Part 14

The companion play, _Giles Corey_, shows what has been already observed, how little adapted Longfellow’s genius was for dealing with psychological mysteries. He could understand the mental conditions and sympathize with persecutors and victims, but he could not reproduce the uncanny atmosphere enveloping the witchcraft tragedies. _Giles Corey_ is a finished study of a theme which might have been developed into a powerful play. It is profitable reading, yet if one would be carried back into the horrors of that time he must go to Hawthorne’s ‘Young Goodman Brown’ and not to _Giles Corey_. Poets are notorious for taking liberties with the facts of history. But according to the late John Fiske, the poetical conception of Cotton Mather as set forth in _The New England Tragedies_ is much nearer truth than the popular conception of the great Puritan minister based on the teachings of historians.

The little five-act play, _Judas Maccabæus_, is a piece of careful workmanship, like everything to which Longfellow put his hand, and the scene between Antiochus and Máhala rises into passionate energy. _The Masque of Pandora_ was more to Longfellow’s taste, and if it does not satisfy the classical scholar, who is proverbially hard to please, it remains an attractive setting of one of the most attractive of mythological stories.

The dramatic poem, _Michael Angelo_, though not usually accounted Longfellow’s masterpiece, better deserves that rank than certain more popular performances. Besides being a lovely example of his art, it is the expression of his maturest thought. He kept it by him for years, working on it with loving care, adding new scenes from time to time and weighing critically the value of those already written. Finally he put it to one side, and to show that he had not entirely carried out his idea, the words ‘A Fragment’ were subjoined to the title. It was published after his death.

_Michael Angelo_ is not a play, but a series of dramatic incidents from the life of the great sculptor, illustrating his character, his thought, his work, his friendships. Many passages display a strength not commonly associated with Longfellow’s poetic genius. Little is wanting to the delineation of Michael Angelo to create the effect of massiveness. From the first monologue where he sits in his studio, musing over his picture of the ‘Last Judgment,’ to the midnight scene where Vasari finds him working on the statue of the Dead Christ, the effect is cumulative. The other characters are no less skilfully wrought. Vittoria Colonna is a beautiful conception, lofty yet human. Equally attractive with a more earthly loveliness is Julia Gonzaga, her friend, she to whom one to-day was worth a thousand yesterdays. Titian, Cellini, the Pope and his cardinals, Vasari, Sebastiano, the old servant Urbino, and the aged monk at Monte Luca effectively sustain the parts assigned them, and unite to bring into always stronger relief the character of the unique genius whom Longfellow has made his central figure.

VIII

LAST WORKS

The translation of Dante was a difficult task to which Longfellow gave himself for years with something like consecration. It is satisfactory or it is not, according to the point of view. He who holds that verse can never be translated into verse, and that a poem suffers least by being rendered in prose, will make no exception in Longfellow’s case. On the other hand, the reader who is not, and who has neither the opportunity nor the power to become a scholar in Italian, owes Longfellow an inestimable debt of gratitude. The unpoetic accuracy of which some complain counts for a virtue. The translation remains, with all that can be said against it, the work of a poet.

As age came on, Longfellow’s own verse, instead of losing in charm, the rather increased. _Kéramos_, _Ultima Thule_, and _In the Harbor_ contain many of his loveliest and most gracious poems. ‘Not to be tuneless in old age’ was his happy fortune.

* * * * *

His skill in the sentimental, homely, and obviously moral has blinded not a few readers to the larger aspects of Longfellow’s work. One wearies, no doubt, of the ethical lesson that comes with the inevitableness of fate. But there is no need of impatience, Longfellow does not invariably preach. Besides, all tastes must be taken into account. Many prefer the ethical lesson, unmistakably put.

Had Longfellow been more rugged, and had he been content to end his poems now and then with a question mark (figuratively speaking) instead of a full stop, there would have been much talk about the ‘depth of his meaning;’ and had he been frankly suggestive on tabooed topics, we should have heard a world of chatter about ‘the largeness of his view’ and the surprising degree in which he was in ‘advance of his time.’ Doubtless he lacked brute strength. Whitman could have spared him a little of his own surplus, and neither poet would have been the worse for the transfer. Nevertheless Longfellow had abundance of power exerted in his own way, which was not the way of the world. What preposterous criticism is that of Frederic Harrison, who characterizes _Evangeline_ as ‘goody-goody dribble’!

Perhaps Longfellow should be most praised for his exquisite taste. He was refined to the finger-tips, a gentleman not alone in every fibre of his being but in every line of his work. The poet of the fireside and the people was an aristocrat after all. Generations of culture seem to be packed into his verses. In a country where so much is flamboyant, boastful, restless, and crude, the influence of such a man is of the loftiest and most benignant sort.

FOOTNOTES:

[29] The first volume was printed in 1865 and sent to Italy in commemoration of the six hundredth anniversary of Dante’s birth.

[30] _The Divine Tragedy_, _The Golden Legend_, and _The New England Tragedies_ reprinted in order as parts of a trilogy.

[31] Lectures _On Translating Homer_.

[32] _Prose Remains of Arthur Hugh Clough_, p. 40.

