Part 4

“I cannot but feel that thou hast greatly over-rated the benefits derived from my society and friendship. In fact, I feel very much as a debtor in these hard times might be supposed to feel if his creditor should take occasion to thank him for his indebtedness. The obligation is on my side rather than thine. To me and mine thou hast been an ever kind and sympathizing friend--one whom we never met without pleasure or parted with without regret. For myself, as for them, _my heart thanks thee_. Thou hast cheered us and helped us in many ways by example as well as words. We have read, thought, hoped, feared, enjoyed, and suffered together and the ties of affection and sympathy so woven from the very tissues of our lives are not easily severed. We miss thee greatly in our little circle; we shall often speak of thee in the dark winter days and long to see thy familiar face in the light of our evening fires.

“What beautiful and serene November days we have had! The weather now grows colder with keen premonitions of winter. W---- has gone to Washington. He started on seventh day morning. I saw the poor fellow off. There was a prophecy of home-sickness in his face as he left. We shall miss him. Banks is governor by twenty-four thousand plurality. The morning after election Elizabeth crowned his picture with thy wreath. Mother sends much love. So does Lizzy [his sister Lizzy]. We shall be glad to hear from thee.”

XII

One day in the garden room Whittier spoke laughingly of some early stories of his that he had recently found when rummaging in the garret. He assured his listener--the writer--that they were not so bad! No persuasion, however, could induce him to show them, or even tell her more about them. But not a few of his poems have a dramatic touch which suggests that had he not been reformer and poet, he would have been famous in romance.

It may have been this faculty of romance which has given to “My Playmate,” “In School Days,” and several other of his poems touches which might well be construed into a meaning more tender than friendship alone. Another such is “A Valentine,” written to this same friend of Elizabeth and of the poet himself, and never published. On the envelope was written in the handwriting of the recipient, “Valentine from J. G. W.--1849.” It reads:

“To M----

Long have I sought and vainly have I yearned To meet some spirit that could answer mine; Then chide me not that I so soon have learned To talk with thine.

Oh, thou wilt cherish what some hearts would spurn; So gentle and so full of soul thou art, And shrine my feelings in that holy urn, Thine own true heart!”

His niece, Lizzie Whittier, afterward Mrs. Pickard, told of the poet’s strong home affections. She said that from his early childhood in his games he was always playing at house-keeping; and all his life the ideal of home and the love of it never left his heart.

“A rose-cloud, dimly seen above, Melting in heaven’s blue depths away,-- Oh, sweet, fond dream of human love! For thee I may not pray,”

he sings in “The Wish of Today.”

* * * * *

An Amesbury neighbor, a cousin of “The Countess” of his poem, told the writer of a remark of his. “All the ladies with whom I am associated are in homes different from mine,” he had said, it may be speaking especially of the friends of his early days. But she had added that all his life, wherever he had been placed he had been socially among the first.

This same neighbor also repeated the poet’s remark to another friend who, too, was related to the heroine of one of his poems. “In one thing thee have done better than I have,” he had said to him--“thee have married a good wife.”

The finest comment in Carpenter’s book on Whittier is that upon “Benedicite.” No other poem so expresses the renunciation of Whittier’s life and that purity and holiness of character which made women especially his dear and loving friends.

* * * * *

Once, unknown to the poet, his sister sent to the doctor’s home for inspection an exquisite miniature on ivory of a very beautiful woman. Miss Whittier’s message with the miniature was that this was the portrait of a lady whom the poet had loved, but that she had turned from him and married another. Now, however, in her widowhood and his greater fame she had looked back at him again.

Today’s question is, would she have been won had she found in him his old ardor and less resignation? At least she complained to him of the loss of this ardor. His letters assured her that his feelings to her were the same, but that her “fine artistic nature” could not endure the hard, uncongenial influences of his life surroundings. How much had his ardent emotion softened into tender and constant friendship? If his narrow income at that time forbade him; or if loyalty to his sister would not permit him to put another over the home of which she had been so long the light, who can tell?

This miniature was the portrait of Elizabeth Lloyd to whom the poet’s letters have been published. Was she the inspirer of “Benedicite,” that poem of a deep and holy love?

* * * * *

When Bayard Taylor was ready to bring to Amesbury “his beautiful German wife” whom the poet’s sister had been so eager to see, Miss Whittier was too ill to make the visit possible.

For months she had been growing weaker and more suffering. The doctor sent her to Boston to be in care of Dr. Z----, then a very famous woman physician. During this time Miss Whittier visited Mrs. W----, a sister of Dr. S----.

But in spite of all efforts the disease progressed, and Elizabeth returned to Amesbury worse. From that time she steadily failed, and in the late summer of 1864 she passed to the life beyond.

