hm 1 'Ilii if mmw ■liii ^! '(< ''ill 1 ill ■ w : 1 >o^ lHO^ aV ^. o- t'^L!*, o '^r.<^ ■■'™*'^„ c^c. RECOLLECTIONS OF SEVENTY YEARS By F. B. SANBORN OF CONCORD IN TWO VOLUMES VOLUME TWO BOSTON icMard g. badger i THE GORHAM PRESS 1909 COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY F. B. SANBORN All Rights Reserved The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. CONTENTS VOLUME II PAGE Chapter X Early Influences 255 Chapter XI INITLA.L Love 268 1 Chapter XII Exeter and Cambridge 295 Chapter XIII Concord and Its Authors 313 Chapter XIV Other Concord Authors 338 Chapter XV Mrs. Ripley and Her Friends 357 Chapter XVI Jones, Dunbar and Thoreau Families . . . 375 Chapter XVII Margaret Fuller and Her Friends .... 403 Chapter XVIII Emerson in Ancestry and in Life . . . . 420 Chapter XIX Concord, Past and Present 441 Chapter XX Bronson Alcott and His Family .... 461 Contents Chapter XXI The Concord ScHOOii of Philosophy . . . 485 Chapter XXll Hawthorne and His Household 514 Chapter XXlll Theodore Parker and Emerson 539 Chapter XXIV The Concord Lyceum, Dr. Channing, Wendell, Phillips, and Others 568 Index 587 ILLUSTRATIONS VOLUME II Ellery Channing Frontispiece FACING PAGE Dr. C. H. Sanborn, ^t. 25 266 Sarah Sanborn, ^t. 40 ^66 Helen Sanborn, iEt. 20 ....... . 266 F. B. Sanborn, ^t. 17 266 Ariana Smith Walker, yEt. 18 288 F. B. Sanborn, 1853 288 A Valentine (fac simile) 288 Ednah Littlehale, 1853 304^ Allston's Ednah 304 Autograph Signature of Members of the Town and Country Club 306 The Wayside, from a Sketch by May Alcott . . 320 Hillside, from a Sketch by A. Bronson Alcott . 320 Parlor in the Hosmer Cottage, from a Sketch by A. Bronson Alcott 340 The Hosmer Cottage, from a Sketch by A. Bronson Alcott '340 Hawthorne's Chair, Wayside Hill, from a Sketch by May Alcott 364 The old Manse, 1870, from a Sketch of May Alcott 364 Emerson's Home, Concord, from a Sketch by May Alcott 364 Mrs. Sarah Bradford Ripley, from a Crayon by S. W. Cheney 376 Ralph Waldo Emerson 420 May Alcott's East Studio, Orchard House, from her Sketch 456 Illustrations FACING PAGE Birthplace of Bronson Alcott, from his Sketch . 456 The Children in the Wood 482 A. Bronson Alcott, from a bas-relief by S. W. Cheney 484 B. S. Lyman, 1870 486 Edwin Morton, 1858 486 Dr. W. T. Harris, 1875 486 Dr. W. T. Harris, 1905 486 Last Photograph of Alcott, 1885 .... 498 Hillside Chapel, 1880 ......... 498 Mrs. Alcott, 1870, from a Crayon by May . . 506 May Alcott, 1875 506 Louisa Alcott, Mt 30 506 Grave of Parker at Florence 540 The Orchard House, the Summer Residence of Pro- fessor Desor 540 The Meeting House at West Roxbury . . . 542 House of George R. Russell, West Roxbury . . 542 Story's Parker Monument, Florence .... 558 Parker's Letter to Huntington 564 Mrs. Broad's House and Schoolhouse . . . 566 The West Roxbury Parsonage 566 Daniel Ricketson, 1887 572 Marston Watson, 1887 572 House of F. D. Sanborn, Concord, 1882 . . . 580 The River Bank and Sanborn House .... 580 George Minot, described by Channing (fac-simile) 586 LITERARY LIFE ■ »—IH III > >X CHAPTER X Early Influences THOUGH my political opinions began to manifest themselves at seven and eight years old, for I certainly took a lively interest in New Hampshire elections in 1839-40, yet my literary life began even earlier, and under influences very favorable to the forma- tion of scholarly habits. The libraries of my father, elder brother and grandfather, though small, were well supplied with sound reading; and the " Social Library " founded by Parson Abbot was open to me almost daily, after it was restored to the Parsonage in 1840, from Deacon Lane's; and there I found books of travel, adventure and history, as well as the pleasing fiction of Hannah More and Maria Edgeworth, and a few volumes of English and American poetry. At Grand- father Leavitt's were the books of Scottish re- ligion, which had been his mother's, and especially Doddridge's " Life of Colonel Gardiner," and the intolerant Presbyterian volume of " The Scots Worthies," containing brief biographies of the Protestant reformers of Scotland, from Buchanan and John Knox down to the Covenanters who fought at Bothwell Bridge, and the two beheaded ^55 256 Recollections of Seventy Years earls of Ai-gyle (so the name was then spelled), ending with that ferocious pamphlet of Howie of Lochgoin, " God's Judgment on Persecutors," which gave the extremely hostile view of the Stuart sovereigns, of Ai^hbishop Sharpe, Lauderdale and Graham of Claverhouse. This prepared me for Scott's Waverley Novels, of which I became the owner before I was twelve, having already perused with eager and undoubting interest. Miss Porter's " Scottish Chiefs " and " Thaddeus of Warsaw," in the library of a schoolmate. Burns's poems and Moore's " Irish Melodies " were in the house; and the first volume of the now almost forgotten Southey, which I read at nine, was his rhapsodical " Joan of Arc," now absolutely gone to oblivion. My great find, however, at the age of eight, was an odd volume of Shakespeare including the Henry VI., Richard III., and Henry VIII., which I al- most learned by heart before, at the age of twelve, I got hold of the whole series of the Plays in the newly started " Ladies' Library," the money for which was provided by the " Sewing Circle " of the Unitarian parish, under the energetic management of Miss Fanny Caldwell, the sister and house- keeper of our widowed clergyman. Parson Cald- well. " Don Quixote " was the property of a rov- ing uncle, and remained in our bookcase for years, till I had read it twice over; and Bunyan's "Pil- grim's Progress," the great book of Bronson Al- cott's childhood, was in our house in two American editions — my mother's copy and my Aunt Dolly's, of an earlier date, which had come down to her Early Influences 257 from her grandmother, who brought her up. Sin- gularly enough, " Robinson Crusoe " was not accessible to me in boyhood, so that I lacked the third of that trio of fiction by Bunyan, Cervantes and Defoe, which Johnson and Macaulay praise so warmly. Campbell's poems and Longfellow's earlier volumes I read as a boy of ten, and became still earlier acquainted with Pope's " Essay on Man " from the singular fact that American pamphlet editions of it, with the "Universal Prayer " appended, had been given as school prizes, about 1805, to my father and his elder brother Joseph, and both remained in a great chest in the garret, which contained also Webster's "Spelling-Book," and "Third Part," Murray's " English Reader," and other discarded school- books of the early nineteenth century. At school we had Thomson's " Seasons " for our grammati- cal exercises in " Parsing," so that I had much of that famous poem by heart before I was ten. I cannot remember the time when I could not read with some fluency; and I began to write verses (parodies, at first) certainly before I was eleven. The atmosphere of the little town was literary and even scholastic, from the fact that we had enjoyed a learned ministry since 1780, when Dr. Langdon came to the Parsonage, until I had graduated at Harvard; and there were three " academies " within a few miles — the famous Phillips Academy at Exeter, the Hampton Acad- emy, where Rufus Choate and others fitted for college, and a Baptist Rockingham Academy in 258 Eecollections of Seventy Years Hampton Falls village, built on the triangular parade-ground given to the town by Colonel Weare, Chief Justice and President of the Revo- lutionary State of New Hampshire afterwards, but given, I suppose, while he was a Provincial Colonel under Governor Benning Wentworth, in the old French War. In this Baptist seminary boys were fitted for Brown University, and its teachers were usually graduates from Providence. The winter teachers in our three district schools were either students from the colleges or graduates from these three Academies, and were usually capable of giving instiniction in Latin, sometimes in Greek. Professor Bowen of Harvard taught one of our schools while in college, and boarded with Deacon Lane, who had inlierited from Presi- dent Langdon his globes and parsonical wig, and who lived in a large old house behind the meeting- house of Langdon and Abbot, and of Rev. Stephen Farley, the father of Harriet Farley ; who was herself one of the founders of the " Lowell Offering," written by the factory girls at Lowell, of whom Dickens and other English tourists had much to say, in the years 1841-46. Miss Farley had been a teacher first, and then a factory girl herself; her eldest brother, Massillon Farley, had studied law and become a judge in Texas, in those dim years when the " Lone Star " of that vast State flared over the exploits of Houston and Crockett, and lighted the way to annexation in 1844, against the opposition of Webster, Clay, Van Buren and our local Congressman, John P. Early Influences 259 Hale. Miss Farley's youngest brother, Stephen, was a playmate of mine on the three-cornered green, and my first compassion toward the poor was aroused by his telling me one day that they often had no breakfast in the Parsonage but po- tatoes and cream. My first distinct view of actual insanity, that painful malady with which I have been for many years familiar as an expert, was in seeing the mother of this rather brilliant family of young persons rambling in our pine-wood and talking to herself in an incoherent way; for she was harmlessly insane in her aged years. My first important literary purchase having been Scott's novels, I next bought " Marmion " and Byron's " Childe Harold," and soon after the one- volume American edition of all Byron's poems, plays and letters. Carey's " Dante," in the Ladies' Library, and Fairfax's " Tasso " in my own col- lection, gave me my first taste of Italian litera- ture; and by that time I had read much Latin in my brother's text-books or the old volumes of the Langdon ministerial libraiy, where I found both " Terence " and the " Colloquies of Erasmus," in which I became somewhat familiar with conversa- tional Latin, and the peculiarities of innkeeping in the sixteenth century. All this and much more was random reading, with little method or guidance, but in my retentive memory it laid a foundation for the miscellaneous knowledge in many directions which I had acquired before entering college, and which gave me in some degree an advantage over other students who had 260 Recollections of Seventy Years followed the stricter discipline of the classical schools. It also furnished me with much material for illustration and remark when I became a teacher myself, as I did in a small way, but without compensation, while in college. I imparted what Greek they needed to two of my friends in the Cambridge Divinity School, and prepared Parson Caldwell's son George for his entrance by the gate- way of Latin and some Greek, into the scientific field, where he distinguished himself, after studies in Germany, by his professorship of chemistry at. Cornell University. There I