one day or other it will have to be done, whatever I do now, and however undesirous I may be. The only thing to keep one quiet is the perfect readiness to be unquiet at any moment that may call for it or occasion it.

February 18.

Two hours and a bit at an evening party. _C’en est trop._ However, there were some few reasonable beings there. I don’t much like going to parties, or rather do not approve of their profuse expenditure of one’s finest spirits: however, one must harden oneself. People are cleverer, and know more over there, though perhaps they are more unworldly and amiable here.

Will you think it wrong if I do what I think best in itself, even if it don’t seem the quickest way to get on? Apropos of this Plutarch, I feel sometimes as if I must not trifle away time in anything which is not really a work to some purpose, and that any attempt to be happy except in doing that would be mere failure, even if apparently successful. It sometimes seems to be said to me that I must do this, or else ‘from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have.’ There is nothing very terrible in this, but I cannot get myself to look at things as mere means to money-making; and yet, if I do not, I seem in some sense guilty. It may be the sanguine atmosphere of a new country has filled me with a vain confidence of there being really something in me to be done beyond mere subsistence. In London I felt myself pretty well helpless to effect anything.

‘Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.’ Is there any application for that, I wonder, nowadays?

February 21.

Just back at Cambridge after my visit to Emerson. I was rather _sleepless_ there, but it is very good to go to him. He appears to take things very coolly, and not to meddle with religious matters of any kind. Since visiting him, I feel a good deal more reconciled to mere ‘subsistence’; if one can only have a little reasonable satisfactory intercourse now and then, subsistence may be to some purpose. But to live in a vain show of society would not do long. The Boston people have been too well off, and don’t know the realities. Emerson is really substantive.

Cambridge is a town or a city, or both, if you like. It is a huge district, a parish (which here they call a _town_) of several square miles, with roads stretching away here and there and everywhere, and houses all along them and off them. It is called a city because it has a Mayor and Corporation; but it is more like a big suburban district, a sort of Clapham or Highgate. There is scarcely anything that is a street, properly speaking; but there are acres of roads with houses along them, and cross lanes with houses too.

The College at Cambridge consists of a collection of old red brick buildings, with a library of modern granite. There are students’ rooms, much in our style, only humbler. The boys at College live partly in lodgings, partly in halls, under some little superintendence, much like College rooms; only they don’t dine together, but all about, in families, &c. They learn French, and history, and German, and a great many more things than in England, but only imperfectly.

February 23.

Just returned from dinner with the Longfellows, where I met Mrs. Stowe and her husband; only I to meet them. She is small, and quiet, and unobtrusive, but quick and ready-witted enough. Her husband is a very pleasant, good-humoured country minister, with keen black eyes. He has been in England before; she never.

I have done my article for the ‘North American’; not very well; but that can’t be helped; it is not in a wrong style of speaking, which is the main thing I care for. I have put a pretty good tail to a poor body, like a squirrel. It is very cold to-night, and the wind bloweth where it listeth in this room of mine.

Are you aware that life is very like a railway? One gets into deep cuttings and long dark tunnels, where one sees nothing and hears twice as much noise as usual, and one can’t read, and one shuts up the window, and waits, and then it all comes clear again. Only in life it sometimes feels as if one had to dig the tunnel as one goes along, all new for oneself. Go straight on, however, and one’s sure to come out into a new country, on the other side the hills, sunny and bright. There’s an apologue for you!

Here is a little story about Napoleon told to me by S. C., and told to him by some old soldier in Switzerland or France, probably a courier. This man was one of the cuirassiers, and was in the Russian campaign, and at his first battle was riding on to the charge, when suddenly he found his kettle (they all carry their kettles behind them) had dropped. So he jumped off, and was picking it up, when somebody called out, ‘Hé; cuirassier, que fais-tu là?’ He looked up and saw the Emperor. Touching his hat (which he did also in repeating it), ‘Ah, votre Majesté, j’avais perdu ma chaudière.’ ‘En avant,’ replied the Emperor, ‘les Russes en ont.’

