Chapter 21
I have just lost a friend, Dr. Follen, a man to whose character no words of mine could do justice. He has been publicly mourned from more than one Christian pulpit; and Dr. Channing, in a discourse after his death, has spoken of him as one whom "many thought the most perfect man they ever knew." Among those many I was one. I have never seen any one whom I revered, loved, and admired more than I did Dr. Follen. He perished, with above a hundred others, in a burning steam-boat, on the Long Island Sound; at night, and in mid-winter, the freezing waters affording no chance of escape to the boldest swimmer or the most tenacious clinger to existence. He perished in the very flower of vigorous manhood, cut off in the midst of excellent usefulness, separated, _for the first time_, from a most dearly loved wife and child, who were prevented from accompanying him by sickness. In a scene of indescribable terror, confusion, and dismay, that noble and good man closed his life; and all who have spoken of him have said, "Could one have seen his countenance, doubtless it was to the last the mirror of his serene and steadfast spirit;" and for myself, after the first shock of hearing of that awful calamity, I could only think it mattered not how or where that man met his death. He was always near to God, and who can doubt that, in that scene of apparent horror and despair, God was very near to him?
Even so, my dearest Harriet, do I now think of the impending fate of Dorothy; but oh, the difference between the sudden catastrophe in the one case, and the foreknowledge granted in the other! Time, whose awful uses our blind security so habitually forgets, is granted to her, with its inestimable value marked on it by the finger of death, undimmed by the busy hands of earthly pursuits and interests; she has, and will have, her dearest friends and lovers about her to the very end; and I know of no prayer that I should frame for her, but exemption from acute pain. For you, my dearest Harriet, if pain and woe and suffering are appointed you, it is to some good purpose, and you may make it answer its best ends.
These seem almost cold-hearted words, and yet God knows from how warm a heart, full of love and aching with sympathy, I write them! But sorrow is His angel, His minister, His messenger who does His will, waiting upon our souls with blessed influences. My only consolation, in thinking upon your affliction, is to remember that all events are ordered by our Father, and to reflect, as I often do----
I had written thus far, dearest Harriet, when a miserable letter from Georgia came to interrupt me. How earnestly, in the midst of the tears through which I read it, I had to recall those very thoughts, in my own behalf, which I was just urging upon you, you can imagine....
We may not choose our own discipline; but happy are they who are called to suffer themselves, rather than to see those they love do so!...
My head aches, and my eyes ache, and my heart aches, and I cannot muster courage to write any more. God bless you, my dearest Harriet. Remember me most affectionately to dear Dorothy, and
Believe me ever yours, F. A. B.
[Dr. Charles Follen, known in his own country as Carl Follenius, became an exile from it for the sake of his political convictions, which in his youth he had advocated with a passionate fervor that made him, even in his college days, obnoxious to its governing authorities. He wrote some fine spirited Volkslieder that the students approved of more than the masters; and was so conspicuous in the vanguard of liberal opinion, that the Vaterland became an unwholesome residence for him, and he emigrated to America, where all his aspirations towards enlightened freedom found "elbow-room."
He became an ordained Unitarian preacher; and it was a striking tribute to his spirit of humane tolerance as well as to his eloquent advocacy of his own high spiritual faith, that he was once earnestly and respectfully solicited to give a series of discourses upon Christianity, to a society of intelligent men who professed themselves dis-believers in it (atheists, materialists, for aught I know), inasmuch as from him they felt sure of a powerful, clear, and earnest exposition of his own opinions, unalloyed by uttered or implied condemnation of them for differing from him. I do not know whether Dr. Follen complied with this petition, but I remember his saying how much he had been touched by it, and how glad he should be to address such a body of mis- or dis-believers. He was a man of remarkable physical vigor, and excelled in all feats of strength and activity, having, when first he came to Boston, opened a gymnasium for the training of the young Harvard scholars in such exercises. He had the sensibility and gentleness of a woman, the imagination of a poet, and the courage of a hero; a genial kindly sense of humor, and buoyant elastic spirit of joyousness, that made him, with his fine intellectual and moral qualities, an incomparable friend and teacher to the young, for whose rejoicing vitality he had the sympathy of fellowship as well as the indulgence of mature age, and whose enthusiasm he naturally excited to the highest degree.
His countenance was the reflection of his noble nature. My intercourse with him influenced my life while it lasted, and long after his death the thought of what would have been approved or condemned by him affected my actions.
Many years after his death, I was speaking of him to Wæleker, the Nestor of German professors, the most learned of German philologists, historians, archæologists, and antiquarians, and he broke out into enthusiastic praise of Follen, who had been his pupil at Jena, and to whose mental and moral worth he bore, with deep emotion, a glowing testimony.]