renewed my acquaint- ance with him after more than 25 years, during my lectureship at Cornell, in 1885-88. Looking back upon the story of my brothers and sisters, I per- ceive that we were, five of us, a group of successful teachers, and all of us, except my youngest brother Joseph, who had stricter instruction from myself and the Exeter professors, had prepared ourselves much in the careless way I hint at in my own case. My second sister, Helen (the only survivor now of that family of ten or twelve persons in the large old house whom I first saw there), had among her pupils in their early studies, Alice Brown, the faithful chronicler of village and rural histories, and Ralph Cram, the architect and aesthetic au- thor, and also his younger brother William, who has gained distinction as a naturalist, while tilling his ancestral farm in the town where we were all born. About 1845, when I had entered my fourteenth year, with the random reading at which I have Early Influences 261 glanced, I began to read Hawthorne, Carlyle, and Emerson, and perceived that the bent of my mind was with that school of writers. " Sartor Re- sartus " and Hawthorne's " Mosses " were the first volumes of these authors that I read; but I came upon Emerson's poems as they were copied into the newspapers from the Dial, and the " Western Messenger " of James Freeman Clarke, where they first appeared. Without my understanding their full import, they addressed in me that poetic sentiment which, with no corresponding gift of po- etic expression, I shared with him and many others. So early did I begin to read Emerson's writings, at least in extracts (and very likely first in the Christian World of Boston, edited by an early disciple of the Concord poet, J. F. Clarke) , that I can hardly remember when I did not know them, in part and superficially. A natural affinity for that school of thought which he most clearly repre- sented, and something akin to his intuitions in my own way of viewing personal and social aspects, really brought me into relations with him before I ever saw him, or ever heard that thrilling voice, which few could forget who had once listened to its deeper tones. I did not set foot in Concord until the spring of 1851, when I was nineteen, and was finishing my freshman studies for Harvard at the Exeter Academy. I then walked over from Sudbury with my schoolmate Henry Shaw (once of Hampton Falls, but then studying medicine at his father's parsonage in Sudbury, the next town south of Concord), after sailing on the broad 262 Recollections of Seventy Years meadows of Sudbury with Henry, who, since we walked to school together in New Hampshire, had become an expert seaman and fisherman by voy- ages to India and along our coast, and was after- ward for years a surgeon in the navy. We did not see Emerson that day, although we passed his house and the Old Manse; and it was two years later, at the end of my sophomore year in college, that I called on him and introduced myself to his acquaintance, knowing by that time many of his friends. I must have begun to read Emerson before six- teen; for in my sixteenth year I remember perus- ing with indignation Francis Bowen's scoffing review of the " Poems," which he printed in the North American Review for 1847, in an editorial article entitled " Nine New Poets." It was Bowen's notion at the time that Bulwer's " New Timon " was the great poem of the age, and he so expressed himself to Longfellow, his brother professor at Harvard. About the time of this review I was reading " Sartor Resartus " of Car- lyle, in the edition that Emerson introduced to America, where it long preceded the English volume. The second edition of Emerson's " Nature " came out and was read by me in 1849, and I then had each of his volumes, as it came out, added to our local library. In the year 1850, when I was reading Greek privately with Professor J. G. Hoyt at Exeter, he told me how his classmates at Dartmouth in 1838, as they were graduating, Early Influences 263 invited Emerson to give his discourse on " Literary Ethics" (one of the first of his addresses I had read in 1849) and what he said on the subject of having it reported for the newspapers. Young Hoyt, in the name of the class, met him and asked if he would allow a report to be made. Emerson refused with decision, according to Mr. Hoyt: " I curse the reporters," said the gentle sage, — " I curse them." When I told Emerson this story in later years, he refused to believe he had so expressed himself; but I dare say the tale was true. I had, of course, made the customary readings in American history and biography in my boyhood, and delighted in the myths of Parson Weems, who wrote the lives of Washington, Marion, and other heroes of the Revolution; and I was quite as familiar with the model biography of Frank- lin, by his own modest and skillful hand. In the Langdon Library were the serial numbers of Thomas Paine's " Crisis," received by President Langdon while at the head of Harvard College, where he had bestowed the degree of LL.D. on Washington, in Latin of his own composition. There also were other pamphlets of that period, and possibly a few of Dr. Langdon's own sermons in print; but I was not then a very eager reader of sermons, and passed by with a groan the finely printed pages of Zollikoffer's Sermons on the shelves of our " Social Library." But I took much delight in Thomas Burnet's " Theory of the 264 Recollections of Seventy Years World before the Flood," which had come down from my great-grandmother Leavitt's religious bookcase, — accounting, as it did, for the antedi- luvian earth on strictly orthodox principles, be- fore geology and schism came to break up all our ancient faiths. I had been a reader of the Bible, Apocrypha and all, from earliest years; indeed, had read the Old Testament through, without omis- sion, before I was eight. This of itself was a lit- erary training to one who was old enough to feel the force of its remarkable English style. I was indebted to a very different school of au- thors, the writers for the weekly Boston Post, for much literary news and entertainment in their book reviews. The brothers Greene, kindred of Sena- tor Fessenden of Maine, and indeed, distant cousins of mine through a descent from that old Oxford scholar, Rev. Stephen Bachiler, of Hampton, M^re men of lively minds, and Nat, the elder, was much of a scholar ; so that the book reviews, in which Richard Frothingham may have aided, were able, and indulged rustic readers like myself with long quotations from the book in hand, — a custom that George Ripley and many other good critics have since followed, and which I adopt myself, when space and time will allow. For I well recall the keen pleasure I found in these quotations, — while the criticism passed by my boyish mind, as the idle wind. I dare say it is just so now with those boys who take the trouble to read the hundreds of book-notices that I turn off in a year, — and have been doing so ever since I took charge of the Early Influences 265 Boston Commonwealth in 1863, and became an editor of the Springfield Republican in 1868. It must not be supposed, however, that I was a mere bookworm in boyhood, and learned nothing of the wholesome games and sports of youth. I early was taught to shoot and swim, played all the ball games then in vogue, and had many joyous comrades in the field during the open season, and by the winter fireside from October to April. I remember one spring night in a sawmill on Tay- lor's River, — one of the oldest mill-streams in New Hampshire, — where during the running of the log, which my companion had to watch, he and I played " checkers " through the night, on a board lined off with charcoal, and with bits of bark for the men; since checkers was then the most common game except " High, Low, Jack " with cards. In time I was taught Chess (by a parson's son) and Whist, and became fairly expert in both. There was a nightly company too, for several years, made up of the farmers' sons and a few students from the Academy, which met in the dense woods, ate fricasseed chicken by a fire of pine boughs, and even made excellent sponge cake, by the art of John Godfrey, who was afterward a good army quarter- master in the Civil War. and in peace a diviner with the hazel wand to find concealed springs of water, in a dry season. We had a fancy that we were as well oflP in these escapades as the brigands in Schiller's " Robbers," whose fine song the elder Rangabe imitated in his Klepht Song, which in 1893 I found so popular in Greece. 266 Recollections of Seventy Years Ein Freies Leben fiihren wir, Ein Leben voller Wonne, Der Wald is unser Nachtquartier, Bei Sturm und Wind hantieren wir, Der Mond ist unsre Sonne ; Mercurius ist unser Mann, Der's Praktizieren trefflich kann. By this time (1849) my brother, Charles, had suspended his Latin and French studies and taken up German; and I mingled my renewed Greek with his attractive German poesy. The first piece I ever printed was a version of Burger's " Wild Huntsman," which came out in the New Hamp- shire Independent T>e7nocrat, in 1849; but when I took up Schiller, the next year, I made several better translations from that pleasing poet. Some of these were from this same wild play of " The Robbers " (in which I have seen Edwin Booth act) , which being an early piece by the poet, he clapped into it some of his school-poems on Greek and Roman subjects, — the " Farewell to Hector," and the lyrical interview between Brutus and Caesar's Ghost at Philippi. What they have to do with a sensational Storm-and-Stress melodrama of Ger- many, is hard to say; but they sounded well, and were not hard to translate. Alexander Rangabe caught the tune of Schiller's song, but developed a far better poem, on a theme always popular in modern Greece, — the tyrant-slaying brigand of the mountain ranges. He thus begins : DR. C. H. SANBORN, MT 25 MISS SARAH SANBORN, MT 40 F. B. SANBORN, .ET 17 MISS HELEN SANBORN, .ET 20 Early Influences 267 " Mavr' ein' e nykta 's ta vouna 'S tous vrachous pephtei chioni : Black on the mountain falls the night, O'er crags the snow is drifting," and then goes on to picture the short and glorious life of the Klepht, from the calls to battle till his death in the moment of victory, — ending thus: " My blue-eyed darling, weep no more. But light the torch of glory ! Thy tears must not my death deplore; Freeborn, these crags I rambled o'er. In death lie free before thee." This song reminds me that one of the first histories I read, after Plutarch, was Dr. Howe's story of the Greek Revolution, in which he bore so gallant a part. We were playing Robin Hood, Klepht and Fra Diavolo, in our nightly revels of the green- wood; but it was a harmless comedy, like Shake- speare's "As You Like It," and soon gave place to the realities of life. CHAPTER XI Initial Love IN his " New Life," that exquisite parable of initial love, Dante says, " Behold a Spirit Cometh mightier