* * * * *

The doctor’s wife who was often in Miss Whittier’s room during the latter part of her illness could well have given a touch of the poet’s inner life.

One day Elizabeth in a spasm of pain looked up at her brother from this friend who was bending over her.

“Ah, Greenleaf,” she said, “I wish thee had a good, strong wife like the doctor’s.”

“So do I, Elizabeth,” he answered her. “But thee knows--”

The finishing of that sentence the hearer never told beyond the limits of her own home.

* * * * *

After Elizabeth’s death, in his loneliness and his loyalty to those who had gone, Whittier’s heart uttered itself. How could the world help listening to the voice of such a heart as spoke in “Snow Bound?”

When wider fame and money followed the writing of this poem, the poet was full of tender regret that those he loved best were not here to share. One day he spoke to the writer of his increased income and how he wished that he could have given his sisters what they did not have while they were with him. And again, when some strong wind of praise had swept down upon him, he said to one who had known Elizabeth: “If my sister could have lived to see this day, how happy she would have been!”

But he saw “the stars shine through his cypress trees.”

To him life broadened more and more. It was given him to learn yet more fully the truth which his labor for the slave had so well prepared him to comprehend. For to him in a deeper sense than ever before those who did God’s will and work in the world were united with him, as with his Master, in a spiritual bond.

* * * * *

After the death of Elizabeth the poet’s dearest friends hoped that he would marry. He was not a person to whom such a suggestion could be lightly made. Yet one, out of his affection, did hint at this hope.

But Whittier’s words shattered the day dream.

“No,” he answered, mindful of his frail health. “I have not married a wife. I will not marry a nurse.”

XIII

The poet’s well-known fondness for young people was not more marked in later life than in his Amesbury days. There was a group of these young people whom he used to call his “boys and girls,” and in whose achievements and successes he felt the greatest interest. His influence over them was not due wholly to that in his character which commanded their admiration, or even to his fun and power of repartee. It came largely from his sympathy with them, his ability to see things from their point of view. And who so well as he brimming over with humor and wit, could enter into and direct their fun? One of this adopted family has recalled when several of them sat in the garden room, each merrily declaring what he or she would do with a fortune, if that would only befall.

“I should put thirty thousand dollars in the bank for John G. Whittier,” declared the poet promptly--thirty thousand dollars being at that time a much larger sum than it is today. “And I should buy M---- [the daughter of his married sister and very fond of pretty gowns] ten new dresses!” And he laughed with his listeners.

* * * * *

To a member of this same group, the one to whom he had given the lilies on the train, he one day made a prediction. She had told him she was going to Centre Harbor, then a famous resort.

“Are thee going alone?” he asked her. She was; but she was to meet a cousin there. “Thee’ll lose thy way,” he said. And when she asserted that she never did that, he persisted, “Thee’ll lose thy trunk at Dover.”

And she actually did!

* * * * *

It is to Whittier that Lucy Larcom refers in her poem about the child,

“Pouring out cups of invisible tea,” and says, “Yonder a poet sits chained at thy feet.”

This was literally true, for the writer coming that day into the garden room, found him seated on the floor with the baby daughter of a relative, entertaining his young visitor and being entertained while Miss Larcom looked on smiling.

* * * * *

To one of these young friends to whom he used to talk of many things in Heaven and on earth, he once said: “Thy conscience stands in thy way.”

“I don’t see what I can do,” she retorted. “I can’t get rid of it. I suppose I shall have to let it stand.”

To this he readily assented. His remark may have been a test.

* * * * *

To waken a dormant power, to teach an unfledged thought to take wing and fly boldly, to turn stray impulses into steady purpose for good, to stimulate youthful promise to become the worthy performance of maturity, to break the chains of ignorance and prejudice, as he had helped to break the iron chains of the slave, was not only delight to Whittier, it was one of the objects for which he lived. The men and women who knew him in their youth and who are still living have rich memories of words fitly spoken by which he opened their eyes to opportunities hitherto unseen, turned their thoughts into new channels and stimulated them to nobler performance.

“I like thy courage and perseverance,” he wrote to a young friend entering the path of literature, “and what thee say of sometime writing out thy heart as if nobody were to read and comment upon it. I suspect that is the true way; and there are passages in thy letter which are better than thee dare to print.”

* * * * *

One of his young friends in whose latent literary powers he had faith and whom stress of circumstances had brought into financial difficulties, one day came to see him. Another visitor interrupted their conversation and Mr. Whittier did not get the opportunity to say to her what he would have liked to say.

The poet, however, was a man of resources. The way of speech being blocked, he took the path of suggestion. He made her a gift of some new pens--“_to try_.”