BUTLER PLACE, March 23rd, 1840.
I have just learned, dearest Harriet, that the Censorship [office of licenser of plays] has been transferred from my father to my brother John, which I am very glad to hear, as I imagine, though I do not know it, that the death of Mr. Beaumont must have put an end to the existence of the _British and Foreign Review_, for which he employed my brother as editor.
If the salary of licenser is an addition to the income attached to his editorship of the _Review_, my brother will be placed in comfortable circumstances; and I hope this may prove to be the case--though ladies are not apt to be so in love with abstract political principles as to risk certain thousands every year merely to promote their quarterly illustration in a _Review_, and I shall not be at all surprised to learn that Mrs. Beaumont declines doing so any longer.
[Mrs. Wentworth Beaumont, mother of my brother John's friend, must have been a woman of very decided political opinions, and very liberal views of the value of her convictions--in hard cash. Left the widowed mistress of a princely estate in Yorkshire, on the occasion when the most passionate contest recorded in modern electioneering made it doubtful whether the Government candidate or the one whose politics were more in accordance with her own would be returned to Parliament, she, then a very old lady, drove in her travelling-carriage with four horses to Downing Street, and demanding to see the Prime Minister, with whom she was well acquainted, accosted him thus: "Well, my lord, are you quite determined to make your man stand for _our_ seat?" "Yes, Mrs. Beaumont, I think quite determined." "Very well," replied the lady; "I am on my way down to Yorkshire, with eighty thousand pounds in the carriage for my man. Try and do better than that."
I am afraid the _pros_ and _cons_ for Woman's Suffrage would alike have thought that very expensive female partisan politician hardly to be trusted with the franchise. Lord Dacre, who told me that anecdote, told me also that on one occasion forty thousand pounds, to his knowledge, had been spent by Government on a contested election--I think he said at Norwich.] ...
The longer I live, the less I think of the importance of any or all outward circumstances, and the more important I think the original powers and dispositions of people submitted to their influence. God has permitted no situation to be exempt from trial and temptation, and few, if any, to be entirely exempt from good influences and opportunities for using them. The tumult of the inward creature may exist in the midst of the calmest outward daily life, and the peace which passeth understanding subsist in the turmoil of the most adverse circumstances.... Our desires tending towards particular objects, we naturally seek the position most favorable for obtaining them; and, stand where we will, we are still, if we so choose, on the heavenward road. If we know how barely responsible for what they are many human beings necessarily must be, how much better does God know it! With many persons, whose position we regret and think unfortunate for their character, we might have to go far back, and retrace in the awful influence of inheritance the source of the evils we deplore in them. We need have much faith in the future to look hopefully at the present, and perfect faith in the mercy of our Father in heaven, who alone knows how much or how little of His blessed light has reached every soul of us through precept and example....
You ask me of Margery's successor: she is an honest, conscientious, and most ignorant Irish Protestant. You cannot conceive of what materials our households are composed here. The Americans, whose superior intelligence and education make them by far the most desirable servants we could have, detest the condition of domestic service so utterly, that it is next to impossible to procure them, and absolutely impossible to retain them above a year. The lowest order of Irish are the only persons that can be obtained. They offer themselves, and are accepted of hard necessity, indiscriminately, for any situation in a house, from that of lady's-maid to that of cook; and, indeed, they are equally unfit for all, having probably never seen so much as the inside of a decent house till they came to this country. To illustrate--my housemaid is the sister of my present nursery-maid, and on the occasion of the latter taking her holiday in town, the other had the temporary charge of the children, and, when first she undertook it, had to be duly enlightened as to the toilet purposes of a wash-hand basin, a sponge, and a toothbrush, not one of which had she apparently been familiar with before; and this would have been the case with a large proportion of the Irish girls who present themselves here to be engaged as our servants.
Our household has been reduced for some time past, and I have no maid of my own; and when the nurse is in town I am obliged to forego the usual decency of changing my dress for dinner, from the utter incapacity of my housemaid to fasten it upon my back. Of course, except tolerably faithful washing, dressing, and bodily care, I can expect nothing for my children from my present nurse. She is a very good and pious girl, and though her language is nothing short of heathen Greek, her sentiments are very much those of a good Christian. This same service is a source of considerable daily tribulations, and I wish I only improved all my opportunities of practising patience and forbearance....
F. A. B.
BUTLER PLACE, March 25th, 1840. MY DEAR T----,
I have been reading with infinite interest the case of the _Amistad_; but understand, from Mrs. Charles Sedgwick, that there is to be an appeal upon the matter. As, however, the result will, I presume, be the same, the more publicity the affair obtains, the more it and all kindred subjects are discussed, spoken of, thought on, and written about, the better for us unfortunate slaveholders.