than thou, who shall rule over thee." The hour of Love was come and neither of us suspected it. Up to my 19th year I had lived fancy-free, although susceptible to the beauty of girls, in which few New England towns were then deficient, and slightly attached, at school or elsewhere, to this maiden or that with fine eyes and a social or narrative gift; one I remember, Frances Brown, who had the Oriental trait of story-telling in what then seemed perfection. To one pair of sisters, in a family distantly related to ours, I was specially attracted by their loveliness and their gentle ways. They had the " matia ga- lana " of the Klepht's blue-eyed maiden; and toward the younger of the two, almost exactly my own age, had I early manifested this interest, when my years cannot have been more than seven. They had come with their cousin, who was also my cousin, to spend the afternoon and take tea with my two sisters ; it may have been the first time I had noticed the sweet beauty of Sarah C, who was a granddaughter of the former parson of the parish. So strongly was I impressed by it, that 268 Initial Love 269 while they were taking tea by themselves, boys not being expected to enjoy their company, I went to my strong box, which contained all my little stock of silver, took from it a sliining half-dollar, the largest coin I had, and deftly transferred it to the reticule of Sarah, hanging on the back of a chair in the " parlor chamber," all without telling any- body what I had done. The two girls (aged seven and ten) went home unsuspecting what had oc- curred, but in emptying the reticule that night, the coin was found, and Sarah knowing nothing about it, the gift was sent back to the house of the tea party, and my little scheme of endowing her with my worldly goods was discovered, to my confu- sion. There had been other fancies, but nothing serious until the year 1850, when I was just eighteen. Nor had I taken the burden of life very seriously in other directions. I had formed no scheme of life; my education had been going on as already described, with no particular plan on my part or that of my family. My mother's cousin. Senator Norris, being in Congress from 1843 until his death in 1855, it had been suggested that he should appoint me a cadet in the West Point military school; but I had no turn for a soldier's life, and nothing was done to obtain his patronage, which his uncle, my grandfather, a veteran Democrat, could have secured, perhaps. A rather exacting literary society had been es- tablished about 1848 in the upper hall of the school- house where I had been a pupil, at the instance. 270 Recollections of Seventy Years I suppose, of the good minister of the Unitarian parish. We held debates, and soon estabhshed a MS. montlily journal, Star of Social Reform, which received contributions, supposed to be anony- mous, from the members, male and female, and these were read at the monthly meetings. I early became a contributor, both in prose and verse, and in the summer of 1849 wrote a burlesque on the poem of " Festus," then much read in New Eng- land, in mild ridicule of the English author, Philip Bailey. The following winter the editor of the Star J one of the two sisters just mentioned (now Mrs. S. H. Folsom, of Winchester, Mass.), visit- ing her friend. Miss Ariana Smith Walker, at Peterborough, showed her the " Festus " verses and some others, which she was good enough to like, and sent them to her dearest friend. Miss Ednah Little- hale, of Boston (the late Mrs. E. D. Cheney), with this note : " March 30, 1850. I don't know that I should have written you to-day if I had not wanted to send you the enclosed. It purports to be a newly discovered scene from ' Festus,' and is written by a person who does not altogether like the book, as you will see from the last part, especially. I want you to read it -first, and then read the little note which will tell you about the author. / think it is capital; tell me how it strikes you. Please return it to me in your next. A. S. W." A few weeks later, April 26, she added: *' I send you herewith some poetry of Frank S., the Initial Love 271 author of the new scene from ' Festus.' The little ballad, is, I think, very pretty. He called it ' Night Thoughts,' but I like ' The Taper ' better, do not you ? And now I will tell you that he is a Hampton Falls boy, and that his name is Sanbome. I will send you all I can of his writing, and I want 7/ou to write a criticism upon the ' Festus,' etc., for the Star, a paper written by the young people at H. Falls. They shan't know who writes it ; but won't you sometime send me a sort of laughing notice of this 'new Poet'?" The ballad was the subject, afterward, of a commendatory notice in the Star by A. S. W., which pleased the young poet, and led him to an- ticipate the arrival of the critic ; who also had some curiosity to see the youth about whom her friend had told her many things. When they first saw each other in the small church at Hampton Falls, she was sitting beside her friend in the pew, and I was opposite, facing them, but only fifty feet away, so that our eyes met. In her next letter to Ednah she said (July 22, 1850) : " I have seen F. S., the young poet, a face like the early portrait of Raphael, only Frank's eyes and hair are very dark. I don't care, now I have seen him, to speak or meet with him." [In fact two days after he called on her and was welcome.] " When we began to talk earnestly I forgot everything else in my surprise and pleasure. I was astonished and delighted. There was a charm about everything he said, because he has thought more wholly for himself than anyone I ever met. ... In books, too, I was astonished at his preferences. It seemed strange that Shelley should be the favorite poet of an 272 Recollections of Seventy Years uncultivated, I should say, self-cultivated boy ; but so it is, and he talked of him and of the poems as I never heard anyone talk, after his own fashion. . . . He excused himself for staying so late, but said the time had passed rapidly. C. seemed very much surprised that he had spoken so freely to a stranger; I think he himself will wonder at it. The conversation covered so many subjects that I could not help laughing on looking back upon it ; he might have discovered the great fault of my mind, a want of method in my thoughts, as clearly as I saw his to be a want of hope. But talking with a- new person is to me like going for the first time into a gallery of pictures. We wander from one painting to another, wishing to see all, lest something finest should escape us, and in truth seeing no one perfectly and appreciatingly. Only after many visits and long familiarity can we learn which are really the best, most suggestive and most full of meaning; and then it is before two or three that one passes the hours. So we wander at first from one topic of conversation to another, until we find which are those reaching farthest and deepest, and then it is these of which we talk most. My interest in Frank S. is peculiar ; it is his intellectual and spiritual nature, and not himself that I feel so much drawn to. I can't say it rightly in words, but I never was so strongly interested in one where the feeling was so little personal." This was by no means my own case. I had the strongest personal interest in this young lady, whose life had been so unlike mine, but who had reached in many points the same conclusions, lit- erary, social and religious, which were my own, — so far as a youth of less than nineteen can be said to have reached conclusions. We met again and Initial Love 273 again, and discussed not only Shelley, but Plato and Emerson, of whom we were both eager readers. She had received from her father the winter before Emerson's " Representative Men," just after she had been reading Plato with Ednah Littlehale, and she was also familiar with several of the other characters in that volume, — her studies in German having advanced further than mine. Two years earlier she had read Emerson's first book, " Na- ture," more than once, and at the age of eighteen thus wrote of it to Ednah: " April 1, 18-18. I am glad you have read ' Nature.' It has long been one of my books. It lies at this moment on my little table, and seldom does a day pass without my finding there something that chimes with the day's thought. Emerson always gives me a feeling of quiet, simple strength. I go to him, therefore, when I am weak and feeble — not when I am full of unrest and disquiet. My soul is at times the echo of his ; like the echo, how- ever, it can only give back a single word. I bow in quiet joy at his grander thought; but, like him, I do not there- fore yield my own. The light of his spirit does not dazzle my eyes so that all seems dark elsewhere ; on the con- trary, the world around me, reflecting back that radiance, smiles in a new-born glory. I love the whole earth more, that I know him more truly." Our second evening was that of August 1, and this is the record in her journal: " Last night F. S. was here again. We had been wishing he would come but did not expect him. He was in a fine mood, but one or two things I regret in the 274 Recollections of Seventy Years evening's talk. He had spoken of many things earnestly, and at last he mentioned James Richardson's proposal that he should enter the ministry. We all laughed. I wanted to say sometliing of his future life; but I seemed to have no right. He said ' That is the last thing I should choose.' ' No,' said I, with decision, ' preaching is not your mission.' I felt as if I must go on, but I restrained myself and was silent. He must have thought we ridiculed the idea of his becoming a minister, because we thought him unequal to the work. I did not feel this so fully then as I did after he was gone; but it hurts me to have so repulsed him, for I think he wished us to say something: more — to talk with him of himself and of his future. O golden opportunity ! I fear it is lost and will not come again." " August 2. As I wrote the above, Mrs. C. asked me why, if I felt that F. had misunderstood what I said, I did not write him a note, and tell him what I then wished so much to say. She urged my doing so, and at last I wrote the following, which I showed to her, and which she advised my sending: " NOTE. " ' When you spoke last night of Mr. R.'s propo- sition that you should enter the ministry, I have thought that what I replied might and must have given you a wrong impression. When I said with decision that I did not think preaching your mission, it was not because I feared you would fail in that, or in anything for which you should heartily strive; but because it seems to me as if no one should take such a mission upon himself un- less he feels a decided call, and is sensible of a peculiar fitness. " ' Your work in life seems to me more clearly pointed Initial Love 275 out than that of most men ; it comes under that last head in " Representative Men " ; we need you as a