* * * * *

But the poet who gathered this circle of young people about him, holding them by the charm of his personality, who said that the way to keep young was to be with the young, who delighted in youth even to the last, giving evidence in himself that age is but the youth of immortality, was yet to youth, as he was to maturity, a leader--his judgment, not theirs, dominated.

This was the case one autumn day as he sat in the garden room smilingly listening to the pleadings of a bright and interesting member of that large family of his “boys and girls.”

She wanted the poet to put his autograph at the bottom of a blank sheet of paper, that something might be written over it. She most carefully specified what this was to be. There had been a joke about something that had taken place in the summer when both had been at the mountains, and, not herself, but some one else, was to write this page. But she vouched for exactly what it should be.

Mr. Whittier laughingly turned her from the point. Until at last she rose to leave. He accompanied her to the door. The writer seems still to see the girl standing on the doorstep and looking with a laugh, and yet a coaxing, into the face of the poet as she reiterated her plea--and to see him from the threshold gazing down upon her, enjoying the light in her clear brown eyes and the saucy tilt of her head, and answering with exceeding gravity of tone:

“My name is not worth anything, now that the Eastern Railroad stocks have gone so low.”

Then both laughed. And the visitor departed--without the autograph.

* * * * *

In Amesbury lived also the “Jettie” at whose challenge that he had never written a love poem, Whittier wrote “The Henchman.” It was of her the poet sang:

“To Jettie for her dancing nights, Slippers dropped from Northern lights.”

Young friends in his own town, and some of them members of his party in summer places, with their merry young voices and laughter helped the poet to many a pleasant hour--although it is safe to say that he always did his share in securing these.

* * * * *

He questioned laughingly a young girl giving an account of a lecture upon “Chivalry” to which she had just been listening.

“How would thee like,” he said, “to have a knight roaming around the world doing exploits in thy name?”

She retorted that unless he went to serve his country she would prefer to have him stay at home. To this he responded at once:

“Thy father [in service of his fellow-men] is a better knight-errant than any in those days.”

* * * * *

A child of ten years whose home was on the beautiful Merrimac River, a mile from the poet’s house, one day shyly left her tribute of loving reverence for him at his door. To her came the following note:

“John G. Whittier is greatly indebted to his young friend, Grace M----, for her beautiful gift of flowers. It is doubly welcome at this inclement season and she has his thanks and best wishes. Amesbury, 3rd mo, 29, 1883.”

XIV

The poet had the happiest way of making people feel at ease with themselves, and so of bringing out their best. A man often left his presence feeling himself a more worthy fellow than he had done when he had entered it. And so he ought to have been.

But there were times when peculiar exhibitions of character roused Whittier to keen comment.

While in Boston he was talking one day to two ladies at the same hotel. A young woman just out of boarding school coming to pay them a visit, was introduced to the poet. But she was far from comprehending the honor done her, and it was impossible then and there to enlighten her.

“Whittier!” she repeated patronizingly. At the school they had just been reading “Snow Bound.” It was beautiful--“so fine!” And she gushed inanely in its praise. Had he read it? she questioned.

The poet admitted that _he had looked it over_!

And he admired it, of course? Taking assent for granted, she next asked Mr. Whittier _if he were any relative of the poet_? He answered her that he had not studied out what relation.

“_And have you ever seen the Poet Whittier?_” she propounded promptly.

The poet thought that he _had_ met him.

For some time the young woman talked on, happy in the sound of her own voice and patronizing still more both poem and poet--to say nothing of the unknown who bore his name.

In speaking of her the poet remarked that he always pitied such young women.

* * * * *

Among his many experiences of autograph hunters he enjoyed the following:

He was on his way to the mountains. It was a delightful autumn day. The sunshine, the brilliant colors of earth and sky, the nectar of the clear and balmy air, all acted upon his sensitive nerves and brought a keen pleasure which prepared him for the enjoyment of any amusing phase of human nature that might present itself. The train drew up at a junction. As the poet alighted with that alertness of movement which to the last distinguished him and made his way toward his exchange, a young woman forced a passage through the rushing crowd and came up to him.

“Are you Mr. Whittier?” she inquired of him breathlessly.

The poet assented.

“Won’t you please write your name in my album?” And she held out her book open at the desired page.

His dark eyes lighting with amusement passed swiftly from the puffing train--his train on which in another moment the bell would ring and from which the conductor was already shouting, “All aboard!”--to the eager and entreating face of the speaker. He appreciated the situation; he liked her pluck. But what was he to write with? Fountain pens were then uninvented.

He flashed his glance about the station; then with the young woman in tow, hurried to the telegraph office, seized a pen, dashed off his autograph, walked swiftly to his train, and in another moment was being whirled onward.

That must have been one of the occasions when his hand smote his knee in keen appreciation of the episode.