I am very much obliged to you for sending me that article on Mr. Jay's book. You know how earnestly I look to every sign of the approaching termination of this national disgrace and individual misfortune; and when men of ability and character conscientiously raise their voices against it, who can be so faint-hearted as not to have faith in its ultimate downfall?
Your very name pledges you in some sort to this cause, and, among your other important duties, let me (who am now involuntarily implicated in this terrible abuse) beg you to remember that this one is an inheritance; and for the sake of those, justly honored, who have bequeathed it to you, discharge it with the ability nature has so bountifully endowed you with, and you cannot fail to accomplish great good.
In reading your article, I was much reminded of Legget, whose place, it seems to me, there is none but you to fill.
I have just been interrupted by a letter from Elizabeth, confirming the news of your sister's return from Europe. I congratulate you heartily upon the termination of your anxieties about her. Remember me most kindly to her, and to your mother, if my message can be made acceptable to her in her present affliction, and believe me
Ever yours most truly, F. A. B.
[The _Amistad_ was a low raking schooner, conveying between fifty and sixty negroes, fresh from Africa, from Havannah to Guamapah, Port Principe, to the plantation of one of the passengers. The captain and three of the crew were murdered by the negroes. Two planters were spared to navigate the vessel back to Africa. Forced to steer east all day, these white men steered west and north all night; and after two months, coming near New London, the schooner was captured by the United States schooner _Washington_, and carried into port, where a trial was held by the Circuit Court at Hertford, transferred to the District Court, and sent by appeal to the United States Supreme Court. The District Court decreed that one man, not of the recent importation, should, by the treaty of 1795 with Spain, be restored to his master; the rest, delivered to the President of the United States, to be by him transported to their homes in Africa.
Before the case could come before the United States Supreme Court, the President (Mr. Van Buren), upon the requisition of the Spanish minister, had the negroes conveyed, by the United States schooner _Grampus_, back to Havannah and to slavery, under the treaty of 1795.
The case created an immense excitement among the friends and foes of slavery. The point made by the counsel for the negroes being that they were not slaves, but free Africans, freshly brought to Cuba, contrary to the latest enacted laws of Spain. The schooner _Amistad_ started on her voyage to Africa in June, 1839, reached New London in August, and was sent back in January, 1840.]
BUTLER PLACE, April 5th, 1840. DEAREST HARRIET,
I have received both your letters concerning Dorothy's health. The one which you sent by the _British Queen_ came before one you previously wrote me from Liverpool, and destroyed all the pleasure I should have received from the cheerful spirit in which the latter was written.
I was reading the other evening a sermon of Dr. Channing's, suggested by the miserable destruction of a steamboat with the loss of upwards of a hundred lives; among them, one precious to all who knew him perished, a man who, I think, had few equals, and to whose uncommon character all who ever knew him bear witness.
The fate of so excellent a human being, cut off in the flower of his age, in the midst of a career of uncommon worth and usefulness, inspired Dr. Channing, who was his dear friend, with one of the finest discourses in which Christian faith ever "justified the ways of God to Man."
In reading that eloquent sermon, so full of hope, of trust, of resignation, and rational acknowledgment of the great purposes of sorrow, my thoughts turned to you, dearest Harriet, and dwelt upon your present trial, and on the impending loss of your dear friend. I have not the sermon by me, or I could scarce resist transcribing passages from it; but if you can procure it, do. It was written on the occasion of the burning of the steamboat _Lexington_, and in memory of Dr. Charles Follen.
One of the views that impressed me most, of those urged by Channing, was that sorrow--however considered by us, individually, as a shocking accident,--in God's providence, was a large part of the appointed experience of existence: no blot, no jar, no sudden violent visitation of wrath; but part of the light, and harmony, and order, of our spiritual education; an essential and invaluable portion of our experience, of infinite importance in our moral training. To all it is decreed to suffer; through our bodies, through our minds, through our affections, through the noblest as well as the lowest of our attributes of being. This then, he argues, which enters so largely into the existence of every living soul, should never be regarded with an eye of terror, as an appalling liability or a fearful unaccountable disturbance in the course of our lives.
I suppose it is the rarefied air our spirits breathe on great heights of achievement; as vital to our moral nature as the pure mountain element, which stimulates our lungs, is to our physical being. In sorrow, faithfully borne, the glory and the blessing of holiness become hourly more apparent to us; and it must be good for us to suffer, since our dear Father lays suffering upon us. If we believe one word of what we daily repeat, and profess to believe, of His mercy and goodness, we must needs believe that the pain and grief which enter so largely into His government of and provision for us are all part of His goodness and mercy.... I pray that you, and I, and all, may learn more and more to accept His will, even as His Son, our perfect pattern, accepted it....