writer. I know how much of struggle and even of suffering such a life must contain, but Plato says, " When one is at- tempting noble things it is surely noble also to suffer whatever it may befall him to suffer." " ' I feel that there is that within you which cannot rightfully be hidden ; and your success seems to me sure, if you will but bend your whole energies to this end. I wish I were wise enough to suggest something more than the goal to be reached ; but I am sure you will have other and more efficient friends who will give you the aid of experience. " ' Perhaps you will think I presume upon a short acquaintance to say all this ; but it is so often given to us " to foresee the destiny of another more clearly than that other can," and it seems to me only truth to strive " by heroic encouragements to hold him to his task." Will you pardon my boldness .f* I give you God-speed. " ' Your friend, " ' Anna W.' " " Wednesday, Aug. 7. I went to the Sewing Circle on Munt Hill. I had three reasons for going — to be with Cate, to sit under the green trees once again, and to see Frank, who I felt sure would be there. I had a beautiful but wearisome afternoon. I liked to sit under the green arches of the oaks and maples, and to watch the play of faces, and read through them in the souls of those around me. Cate is the best, and most beautiful and worthy to be loved ; and next to her I was drawn to Helen Sanborn. She is cold and self-centered, but she interests me. I want to know what all that coldness covers and conceals. Frank came; he greeted me last, 276 Recollections of Seventy Years and then almost distantly — certainly coldly. He was gay and witty, and we had a little talk together, sitting after tea in the doorway. Miss (Nancy) Sanborn's house is prettily located, but there is something really mournful in such a lonely life as hers. Heaven save me from so vacant, so desolate a life as that of most unmarried women I » " August 8. The conversation began by Gate's show- ing him my Analyses. I sat in a low chair at C.'s feet, and watched his face while he read. It was steady ; I could not read it, and I admired his composure, because I do not think it arose from a want of feeling. He said, when he had finished, that he should not like to say whose the first analysis was ; it might apply in parts to many ; and then turned to his own, and began to talk of it ; not easily, but with difficulty and reserve. I gave him a pencil and asked him to mark what he thought untrue. He made three or four marks, and explained why he did so ; but not for some time did he say that it was himself of whom he spoke. He said I overrated him ; he was quick but confused, and he complained of a want of method, strictness and steadiness. " The conversation turned upon many things which I cannot write here — upon pride, upon faith in a future life, etc. It was not till after midnight that he said he must go ; and then it was evidently only because he felt he ought ; the conversation held him. ' When,' he asked, ' shall you be in Hampton Falls again ? ' ' Perhaps in one year, perhaps not for several,' said I. ' Then it is doubtful when we shall see one another again. I shall not be likely to meet you anywhere else.' ' Yes,' said I, ' when I see you next, your destiny will probably be decided.' ' I will promise you,' he said, ' that my choice shall be made as quickly as possible.' Initial Love 277 " I told him I hoped I should hear of it when he did so. He said he might not be in Hampton Falls at that time, and seemed, I half thought, to wish me to ask him to tell me himself of his decision ; but I hesitated to do so, and so said nothing." Here is the analysis then under consideration : " THE CHARACTER OF F. B. S. AT EIGHTEEN. " Mind analytic, the intellect predominating and gov- erning the heart ; feelings do not often obtain the mastery. Intellect calm and searching, with a keen insight, equally open to merits and demerits. Much practical ability and coolness of judgment. He is unsparingly just to his own thought, and is not easily moved therefrom. With great imagination he is not at all a dreamer, or if he is ever so, his dreams are not enervating and he has power to make them realities. He is vigorous, healthy, strong. Calmness of feeling as well as of thought, is a large element in his nature ; but there is fire under the ice, which, if it should be reached, would flame forth with great power and intensity. Imagination rich and vivid, yet he is somewhat cold; wants hope, is too apt to look on the dark side of things. " Has great pride. It is one of the strongest elements of his character. Values highly independence, and thinks himself capable of standing alone, and as it were apart from all others ; yet in his inmost soul he would be glad of some authority upon which to lean, and is influenced more than he is aware by those whose opinions he re- spects. There is much religion in him. He despises empty forms without the spirit, but has large reverence for things truly reverenceable. " He is severe, but not more so with others than with 278 Recollections of Seventy Years himself: yet he likes many, endures most, and is at war with few. His feehngs are not easily moved, loves few — perhaps none with enthusiasm. He is too proud to be vain, yet will have much to stimulate vanity. He fancies himself indifferent to praise or blame, but is much less so than he imagines. He is open, and yet reserved ; in showing his treasures he knows where to stop, and with all his frankness there is still much which he reveals to none. Has much intellectual enthusiasm. Loves wit, and is often witty ; has much humor too, sees quickly the ludicrous side of things, and though he wants hope is seldom sad or despondent. Has many noble aspirations yet unsatisfied. Still seeking, seeking, groping in the dark. He wants a definite end for which to strive heartily; then his success would be sure. Much executive power, executes better than he plans. " Loves the beautiful in all things. He has much originality; his thoughts and tastes are peculiarly his own. Is impatient of wrong, and almost equally so of inability. Is gentle in spite of a certain coldness about him; has strong passions in spite of his general calmness of intellect and affection. A nature not likely to find rest, struggle is its native element; wants a steady aim, must work, standing still is impossible ; but he must have a great motive for which to strive." " August 5, 1850. Many contradictions in this analy- sis, but not more than there are in the character itself." This forecast of character was made after sev- eral long conversations, of which Anna (we soon got beyond the formality of titles) preserved a record in her journal, for she had formed the jour- nalizing habit in childhood, and had it confirmed Initial Love 279 by the fashion of the day, among her Boston friends. This sketch was followed up a few weeks later by a mythical entry in my journal, wherein JNIiss Walker endeavored, by a sally of the imagination, to fathom mj^ sentiments and wishes, in a passage not meant for my eyes, and which I did not see till many years after. In sending it to her Hamj^ton Falls friend, whom she designated as " M.," and herself by " L." (for which I substitute the true initials, "A." and "C"), Miss Walker thus wrote, September 3, 1850: " Here you have what F. would never have written, or even thought definitely and connectedly ; but what I think he would feel to be true to his opinion if he saw it here written. It is a curious jumble of fact and fiction, which it may amuse you to read, as it has me to write. Some things are like F., — others most unlike; the style of the Journal is not F.'s — some of the thoughts such as he might have, others that he would not. I have not given this care and time enough to make it good ; but I like you should see it." Here follows this singular dramatic interlude : " I have received from A. a paper in which she has written a kind of analysis of me. It is curious to look at one's self through the eyes of another in this way, — some things both pleasant and unpleasant are in it. In this paper she has said many true things of me ; though there are also some which I should be inclined altogether to deny. Still I doubt whether I myself should have made a fairer statement. But after all, where does this lead 280 Recollections of Seventy Years me? I asked this of A., but got from her no clear answer in words, though I know in general what her thought is. " ' Had a divine messenger from the clouds,' says Teufelsdrockh, ' or a miraculous handwriting on the wall, convincingly proclaimed to me This thou shalt do! with what passionate readiness (so I often thought), would I have done it, — had it been leaping into the Infernal Fire.' So also could I say ; but in the self-introspection forced on me of late, I have found such a source of doubt and self-distrust that I sometimes feel as if I were fitted for no work. All! the most fearful unbelief is unbelief in one's self. " In the Analysis A. writes, ' He is severe, but not more so with others than with himself.' I questioned of this severity with her, but she still maintained it to be true. And yet, said I, ' I cannot speak to any one of his faults without suffering greater pain than I inflict.' ' Yes,' said she, ' there is a curious sweet gentleness down there in the depths, that keeps very near this same sterm jus- tice, — goes hand in hand with it, even, and checks and re- strains and softens it always.' " How I wish I had some friend wise enough to decide for me ! and yet I would not burden another with me ; and I can stand by myself. A., to whom I said some- thing of this, half rebuked me for pride, — and pride I believe it is. Injustice troubles me little; there is a certain consciousness of superiority over the person who mis- judges me that takes away the pain. But too high a hope — one can only suff^er from that. A. says she is simply just; I think she is true to her thought; and after all why should I fret and fume? Every one must in the end pass for what he is worth. Why cannot I wait quietly till the waters sink to their true level? " A. is a singular person ; she talks to you of yourself with the same frankness that she would talk of a third Initial Love 281 person, — perhaps even with more severity of truth. Yet she does it not rudely. I talked to-day with C. of my future, and of many things besides. She is a person to whom one need not fear to go at all times; her judgment is good, and her mind clear; she only wants self-confi- dence in the expression of her thoughts. C. and A. are very unlike. C. listens to your thought gently and with sympathy, but gives not her own, often, until she is asked therefor. A. gives you her own thought, fancy or opinion, and then calls quietly for yours. She does not argue but affirms, and calls out argument in you. C. advises me as A. does, and agrees with her as to what is the best present plan for me. But what