March 9.

Just returned from a little party, to which I went in a very bad humour, but have returned in much better. A pleasant tiny old house, the oldest in Cambridge, perhaps, that is really a pleasure to one’s eyes; beams across the ceilings, and solid wood-work, and so forth. I went at nine, and back at half-past ten; that also is the right thing. Tea, coffee, and chocolate; that also is sensible.

I am almost persuaded to be an Abolitionist, which, how ever, is not true; but I am a decided Free Soiler for the present, and entirely give up the cause of the Fugitive Slave Law.

Emerson is the only profound man in this country. There are some other nice people at Concord; but for society generally the advantage is greatly on the side of Cambridge. Concord would be but dull, but the walks are far prettier than here. It is nearly an hour’s journey from Boston. People don’t the least despise one for being poor in Cambridge, and indeed I recommend them not! There are two Miss ---- and their mother living here; their father, now dead, was American minister for many years at ---- and ----; and now one Miss ---- teaches French, and the other music. My opinion is that the true position in this country is that of comparative poverty. No sort of real superiority of breeding or anything attaches as it does in England to the rich. The poor man can get his children educated at the public schools, to which the rich children go also, _for nothing_, prepared for College even. And very few people indeed are so rich by patrimony as not to be in business.

What I mean by mysticism, is letting feelings run on without thinking of the reality of their object, letting them out merely like water. The plain rule in all matters is, not to think what you are thinking about the question, but to look straight out at the things and let them affect you; otherwise how can you judge at all? look at them at any rate, and judge while looking. I was just now looking into a book of verse which I brought with me, at what is called there ὔμνος ἀύμνος; it wants a good deal of mending as it stands, but it is on the whole in sense very satisfactory to me still. However, we shall learn more together, I do not doubt. The only way to become really religious is to enter into those relations and those actualities of life which demand and create religion.

In the years 1844 and 1845 I was in very great force, and used to be taken for an undergraduate just come up to College. I am wiser perhaps now, but I have lost a good deal to become so.

March 16.

Here comes a letter from Carlyle, about my coming home and about the Council Office. I tell him I shall be very glad to come home, and very grateful to be brought; but I don’t dwell on what must be an uncertainty. I should like you, even if it were but for a little while, to see this worthy Yankee-land. From the specimens I occasionally meet with, I infer it to be a good deal the best part of the American Republic. But I should like to see the West.

March 30.

This morning I went for a walk of an hour and a half to Fresh Pond, the pond where they cut the ice to go to England, India, or wherever it may be. There are odd birds here. The rooks fly to the South, and have just reappeared; that is, I have seen one. There is a bird about as big as a starling, with a black head, and a slight tinge of red on the breast; this they call the robin. There are little things they call sparrows, more like sedge-birds, I think; and black-birds with long tails, that hold Sunday meetings in the pines, bigger than ours. But the prettiest bird I have seen is the blue-bird, rather less than the robin, with blue back and wings, and a red-tinted breast, something like a bullfinch, only larger.

The extremely-respectables of Boston attend ‘the Stone Chapel,’ an Episcopalian church of old time, whose minister, some thirty years ago perhaps, told his congregation that he had become a Unitarian, and therewith resigned. So they considered and consulted, and said, Well, they liked him very much, and they thought they would turn Unitarians too; what was good enough for him was likely to be as much as would do very well for them. So they took the English liturgy (for moreover certain endowments depended on the use of the Church liturgy) and cut off the tails of the prayers, and pruned things here and there, and lo! they have a very handsome Common Prayer Book, quite as good as any genuine one. And to this Stone Chapel go all the fashionable Unitarian people of Boston, in their best dresses, just as if they were Church of England people, and are deeply attached to their liturgy just as if it was the real thing. Is not that curious?

Did I tell you of the aged Calvinist woman, who being asked about the Universalists, said, ‘Yes, they expect that everybody will be saved, but we “look for better things”?’

April 1.