* * * * *

Although Whittier never perpetrated matrimony, he was far from being like the melancholy Jacques, and much enjoyed looking at happiness through other men’s eyes--and through women’s too.

He was vastly amused at the man who complained to him because a certain young relative of the poet would persist in quitting the room by one door at the moment he entered it by another.

“The woman ought to do her part!” quoted the poet with great gusto from the plaint of the complainer who was too dense to read the significant scorn of the lady’s conduct to him.

* * * * *

A mother boasted to him that she had never done anything to have her daughters married.

“But thee ought,” retorted the poet.

When one day a young man had come with a span of fine horses and carried off one of his nieces to drive, Whittier commented on the event in his most humorous vein. He didn’t think she cared for the young man in the least, he said. The span was the attraction. As for what her uncle thought of her going, she cared nothing at all. He didn’t know what he could do about it--except find a young man with three horses!

* * * * *

But for all the poet’s jesting, love’s young dreamers were very interesting persons to him. He once said with a laugh which yet had conviction under it, that he would have made a good husband--if he’d been caught young!

* * * * *

He was confident that in many instances he could have made better matches for certain young persons than they had done for themselves. And with his vision that nothing escaped, his keen perceptions, his infinite tact, it came about more than once that he turned the wavering balance of fancy in the head--or heart--of some young man, or woman, and, like destiny, resolved uncertainty into joy. And where he was thus successful, the lovers themselves had no inkling of his co-operation and outsiders could only surmise that the poet’s skill might have had play.

Only once in this skillful manipulation of the susceptible heart of youth did the credit for his insinuations recoil upon his own head. A betrothed couple came one day to pay him a visit. In the course of this the young man congratulating himself upon the wisdom and success of his choice, openly commended his host for having suggested it to him--and this in the presence of the intended bride! It was in vain that the embarrassed poet hastened to repudiate the charge, of which he could never have been guilty in the manner of which he was accused. This only made the young man more insistent. Whittier’s quickness of retort must have opened to him some way of escape from the situation. And he had a consolation; for in telling the story, he added that during this conversation the young woman gazed at her betrothed as if she believed wisdom would die with him.

* * * * *

On the day of the wedding of the poet’s niece at his Amesbury home the whole house was in commotion. The poet in a vain attempt to restore order was overheard saying with authority to his cousin, Mr. Cartland, who had become infected with the general restlessness:

“Thee sit down, Joseph. Thee isn’t going to be married.”

XV

The poet’s friends and neighbors had for good and sufficient reasons a peculiar form of invitation to him. From the doctor’s family--often through the lips of one of its young members--the invitation would run:

“Mr. Whittier, we should be so glad to have you come to breakfast”--or dinner, or tea, as the case might be--“if you are able to come, if you are well; but do just as you feel about it.” Then would follow often the announcement that some other interesting guest was to be present. “Do just as you please, Mr. Whittier,” the messenger of the would-be hostess would always add anxiously; “but we shall be so glad to see you.”

The poet never promised. If he were tied, his headache would be sure to find him out; so, this method was taken as a charm to outwit the fiend. Quite often it was successful, and the poet would be on hand promptly. At other times the family having waited until it was believed that he was not coming, would sit down to table, when the doorbell would ring and Mr. Whittier appear. At such times he perhaps had a headache but had decided that it would be no worse there than at home. And having been free from obligation, and come because it was his own wish, he was delightful. To listen to him was an education--as to listen to him in the garden room when he talked in his deepest moods, and often then to one hearer, was an inspiration.

His unsolicited visits also made red-letter days. Sometimes on his way home from his customary walk to the post office in the morning, or in the evening, he would take the street leading past the house of some friend. Word would be tossed about from one to another, “There’s Mr. Whittier! Is he coming in?” And eager eyes would watch his movements. “Oh, he’s going by!” in accents of deep disappointment--“No, he’s coming in!” in jubilant tones.

And the visit would be one to be remembered.

It was upon some such occasion that the poet eagerly caught up a remark by his hostess, that people liked a good listener.

“Yes, that’s it, Mrs. S----,” he said, “a good listener.”

For the poet was quite able to talk, and he liked to do it.

* * * * *

It was Whittier’s habit to put on his hat when he chanced to answer the doorbell. This might have been on account of his neuralgia and the northwest wind which often swept freely down the street, or--what was worse to him--the east wind which swept up it and into the doorway. Or else, being uncertain who his visitor might be, he would possibly find it convenient to appear to be going out. But whatever had been his reason for donning the hat, upon most occasions it was promptly laid aside and the visitor was cordially invited to enter. This visitor was perhaps a neighbor, or friend, or both in one--or a stranger who thus spending an hour with the poet, forever afterward cherished a happy memory.

* * * * *

Readers of Whittier’s poems will recall one “On a Sun Dial,” beginning