A. would be inclined somewhat to urge upon me, C. would only doubtfully suggest. Yet both would be patient with delay ; A. because if one plan failed, she would hope at once in another, — or if her own did not succeed, would have full confidence that a better would be found and followed ; C. because she had never trusted her own opinion, or felt herself equal to advising; and because she would feel it assumption to urge or insist, or even silently to believe her own thoughts best. From the same cause, C. would suffer most in anticipation, A. in retrospection. C.'s personal presence is necessary to you ; A. is of no more value present than absent. " A. spoke of my calmness. I was not very calm as I walked home last night. I was angry with myself that I had said so little of what I meant to say. I never am equal to the occasion. And now, what is to come of all this? We reached not to any clear plan, though ways and means of life were considered." Here is the same subtle earnestness of insight as in the analysis itself; but the question would oc- cur at once, " Why this intense occupancy of the 282 Recollections of Seventy Years mind with a single person, and that a new acquaint- ance? one, too, whose traits, if interesting, were not unusual." The events of the next few months re- vealed the answer. It was the impression of A. that this new friend was in love with C, and a part of the interest shown came from feminine sympathy with any romance of the affections. The descrip- tion of " C." is very exact. After the parting, which was for only a few months, the Journal of August 9 goes on, and shows how far from mere intellectual interest was the awakened sentiment in this gentle breast: " Intellectually, or by a certain fitness between us, I seemed to draw near to him, and I think lie was sorry that our acquaintance should have been so transient, and should have terminated so suddenly. It seems strange to think of now, and not quite real to me ; but I feel it has been of great service to me, however little I have done to help him. I have never seen anyone like Frank. It is good to have a new interest in life, and in him I shall always feel strongly interested. I believe the journal of this evening is very poor ; it gives not the least idea of what I consider as almost the most singular conver- sation in my life — and the end of a strange experience. " When he was gone I felt so full of regret that I had not spoken more wisely to him that I covered my face with my hands and let the warm tears flow fast — but it was only for a moment. I was excited as I seldom am ; felt strong and free, and as I looked out of the window had an inclination to throw myself down on the cool grass below. The girls would not let me talk ; they went to their rooms — but I lay waking all the night through. Initial Love 283 How I wished for some divining power to give me a knowledge of Frank's thoughts! Had I helped him? was tliis meeting of ours to have any influence upon his Hfe? and if so, would it work for good or evil? was this the beginning or the end of some new life? Lastly, how had he thought of 7ne? finely and highly, or had I seemed poor and bold? Upon his thought of me all the power of this evening to help him must depend ; and I felt doubtful what it had been. Are we really to see each other no more? and is this to end our acquaintance? Have I been forbearing enough? Should I not have waited to be sought, and not have gone out to meet him? But my motive was pure and disinterested ; does he know that? Of course he could not seek me. There certainly was feeling in him to-night — I saw it in his face. It is true then that he loves C? These and a thousand other questions I went on asking." There was no occasion for my new friend to doubt how I had received all this inspiration and encouragement to a more active and public way of life. I was ever unapt to think unworthily of such as thought worthily of me; and no thought inconsistent with the most ideal friendship occurred to me. But the arrow of Love had wounded me also, and I was not bound to be so unconscious of it as the lady in the case must be. We continued to correspond, and I went on a long-projected tour to the White Mountains on foot, early in Sep- tember, with my head and heart both enlisted in this new service. I followed the route that Henry and John Thoreau had taken in September, 1839, stood on the summit of Mount Washington (then 284 Recollections of Seventy Years covered with a light snow) September 15, returned by the Connecticut Valley as far as Lebanon, but without seeing Dartmouth College; called on the publisher of my first verses in the New Hampshire Concord, and thence by way of Pittsfield, North- wood, Nottingham and Exeter, reached home late in the month. Soon after, in accordance with Miss Walker's suggestion, I made the arrangement with Mr. Hoyt, at Exeter, by which I was to recite to him in Greek for a year before entering as a stu- dent in the Phillips Academy, of which he was one of three teachers of some 60 students, where now are 460. Before this journey was undertaken, the Sibyl who had thus foreshadowed my character, after so short an acquaintance, but in virtue of her lively sympathy and the insight of genius, had also, with a calm judgment not always vouchsafed to the sibylline class, thought out the practical path for her new friend to follow. She considered and set aside, as I had done, a proposal of James Rich- ardson, a classmate in college of Thoreau, that I should enter college under his protection. He was then the Unitarian pastor in Haverhill, and a friend of Whittier as well as of Thoreau. Miss Walker said, writing to her friends at Hampton Falls, from Gloucester, where she was visiting Miss Littlehale : " With regard to Mr. Richardson, if that plan should be open, I doubt if it would be really for the best. James Richardson's faults of mind are so exactly those which Initial Love 285 F. complains of in himself, that I fear he would not obtain from him that discipline which he most needs. There is not reality enough about J. R. to satisfy the wants of a true and strong nature ; not that I fear con- tagion, for F. has more power of self-preservation than any person I ever met ; but his teacher should be a man of strong and accurate mind, with an element even of intellectual severity in it." She then offered this suggestion, with the rea- sons for it, and a strong indication of her own sympathetic interest in my future: " That Frank shall remain at Hampton Falls and take private lessons of Mr. Hoyt at Exeter, during this winter, at least. Going into Exeter once or twice a week would be easy for him, and all that would be needful in his case. And from all I hear of Mr. Hoyt he is admirably fitted to be Frank's guide. Ednah, who knows him, says he is just the person, I only judge of him through others. If I were Frank I should go to Mr. H. and tell him just how it was with me — that it was the discipline of educa- tion that I wanted, and not to be fitted for any particular profession ; and I should ask his advice as to the studies best to pursue. If Frank would do this, I do not fear for the result ; if I am not mistaken in my opinion of Mr. H. at the end of the winter he would no longer stand in need of that friend who is wise enough to choose for him his future course in life. Is not this the best and most possible present course for Frank? It does seem so to me; and I have thought of this with far more anxiety and effort than I have bestowed even upon my oivn winter, and all that must depend thereon. Can I say more? or will you understand fully that this is my best judgment — which can only pass for what it is worth? 286 Recollections of Seventy Years though I would it were of a thousand times more value than it is. . . . After all, this can only be a sug- gestion — for it is made without a full knowledge of facts, and there may be many objections known to Frank, of which I am wholly ignorant. " Frank's course in life, as it lies clearly in my thought, seems to be this: To devote the next four or five years to as severe study (and I do not mean by study mere getting of lessons) as a strict obedience to the laws of health will allow ; to take for this time intellectual disci- pline as the principal, though not the exclusive end and aim of life, and for this purpose to make use of all and the best means in his power. At the end of those years he may work with his hands at anything he pleases ; there is no labor which a noble soul cannot dignify. I would not condemn him to the hard struggles of the merely literary man, even if his physical strength would allow ; for in this money-loving Yankee land want and suffering are the sure accompaniments of such a life; but I would have him fitted to use to the full those powers of mind which God has given him for the benefit of others ; and I would have this work of a writer the highest end and aim of life, although other things may be the needful and even beautiful accessories. ' If I were to proffer an earnest prayer to the gods for the greatest of earthly privileges,' says Mr. Alcott in his Journal, ' it should be for a severely candid friend.' That, at least, I am and have been to Frank ; and even should he think me inclined to force and intrude my opinions upon him, I will not selfishly shrink from doing what I think right, because I may thereby suffer the loss of his good opinion." I followed this very wise counsel, took lessons in Greek of Mr. Hoyt for a year, and then en- Initial Love 287 tered Phillips Exeter Academy for seven months, and from that entered at Harvard a year in ad- vance, — having read much Latin before going to Exeter. The arrangement had the incidental ad- vantage, not foreseen by either of us, that I could receive my letters and parcels from Anna, and send my own without attracting too much notice from friends and relatives, — who were generally excluded from knowledge of the correspondence. This was at Anna's request, her position being more difficult than mine. In later years, with a fuller knowledge of the world and its feminine moiety, I have sometimes thought that a youth of less vanity than myself might have been excused for hoping that a lady, who evidently took so deep an interest in his char- acter and future career, had at least a slight per- sonal reason for so doing. But that would have been unjust to this rare personage, who certainly was the most unselfish and just of all women. The disclosure of love was truly as great a sur- prise to her, three months after this, as anything could have been; but that it was not unwelcome the event proved. In one of my letters I sent her these lines, M^hich, after the avowal of my love in November, I com- pleted to a sonnet, by the lines of the final couplet : " As calmest waters mirror Heaven the best. So best befit remembrances of Thee Calm, holy hours, from earthly passion free, Sweet twilight musing, — Sabbaths in the breast ; 288 Recollections of Seventy Years No stooping thought, nor any grovehng care The sacred whiteness of that place shall stain, Where, far from heartless joys and rites profane, Memory has reared to Thee an altar fair; Yet frequent visitors shall kiss the shrine, And ever keep its vestal lamp alight, — All noble thoughts, all dreams divinely bright, That waken or delight this soul of mine. So Love, meek pilgrim ! his young vows did pay, With glowing eyes that must his lips gainsay." A month after the declaration, Anna wrote to Ednah Littlehale, her dearest friend: " And yet, my Ednah, even you are not dearer to me than Frank is. I cannot bear to tell George of all this until F. has achieved for himself so much that it will not seem mere madness to George. I think I cannot speak of this to him until this is so. I cannot expose F. more than myself to the pain that would follow ; and yet you say it would not be right to keep this a secret — and I could not ask a longer waiting of Frank. I send you inclosed F.'s letters : I wish you to return them at once, and write to me of them some time, frankly, just what you feel ; this, dearest, at your leisure. . . . Believe me that I do not muse and dream ; the only time when I am ever guilty of this is in the very early morning, when I have waked sometimes from dreams of F., and, half waking, half sleeping, have fancied what we should say to one another when we met." And to show that I was no better in that respect, she enclosed to Ednah my last sonnet: ARIANA SMITH WALKER, ^T 18 From a crayon by A. Morse // F. B. SANBORN, 1853 ,^ft^/j, -^^^22- (^Tra^e^ /h^'T-'c—trC^ 0^7-!