I went last night to Dana’s, where was pretty nearly all Cambridge; and where I had some port wine, I believe the first I have seen since I came to America. He showed us a copy of Hallam’s works handsomely bound, received by him in gratitude for his services in their behalf from the negroes of Boston. He defended their cause in some of the trials about the Fugitive Law.

Before the end of this month the Nortons depart, which will reduce my stock of sociabilities materially. They go in summer to Newport.

I have already established two decent walks, not to mention a sort of half-hour stroll, at the end of which there is a little spot where one can pause and be solaced. On southern slopes there is positively a slight tinge of green. The common, however, which is level, seems to me as brown as ever it was. Mind you tell me as soon as ever the little ferns begin to curl up out of the ground over with you.

April 4.

I have just had my little Ethics class, who seem to enjoy themselves very well, and certainly relieve my inactive life of Plutarchising very pleasantly. This sort of thing, the class of six or seven, is what I have always got on best with. I might get on as far as twelve or fifteen, but after that it gets disagreeable comparatively. I got on famously with some five of the youths at University College with these same Ethics, in the year 1851.

April 6.

To-day is the annual Fast-day, so my little class in Ethics goes to church instead and comes to me to-morrow. People all go to church to-day, and it is a sort of Sunday. Thanksgiving day in November and Fast-day in March or April are the two State religious observances in Massachusetts.

I am going to send a bit of the Mayflower which grows chiefly about Plymouth, where the Pilgrim Fathers landed, and it is called after their ship, ‘The Mayflower.’ They are rare. The spring is beautiful here also, though so slow. The American weeping elms are extremely graceful, with their long pendent branches hung thick with buds. There are sharpish frosts, however, at times, so that there is no appearance of leaf as yet, except upon these Mayflowers, which I think must have been specially sheltered or forced. I saw, by-the-by, a great bittern at Concord; it rose from a pond, and makes an odd noise, on account of which they call it the stake-driver. There were some Andromedas, just budding, covering all the banks of the pond.

General Pierce’s speech is not really at all aggressive; I believe he was forced to say something for his party, but he kept within the lines pretty well. They say that when he read the passage about territories that must become theirs, there was a general cheer; and when he went on to say that under his government no movement not perfectly fair and just should be made, there was a dead silence. Everett’s speech is made a good deal of; but I don’t think he’s up to the mark, and I believe the old Whigs are quite stranded. Circumstances may split the Democrats (Pierce’s people), and they may form into parties, one aggressive and the other conservative. Free soil, perhaps. For they say Mexico must be dropping in soon, and then there’ll be all the old question of Extension of Slave Area over again.

I am going to write an article in the ‘North American Review,’ on recent English poetry. I have been interrupted in my regular quiet Plutarch work, which suits me much better than reviewing Alexander Smith & Co. M. Arnold’s ‘Tristram’ has been giving me pleasure.

I have been reading Mrs. Gaskell’s ‘Ruth’; it is really very good, but it _is_ a little too timid, I think. Ruth did well, but there is also another way, and a more hopeful way. Such at least is my feeling. I do not think she has got the whole truth. I do not think that such overpowering humiliation should be the result in the soul of the not really guilty, though misguided girl, any more than it should be, justly, in the judgment of the world.

I really am very comfortably settled, on very easy terms with the American world in general, and have nothing to complain of, except perhaps the fact which appears to be true everywhere, that to get a livelihood one must do work according to other people’s fancies, instead of one’s own, which of course are the best, but under the circumstances must give way.

Do you know the Nortons have been so good as to offer me house-room during their absence at Newport? so in three weeks’ time you must conceive of me as embowered among the pines of Shady Hill, about two-thirds of a mile from this present Mrs. Howe’s. It will be cooler too. July, August, and the beginning of September are the hot months.

April 28.

I have had a sort of rheumatic cold. The east winds come in, in the midst of the warmth, with damp icy chills from the icebergs. I have had similar sensations in Italy. This day four years I was in Rome, witnessing the battle in which the French got beaten.