J---- B---- has already returned home from the South, weary of the heat, and the oppressive _smell of the orange flowers_ on Butler's Island....
The tranquillity of my outward circumstances has its counterweight m the excitability of my nature. I think upon the whole, the task and load of life is very equal, its labors and its burdens very equal: they only have real sorrow who make it for themselves, in their own hearts, by their own faults; and they only have real joy who make and keep it there by their own effort....
Katharine Sedgwick writes in great disappointment at your not being in Italy this winter, and so does her niece, my dear little Kate. Those are loving hearts, and most good Christians; they have been like sisters to me in this strange land; I am gratefully attached to them, and long for their return. God bless you, dear. Give my affectionate remembrance to Dorothy, and
Believe me ever yours, F. A. B.
BUTLER PLACE, April 30th, 1840. MY DEAREST HARRIET,
Of course I have begun to die already: which I believe people do as soon as they reach maturity; at any rate, the process begins, I am sure, much earlier, and is much more gradual and uninterrupted, than we suppose or are aware of. Most persons, I think, begin to die at about thirty; some take a longer, and some a shorter time in becoming quite entirely dead, but after that age I do not believe anybody is quite entirely alive.... Still, though somewhat dead (as I have most reason to know), to the eyes of most people I am even now an uncommonly lively woman; and while my soul is at peace, and my spirits cheerful, I am not myself painfully conscious that I am dying.... The treasure of health was mine in perfection, almost for five and twenty years, and I do not see that I should have any right to complain that I no longer possess it as fully as I once did....
You and I have changed places curiously enough, since first we began to hold arguments together; and it seems as strange that you should disparage reason to me, as the chief instrument of education, as that I should be upholding it against your disparagement. The longer I live, the more convinced my _reason_ is of the goodness and wisdom of God; and from what my _reason_ can perceive of these attributes of our Father my _faith_ derives the surest foundation on which to build perfect trust and confidence, where my _reason_ can no longer discern the meaning of my existence, the exact purpose of its several events, and significance of its circumstances. Entire faith in God seems to me entirely reasonable; but, indeed, I have yet had no experience of any dispensations of Divine Providence which at all tried or shook my reason, or disturbed my trust in their unfailing righteousness.
Our reason, above all our other faculties, shows us how little we can know; and it is the very function of reason to perceive how finite, vague, and feeble all our conceptions of the Almighty must be; how utterly futile all our attempts to fathom His purposes, whose ways are assuredly not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts.
The spring has come; the mysterious resurrection which with its annually recurring miracle adorns the earth, and makes the heavens above it bright; and even on this uninteresting place, the flush of rosy bloom down in the apple-orchard, the tender green halo above, the golden green atmosphere beneath the trees of the avenue, the smell of the blossoms, the songs of the birds, awaken impressions of delight; and while the senses rejoice, the soul worships. Tulips, and hyacinths, and lilacs, and monthly roses shake about in the soft wind, and scatter their colored petals like jewels among the young vivid verdure. Delicate shadows of delicate leaves lie drawn in quivering tracery on the smooth emerald grass. My garden is a source of pleasure and perpetual occupation to me. Here, where ornamental cultivation is so little attended to, my small improvements of our small pleasure-ground are repaid, not only by my own enjoyment, but by the admiring commendation of all who knew the place before we came to it; and as within the last two years I have planted upwards of two hundred trees, I begin to feel as if I had really done something in my generation. Good-bye, dear.
I remain ever yours, F. A. B.
BUTLER PLACE, June 7th, 1840.
Thank you, my dear Mrs. Jameson, for your letter of April 4th. It was interesting and amusing enough to have been written by one whose thoughts and feelings were far otherwise free and cheerful than yours could have been when you indited it. I lament the protraction of your father's illness very much, for your mother's sake, and all your sakes. A serious illness at his period of life is not a circumstance to cause surprise; but its long continuance is to be deprecated, no less for the sufferer than those whose health and strength, expended in anxious watching, can leave them but little fortitude to meet the result should it prove fatal. I hope to hear in your next that your mother is relieved from her present painful position, and that your own spirits are more cheerful.
I have not seen even as much as an extract from Leigh Hunt's play [I think called a "Legend of Florence," and founded upon the incident that gave its name to the Via della Morte in the fair city]; but I am very glad he has written one, and hope he will write others: certain elements of his genius are essentially those of an effective dramatist, and surely, if the public can swallow a play of ----'s, it might be brought to taste one of Leigh Hunt's. I dislike everything that ---- ever wrote, and think he ought to have been a Frenchman. Can one say worse of a man who is not?...