^>/-A.^rz.iy-€.^ . -O U--T-<-t^ <*«-^J^-tt». _ Z^ <,_W^ / ^/-r-<' v^— ?— r-s-t-* .^^Wiii-i-*^*-:/^^-;^ 'r^-trr' . //i^/r/ Initial Love 289 SONNET. " Being absent yet thou art not all withdrawn, For thou hast stamped thine image on the world; It shines before me in the blushing dawn, And sunset clouds about its grace are curled ; And thou hast burthened every summer breeze With the remembered music of thy voice. Sweeter than linnet's song in garden trees, And making wearisome all other joys. Sleep vainly strives to bar thee from his hall, — Thou win'st light entrance in a dream's disguise, And there with gentlest sway thou rulest all His gliding visions and quick fantasies ; The busy day is thine ; the quiet night Sleeps in thy radiance, as the skies in light." " These I thought you would hke," she adds at the foot; "tell me if you do." Our correspondence was incessant, and the Exe- ter post office gave the opportunity to mail and receive letters without exciting gossip. Something like valentines passed in February, and she wrote to Ednah: " May I talk to you of F. ? I find him mingling more and more in my life; find it daily more difficult to turn my thoughts from him. I believe he is dearer to me now than ever before. I hear often from him ; he writes two letters to my one, generally; is he not good?" " March 19, 1851. If it is finally decided that I do not go to H. Falls next summer, as seems likely now, I see no other way but for F. to come here in June. The excuse must be a pilgrimage to Monadnoc — not very difficult to see through, but sufficient to make no 290 Recollections of Seventy Years explanations necessary. I hate equivocation, but I am forced to it ; and if it is possible for F. to come, it would be possible for me to receive him. But if I went to H. Falls, I know busy tongues would say it was for F.'s sake, and report would occupy itself about us both. Should I hesitate for that? What do you say?" There could be but one issue to all this; the heart governs in such matters, and I knew very early that her heart was mine. I have never heard of a love more romantic and unselfish; no perma- nent thought of ways and means, of foes or friends, came between us. Her life had been such as to arouse compassion for one so endowed, and so fettered by illness; but that very affliction had chastened her to a saintliness that was charmingly mingled with coquetry. "I love to be praised," she said; "I love to be loved "; and few were ever more beloved. By Heaven's direction her favor lighted on me; and, as usual, she exaggerated the qualities in me that herself had inspired. Emer- son's " Hermione " pictures the process: " I am of a lineage That each for each doth fast engage; In old Bassora's walls I seemed Hermit vowed to books and gloom, — 111 bested for gay bridegroom. I was by thy touch redeemed; When thy meteor glances came, We talked at large of worldly fate, And drew truly every trait." There was, on her part, the most complete and Initial Love 291 unselfish devotion to the lover who would not re- nounce her, when she set before him illness and the sacrifice of worldly success as the dower she must bring him. She had been attacked, in 1846, with a painful lameness, which kept her for years from walking freely, and was accompanied by nervous attacks that often seemed to threaten her life. This affliction had interrupted her edu- cation, and made her more dependent on the serv- ice of others than her high spirit could always en- dure ; it also drew forth from her brother, George, five years older than herself, a tender regard and constant care that had inspired the most ardent sisterly affection. Her need of love was enhanced by her limitations of health, and yet all this made it more difficult for her to decide the issue of be- trothal and marriage. And so the world must not know, for my sake, as well as her own, that we were lovers. People must imagine it a close friendship such as her ex- pansive nature was so apt to form, and so faith- ful to maintain. One family in Hampton Falls and one friend in Boston, Miss Littlehale, were to be cognizant of the truth; and it was not clear, for years, to the self-sacrificing good sense of the the maiden, what her ultimate answer to the world might be. Hence misunderstandings and remon- strances from those who saw, more clearly than the young lovers could, how many outward ob- stacles opposed themselves to this union of hearts. But the union remained unbroken, and could at last be proclaimed to the world as an engagement 292 Recollections of Seventy Years of marriage, to be fulfilled when my college course should be ended, and my position in the world es- tablished. The announcement was made in 1853, following a recurrence of the mysterious illness from which she had suffered more or less since 1846, and of which she died in 1854. In the intervening four years since our first meeting, great happiness had been ours, and also much suffering, from the uncertainties of life and the divided allegiance which she owed to her family and to her lover. Finally this source of unhappi- ness was removed, and it was seen by all that her choice was to be accepted, whatever the result might be. Her brother, George, her affectionate brother, seemed at first to stand like a lion in the path that was to bring two lovers together. In the graces and affections of domestic life, none of those here cormnemorated excelled George Walker, and few have left a dearer memory. From earliest years he was distinguished, like his mother and sisters, for tender and helpful sym- pathy with those related to him, and for courtesy and kindness to all. His relation to his sister Anna, after the death of their mother, and in the feeble health and engrossing occupations of their father, was peculiarly admirable ; and when she found her- self more closely bound to another, this new tie was not allowed to weaken the fraternal affection. He adopted the youth, who had so unexpectedly become dear, as a younger brother; and his deli- cate generosity in circumstances which often pro- duce estrangement was never forgotten by those Initial Love 293 who experienced it. In his pubHc life he was the same considerate and high-minded gentleman; not regardless of the advantages which social po- sition and moderate wealth give, but ever ready to share his blessings, instead of engrossing all within reach to himself and his circle. Without the com- manding talents or decisive character which make men illustrious, and secure unchanging worldly fortune, he had, as Channing said of Henry Tho- reau, " what is better, — the old Roman belief that there is more in this life than applause and the best seat at the dinner-table, — to have moments to spare to thought and imagination, and to those who need you." As for that gentle, self- forgetting and inspiring Person whom I of all men have best reason to re- member, and whose long-vanished life has been here recalled, what can be said worthy of her mem- ory? Something of her will be learned from that (graceful portrait of her early womanhood; some- thing, perchance, from her words here cited; but she was so much more than any one mood or aspect could imply, that the variety and vitality of her genius will hardly be suspected from its partial expression. As Chaucer says of his poet: " Certes, it was of herte all that she sung." Affection and humility were her constant traits; they led her to undervalue that nature which none could regard without love and admiration; but along with them went a serene courage and a high spirit not always found to dwell with humility. 294 Recollections of Seventy Years She claimed silently by her steady affection what she was apt to renounce by her magnanimity, — the devotion of hearts too much possessed with the magic of her vivacious thought and romantic sen- timent ever to forget her. I had, perhaps, been endowed with the power of winning friends with- out effort, — a gift that in her was carried to its highest j)oint. She was beloved wherever she was seen, and had no enemy but her own self-accusing tenderness. When the venerable Alcott, her friend and mine, was composing his Sonnets, in tender recollection and spiritual recognition of the companions of his life, young or old, he gave me the first two lines of the poem which follows, and desired me to complete it, in memory of her whom we had lost till the light of a fairer world should shine. With this shall the chapter be closed : Sweet saint ! whose rising dawned upon the sight Like fair Aurora chasing mists away ; Our ocean billows, and thy western height Gave back reflections of the tender ray, Sparkling and smiling as night turned to day ; Ah! whither vanished that celestial light? Suns rise and set ; Monadnoc's amethyst Year-long above the sullen cloud appears ; Daily the waves our summer strand have kist, But Thou returnest not with days and years ; Or is it thine? yon clear and beckoning star Seen o'er the hills that guarded once thy home; Dost guide thy Friend's free steps, that widely roam, Toward that far country where his wishes are? CHAPTER XII Exeter and Cambridge MY absences and anxieties for my dear Ariana hindered the progress of my college studies ; but from those my few months at Exeter were free, and the friendships I formed there, both among my school- mates and the cultivated families