May 12.

Last night I went to a ‘reception,’ that is the next thing after a wedding. At seven o’clock Miss ----, daughter of a German, once Professor, was united to a German merchant, in the presence of about seventy friends, in their drawing-room. I went, and found the groomsman at the door; he took me up, led me to the end of the room, where stood the newly-married lady, holding white flowers in her hand. I made my bow, turned to the right, and presented my congratulations to the lady’s mother, and retired. And so the thing went on for a couple of hours nearly. It is quite the old custom, older a great deal than ours, which only dates from the time when the law was passed enacting that all marriages should be performed before twelve at noon, some time in the middle of 1700-1800.

The most agreeable part of the proceeding was the leave-taking of the young people, who were her friends, which began towards the end of the evening.

On the whole, I do think that pupilising and writing is my proper vocation, and that if I could afford to stick to it, and do whatever work is offered me really well, I should in time be well paid for it. People talk in their sanguine way, but they don’t know how hard it is for the unfortunate solitary schoolmaster to get through his work from day to day: they don’t know how, with no real affection to recur to when he is overworked, he is obliged to run no chances of overworking himself; how he must, as it were, use only his left hand to work with, because he has to _hold on_ with his right for fear of falling altogether. This is not indolence, and so forth.

Eile mit Weile: das war selbst Kaiser Augustus’ Devise.

I send some lily of the valley, which does not grow wild, however and is not native to America.

May 21.

A man who doesn’t go much into the kind of society where people have the chance of going backwards and forwards, and experimenting, and learning their own minds and other people’s minds, and correcting their views by finding out the feelings of others, runs into mistakes more flagrant and irretrievable than hundreds quite as bad really which occur continually. Because he has lived quietly and done his daily duties, and not gone into dancing and flirtation, he has known less about feminine feelings than worse men do, less perhaps also about his own. The mere man’s idea of a wife as a helpmate in duty is not in my judgment an insult to womankind, though it may require modification and correction. But if that were the worst sin committed against womankind the world would be better than it is; and many women, it appears to me, have been misled by their natural aversion to this into accepting worse things. It is a sad thing for a man to feel that by his very steadiness and self-sacrificing in doing his plain duty, he has cut himself off from the happiness which women, alas! are often ready to accord to the indolent and self-indulgent. Indeed, but I fear it is so, very often.

East winds and rain; such is our present not at all pleasant dispensation. September, October, November are said to be the most agreeable months here, and April and May the worst. People fly from Boston in the spring, if they are at all consumptive.

Shady Hill, Cambridge: June 4.

I woke this morning in a sort of paradise. My room here is a most delightful change from my late narrow crib, consequently I awoke in a sort of ecstasy; I have not been in anything like it since I left Combe. It looks south-eastward, right away to Boston, which is full in sight, not much above a mile and a half off; and the masts of some shipping are visible, near where, I think, the steamers lie for England. It is a great relief to get into a nice house, with everything pleasant about one.

On Sunday I walked across a bit of wood and got into a bog, which was all covered with the blue Iris. I picked also some Andromeda and Kalmia.

This climate certainly is to my somewhat rheumatic constitution extremely trying. Think of passing without notice from 85° in the shade to a cold icy-damp east wind of 50°. At three o’clock the thermometer was 89° or 90° in the shade.

June 15.

This is a blazing hot day, which makes me truly wish myself in England. But it will pass, and indeed there is a cool breeze; but that gives one a chill at the same time that one is melting with heat. The autumn is said to be very pleasant, and I myself cared little for the winter. But from the middle of March onward, God help one!

I went to Longfellow’s and had a very pleasant dinner; Emerson, Hawthorne, and C. E. Norton. Hawthorne goes July 7. I am going to Emerson’s next Saturday. I more and more recognise his superiority to everybody I have seen.

Energy is a very ordinary thing; reasonableness is much less common, and does ten times the good. Spurring and lashing is not good; one loses quite as much in sense and sober discernment as one gains in anything else.

June 21.