in Exeter and its vicinity, were a source of much pleasure. With Professor Hoyt I had long been acquainted, and he introduced me to his circle of political friends — Judge French, the father of the now famous sculptor, then a small child; James Bell, the lead- ing lawyer of western Rockingham, and son of a former Governor and Senator; his law partner, Amos Tuck, already Congressman, the successor both of Senator Hale and my cousin Norris, who had been promoted to the Senate. Dr. Gor- ham, a classmate at Harvard of Emerson, and his senior in medicine and surgery, Dr. Perry, were also of this circle, and both had married into the leading families in Exeter, the Gilmans and the Abbots, whose leadership, in the case of the Gil- mans, dated back to the middle of the 17th cen- tury; while Dr. Abbot, as head of the Academy and instructor of Webster, Sparks, Saltonstall, the Hales, SuUivans, Cilleys, etc., took the lead even 295 296 Recollections of Seventy Years of the half-dozen Gilmans who still lived in the old houses above the winding river. In the oldest Gilman house of all, a block-house in the Indian wars, Webster had boarded while at the Academy, and it was still occupied by the daughter of the good old Squire Clifford, who had given Webster as a boy some lessons in politeness, which Miss Betsy Clifford loved to narrate, as we sat at tea around her small tea-table. She remembered the great man, both as awkward schoolboy and princely statesman, and she took a lively interest in my own education, urging me, upon the advice of her old clergyman, to learn Hebrew, whatever else I might study, because it was the language of the Old Testament. My schoolmates also were interesting persons, the senior among them being George Stevens of Deerfield, among the Rockingham mountains near Nottingham, where had dwelt the Revolutionary heroes, Cilley and Dearborn, — the latter secretary of war under Jefferson, — and the ancestors of B. F. Butler, who made much noise in the Civil War and Reconstruction period, and became for a single year Governor of Massa- chusetts in 1883, after trying for that honor a dozen years or more. When he was first actively a candidate for that office, in 1871, I obtained from JNIr. Stevens, still living in the native town of him- self and of Butler, a concise history of the General's father. Captain John Butler, whose record was not a very creditable one, — but that is another story, as Kipling says. In our school days Stevens was the head of a club of students who filled a small Exeter and Cambridge 297 boarding-house, and set the fashion for the com- mons tables that have since prevailed in the old Academy. This club had been founded a year or two earlier, and was a resource for those students whose means were limited. We lived well, but economically, and had that companionship out of school hours that college dormitories allow. Stev- ens was in our advanced class of eight, but did not go to Harvard, as four of the class did. Of those four, three are still living and active, after 56 years of busy life since we left Exeter. Our Latin instructor was the Principal of the school, Dr. Soule, whose teaching, like that of his colleague Hoyt, in Greek and mathematics, was of the strict- est, and whose manners were more formal than Hoyt's. Both were Dartmouth graduates, and Dr. Soule at Hanover knew Rufus Choate, then a col- lege tutor; and remembered that in social meetings of the college faculty and magnates of the little town, Choate would artfully lead the conversation, when his turn came, to some topic on M^hich he had carefully prepared himself, and would then talk and shine, to the envy of the simpler citizens, with whom conversation was not an art. A few of the students lived in the comfortable house of Dr. Soule, which had been built for Dr. Abbot, — in my time two, my classmate Willard "Bliss of Illinois, and Jerry, the only son of Judge Smith, who had fought under Stark at Bennington, served in Congress under Wash- ington, and early in the 19th century had been Governor and chief justice of New Hamp- 298 Recollections of Seventy Years shire. This son of his old age, who is still living, a law-professor at Harvard University, was then a boy in a jacket, and liis careful mother had placed him under the double over- sight of Dr. Soule and Bliss. IVIrs. Smith, who was a Miss Hale of Dover, cousin of Senator Hale, was an amiable, accomplished and charitable lady, who had removed to Dover with her husband in 1842 from his fine house, garden and park of old pines and oaks in Exeter; and after his death to a large farm in the town of Lee, a few miles from where now is the Agricultural College of Dur- ham. There his widow continued to live for twenty or thirty years more. During my winter at Exeter she had invited me with Bliss to ac- company her son to Lee and spend the Sunday, as we did. A description of the place, as it had been seen four years earlier, in autumn, by Miss Walker, then not quite eighteen, pictures the scenery and our hostess better than any other has done. Miss Walker had driven over from Hampton Falls with her friend Gate (now Mrs. Folsom), and sent this letter to her father at Peterborough: "(Oct. 23, 1847). Here I am at length in Lee. I have been so long talking of this visit, and looking forward to its accomplishment, that I had half feared it was one of the unsubstantials, which were pleasant to dream about, but which I could hardly hope to realize. Here, how- ever, I actually find myself, — and a most beautiful place it is. Mrs. Smith's house is on a sort of hill which slopes down to the road, where there are some noble old trees. Directly in front of my window is the most beautiful Exeter and Cambridge 299 field or park which you can imagine, with here and there some scattered elms, and at the bottom a grove of pines with a few maples intermingled, — which now, in their Autumn coloring, make a beautiful appearance. All this, as you may suppose, forms a lovely picture. I do so wish I could sketch it for you, as it lies in the glad- some light of this sunlit morning, — but you must be sat- isfied with my poor description instead. " Witliin doors everything is delightful, — a fine old par- lor, with a piano on one side and bookcases on the other, — an open fire with the Exeter fender before it, and everything wearing a happy, homelike look, which makes everyone feel so comfortable. And when the old arm- chair is filled, and Aunt Lizzie's dear good face smiles out upon you, I do not think a pleasanter place could be found in all our own New England. All here gave Gate and myself a most kindly welcome, and we soon ceased to feel ourselves among strangers. " We had a pleasant ride over from H. Falls, and amused ourselves a good deal in finding out the way, as neither knew anything about it. We made no mistake, however, until in sight of the place, when we took occasion, owing to wrong directions, to go half a mile out of our way ; but finding ourselves in front of a dismal, black-look- ing house, as unlike tliis as possible, I quickly concluded we were wrong, and quietly wended my way back to the turn of the road, which led us immediately here. Is not this doing as well as you could expect of us? " The Journal adds to this account: " Lee, Oct. 22, Friday. Everything here is more beautiful than I had anticipated, — especially the field in front of the house, and the Autumn woods beyond, which 300 Recollections of Seventy Years are exquisite. The house, the grounds and the vines are all in keeping, and all quite perfect in mj eyes. But Aunt E. is the most beautiful of all ; she has more that is truly lovely than almost any woman I have ever met. There is something in her very presence that elevates and purifies. " Oct. 23. To-day the sun has once more greeted us. Everyone rejoices in liis light, — especially the chil- dren, who run about like wild creatures in their bounding life. They are pretty little things, and I love to see their happy faces. Jere. has a fine countenance, full of anima- tion and intelligence ; he pleases me much, and I am glad when they occasionally look in upon us as we sit reading or working in the library. " Monday, Oct. 25. I have left Lee with regret ; many kindly influences hovered round me there. I felt sad at parting, and when Aunt E., as she bade me good- bye, added, ' God bless you, dear,' and kissed me warmly, my soul was full, and I longed to throw my arms about her then. Now, however, was it with me as it has often been before; I feared and the opportunity passed." In the spring following this visit of Bliss and myself to Lee, Daniel Webster (whom IVIrs. Eliza- beth Smith had often entertained at her Exeter home) being a candidate for President, gave an address before the New York Historical Society, of which a printed copy was sent by him to Dr. Soule, as head of our Academy, with a brief letter alluding to his former studies at Exeter, and indi- cating his continued affection for the school. This letter, the doctor told us, the students ought to answer, and he suggested the formation of a com- Exeter and Cambridge 301 mittee to prepare a suitable reply. We met and chose such a committee from all the classes, and to me, as representing the advanced class, was as- signed the duty of drafting the document. It was a singular choice, for I had not only been a pro- nounced opponent of Webster, since his 7th of March speech in 1850, which I held to be a bid for Southern votes in the convention that finally nomi- nated General Scott instead of Webster, but I had written and printed in the Independent Democrat a savage attack on Webster, in heroic pentameters, as it was then the fashion to call the ten-syllable couplets of Pope, Dryden and Goldsmith. How- ever, I undertook the task, and produced a letter which was generally accepted, and was said by George Abbot, son of Parson Abbot of my native town, who was then Webster's private secretary, to have given some pleasure to the weary states- man himself. Before the year was out Webster died at Marshfield; and I had lost the only chance I had to hear him make a speech (in Bow- doin Square in 1851), by the delay of a train which carried me to Boston too late for the speech. At Exeter I read the Odes of Horace and trans- lated some of them in verse, carried on a constant correspondence with Miss Walker, in which we criticised literature, and touched on all those topics that absorb the thoughts of young lovers. I even printed a few verses in the newspapers, and com- posed an ode for a school celebration at Exeter, which met with some favor from the few who read 302 Recollections of Seventy Years it. I entered Harvard in July, 1852, practically without " conditions," and with some reputation for scholarship, which caused the high scholars in the sophomore class to have some fears that I might prove a troublesome rival in the strife for honors. But I had no such ambition. I hastened from my successful college examina- tions to my home at Hampton Falls, where, soon after, Miss Walker arrived to spend a month with her friends who were privy to our engagement. She was unusually well, — the new interest in life seemed to have given to her illness a favorable change; she was to visit Newport with her brother after this New Hampshire visit, and all was happi- ness, present and prospective. We met for walks and drives, and in afternoon or evening parties; one I specially remember at my grandfather's house on the hillside, looking off toward Kensing- ton, — with its four elms, its beehives, its orchard with early-ripening apples, and with some of my lively city cousins always there in summer. We drove to Exeter to see the former home of Judge Smith, her mother's uncle, and the house not far off, where she had lived as a child for a year or two, while her brothers were at the Academy, and when the family circle was yet unbroken by death. We drove also to the sea-beaches at Hampton, in lovely August days, and the occasion was celebrated in two sonnets, one of which was afterward printed in my Introduction to Alcott's volume of " Son- nets and Canzonets " : Exeter and Cambridge 303 Ah, mournful Sea ! Yet to our eyes he wore The placid look of some great god at rest ; With azure arms he clasped the embracing shore, And gently heaved the billows of his breast: We scarce his voice could hear, — and then it seemed The happy murmur of a lover true, Who in the sweetness of his sleep hath dreamed Of kisses falling on his lips like dew. Far off, the blue and gleaming hills above, The Sun looked through his veil of thinnest haze, As coy Diana, blushing at her love, Half hid with her own light her earnest gaze. While on the shadowy Latmian slope she found Fair-haired Endymion slumbering on the ground. I was reminded by her afterward of the notes I had written at eighteen in her Plato, which she had carefully copied off and preserved, — among them these on the " Gorgias " and " Ph^edrus," then read for the first time : " In ' Gorgias ' I should think was a more faithful re- port of the conversation of Socrates than in most of the Dialogues. It agrees better with the character of his dis- putation, — or rather, it puts the striking features of his mode in the strongest light. How the old fellow corners Gorgias and uses up the vain Polus ! but it is the rarest sport to see him ' take the starch out ' of Callicles. At the end the description of the future life is fine ; but this I take to be mostly Plato. It is full of truth, compared with the dogmas believed in by later philosophers who called themselves Christians." " The beginning of the ' Phsedrus ' I cannot admire 304 Recollections of Seventy Years greatly ; it may be a good introduction to the discourse of Socrates on Love, but I do not think it the best. But the conclusion of the speech of recantation, and, indeed, the whole speech is nearly perfect. I say nearly, because though it seems to me perfect, yet I doubt not there is a fuller perfection which might be reached by the human soul. It is both poetry and philosophy, and even religion. Men seem to have been cast down from Heaven, and covered and hidden in dust; but the links of the chain which binds them to their native land have been stretched, not broken by the fall, and may again draw them home." In letters from Boston before I had made many friends there, came these early accounts of the men I was afterward to know : " I have seen Starr King to-day, — a man who would delight you in conversation. He is like clear water. Every one has their insanity, — mine is for persons. I am a little mad on this subject, — people (and I do not mean friends only) give me a more subtle pleasure even than music; and I like that music best, which has most of the musician in it. Beethoven's symphonies move me more than all things, because they are like the deepest and most sublime personal experiences to me. Conversation intoxicates me, it is the mme of life. I do not think you an ' iceberg ' or a ' cynic,' for I believe you will understand this. Mr. King told me that when Emerson returned from England the last time, he asked him ' what Carlyle was doing ' — meaning what literary work he was engaged on. ' Oh,' said Mr. E., ' he sits in his four-story house and sneers.' Was not that characteristic of both.^ I believe I do not quite like that you should speak of Emerson as you do. I mean, that you should feel yourself ' almost his echo,' EDXAH LITTLEHALE (1853) From an oil sketch by S. W. Cheney "^ ,/ ^ V \ '■" ' \ \ \ 'K )'' ■■ ALLSTON'S EDXAH (THE MIDDLE FIGURE) Eoceter and Cambridge 305 — though I know there is a keen pleasure in thus finding an amen to jour own thoughts. Has not your reading, Hke my own, been too exclusively of one class? Out of a certain circle of thought I find so little that affects me, yet change of atmosphere is as necessary to the soul as to the body. I also feel in Emerson the coldness of which you complain, and yet that essay on ' Love ' is the finest, — I had almost said the only articulate utterance upon that subject. All else which I have read, — saving and excepting the Phcedrus, — has been only a vague and broken rhapsody, which I have felt as an impertinence. How fine is that description of the first dawning of love in the child's heart, — ' And instantly it seems to him as if she removed herself from him infinitely, and was a sacred precinct.' " You should hear Mr. Alcott talk of Emerson, — he looks upon him as almost a descendant of the gods, and will rank him only among the old Greek philosophers. ' Pythagoras,' he says, ' should have been the teacher of humanity. After him I find Plato, — then a dearth. After many ages Emerson dawns.' Do not read the Essays too much; it is not wise for you." " I have lately read a book which I shall call charming. It is the Autobiography of Leigh Hunt, and abounds with the most agreeable gossip about literary men. Lamb, Coleridge, and more than all, Shelley. Of the latter he tells you much in detail, and at the close of the volume are some letters from Shelley which are exactly what I looked for from him, — so full of generous delicacy and feeling that I could almost weep that the world had dealt so unkindly with a spirit so tender. Poor Shelley ! he seemed to have strayed here by mistake, — and mortals felt their rights invaded, and repudiated him. Some lines in Tennyson's ' In Memoriam ' remind me of him : 306 Recollections of Seventy Years * Perplexed in faith but pure in deeds At last he beat his music out; There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, — than in half the creeds.* " " I wish you had been in my place this afternoon. I was for some hours in the Atheneum looking over many volumes of engravings. Those from Hogarth you would have liked to see ; there is something in them like you, — a most singular mixture of jest and earnestness. You see first the humor and satire ; but when you have looked more closely, there is beneath this grotesque exuberance of fancy an earnestness always deep and real, — sometimes almost hitter in its intensity. He seems to me often — though not always — like one who felt too deeply to show his thoughts except under a fantastic disguise, — just as one sometimes loves a friend so much that tenderness will not do, but the strong feeling finds expression in hard names and abuse. These pictures affect me powerfully, and in their own times they must have had a much stronger influence, over imaginative minds, than they can have with us, who live amid such different circumstances and environment. As there is a love bordering upon hate, so there is a mirth reaching unto tears, — and Hogarth's is of this kind. " To-day, too, I have seen Mr. Alcott, who in this working-day world, is living an almost purely poetic life. He began life as a pedler, and is now Emerson's ' Plato,' and the friend of many of our wisest men and poets, — and I use ' our ' in a wider than an American sense. I do not agree with his theory of life, but I reverence the man ; and I had rather hear him talk words than many men ideas. " That you are not likely to weary me with letters I am NOTE Of the Town and Country Club of sixty years ago I gave some account in my Memoir of Alcott, relying largely on the description, with some amusing details, which Col. Higginson printed many years since in one of those fugitive weeklies that spring up and fade, like mushrooms, in the stimulating, but speedily arctic climate of Boston. Its name was bestowed by Emerson, its real founder, although Alcott was the proximate cause; it being Emerson's design to provide a place in Boston while Alcott was living there, in which he might easily meet, on the proper terms, other men of thought and letters, the list of whom, preserved by iVlcott in their autographs, is a long one. There might have been women, too, — among them Mrs. Howe, who had a club of the same name at Newport for years, — had it not been for a sudden impulse of Emerson's, which Higginson thus relates: I was designated by fate to stand, as on several other occa- sions, for the admission of the offending sex. This subject had been discussed once or twice and a vote taken that settled nothing, when it seemed to me that the proper way to bring a decision would be simply to nominate two ladies, and let the club settle the matter. The names selected were those of two persons whose great knowledge and services were recognized by all; Miss Elizabeth Peabodv and Mrs. Marv Lowell Putnam. Margaret Fuller Ossoli was in Italy, or she would naturallv have been selected. The next act in the drama was the receipt of the following curious letter from Mr. Emerson: — Concord, 16 May 1849 My dear Sir, I was in town yesterday & Mr. Alcott showed me the list of subscribers to the Town & Country Club and I read at or near the end of the list the names of two ladies, written down, as he told me, by your own hand. On the instant, I took a pen & scratched or l)l()tted out the names. Such is the naked fact. Whether the suggestion I obeyed was supernal or infernal, I say not. But I have to say that I looked upon the circumstance of the names of two ladies stand- ing there upon our roll as quite fatal to the existence of our cherished Club. I had stated to the Club the other day that "men" was used designedly and distinctively in the first draft, & the Club by vote decided that it should stand so. I had more- over yesterday just come from a conference with some gentle- men representing the views of an important section of the members, who, alarmed by the pugnacious attitudes into which the Club was betrayed the other dav, were preparing to with- draw, &: whom I had assured that all those who had long been projecting their literary Club, would not be deprived of their object, &" something else thrust on them, — when to mv sur- prise I found this inscription of names of ladies. I erased them • y ^' /(',.<-w,- /■ ^'y? > > -' '' -^- .'^ '}■'/ '■ A c/^v' . C^ n£^ ^^^u'^>'C- ^/d '