[33] Holmes: _Pages from an Old Volume of Life_.

[34] Luigi Monti, T. W. Parsons, H. W. Wales, Israel Edrehi, Ole Bull, Daniel Treadwell.

IX

_John Greenleaf Whittier_

REFERENCES:

=W. S. Kennedy=: _John Greenleaf Whittier, his Life, Genius, and Writings_, 1882.

=S. T. Pickard=: _Life and Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier_, 1894.

=Richard Burton=: _John Greenleaf Whittier_, ‘Beacon Biographies,’ 1901.

=T. W. Higginson=: _John Greenleaf Whittier_, ‘English Men of Letters,’ 1902.

=G. R. Carpenter=: _John Greenleaf Whittier_, ‘American Men of Letters,’ 1903.

I

HIS LIFE

John Greenleaf Whittier was born at East Haverhill, Massachusetts, on December 17, 1807. His father, John Whittier, a farmer, was noted for probity, sound judgment, and great physical strength. A man of few words, he always spoke to the point, as when, in relation to public charities with which he had officially to do, he said: ‘There are the Lord’s poor and the Devil’s poor; there ought to be a distinction made between them by the overseers of the poor.’ He had imperfect sympathy with his son’s literary aspirations, but it were unjust to say that he was wholly opposed to them.

Whatever lack there may have been on this score was abundantly made up to the youth by his beautiful and saintly mother. Abigail (Hussey) Whittier was her husband’s junior by twenty-one years. From her the poet inherited his brilliant black eyes, a physical trait (mistakenly) supposed to have been derived from the old colonial minister, Stephen Bachiler, that enterprising and turbulent spirit who came to America at the age of seventy, founded cities, disputed the authority of the clergy, and finally astonished friend and enemy alike by marrying for the third time at the age of eighty-nine.

Young Whittier was apparently destined to the toilsome life of his farmer ancestors. He suffered under the ‘toughening process’ to which New England country lads were formerly subjected, and became in consequence a lifelong valetudinarian.

With his frail physique and uncertain health the ‘Quaker Poet’ affords a marked contrast, not alone to his own father, but to that mighty ancestor Thomas Whittier, founder of the American family, who at sixty-eight years of age was able to do his share in hewing the oak timbers for a new house in which he proposed to pass his declining days. The building was erected about 1688. Thomas Whittier enjoyed the use of it until his death in 1696. Five generations of Whittiers were harbored beneath its roof, and here the poet was born. Although not a Quaker himself, Thomas Whittier was a friend of the Friends, and for taking the part of certain unlicensed exhorters was for a time deprived of his rights as a freeman.

Whittier was early a reader and soon devoured the contents of his father’s slender library. So insatiable was his thirst for books that he would walk miles to borrow a volume of biography or travel. At the age of fourteen he became fascinated with the poems of Burns, and under their stimulus began to make rhymes himself.[35] On his first visit to Boston he bought a copy of Shakespeare. Scott’s novels he borrowed, to read them delightedly but with a troubled conscience.

His poetic aspirations were encouraged by his elder sister, Mary, who, without Whittier’s knowledge, sent the verses entitled ‘The Exile’s Departure’ to the Newburyport ‘Free Press,’ a short-lived journal edited by young William Lloyd Garrison. They appeared in the issue of June 8, 1826. Whittier has described his emotions on first seeing himself in print. The paper was thrown to him by the news-carrier. ‘My uncle and I were mending fences. I took up the sheet, and was surprised and overjoyed to see my lines in the “Poet’s Corner.” I stood gazing at them in wonder, and my uncle had to call me several times to my work before I could recover myself.’

Other poems were offered and accepted. Curious to see his contributor, Garrison drove over from Newburyport to the Whittier farm. The bashful country boy could with difficulty be persuaded to meet his guest. Then began a lifelong friendship not uncheckered by differences without which friendship itself lacks zest.

Garrison urged on Whittier’s parents the importance of giving the youth an education. Backed up by the influence of A. W. Thayer, editor of the Haverhill ‘Gazette,’ who offered to take the lad into his own home, Whittier got his father’s consent to his attending the newly established Haverhill Academy. He paid for one term of six months by making slippers, an art he learned from one of the farm hands, and for another term by teaching school, which seemed to him a less enviable mode of life than cobbling.

The favor accorded his verse stimulated invention. During 1827–28 he published, under assumed names, nearly a hundred poems in the Haverhill ‘Gazette’ alone. A plan for bringing out a collection of these fugitive pieces under the title of _Poems of Adrian_ came, however, to nothing.

Garrison, who had been doing editorial work in Boston for the Colliers, publishers of ‘The Philanthropist’ and ‘The American Manufacturer,’ advised their getting Whittier to take his place. Whittier edited the ‘Manufacturer’ from January to August, 1829, when he was summoned home by the illness of his father. But he had had a taste of journalism and politics, and relished both. From January to July, 1830, he edited the Haverhill ‘Gazette.’ His newspaper work made him acquainted with George Prentice of ‘The New England Review,’ published in Hartford. When Prentice left Connecticut for Kentucky, where he was to spend six months and write a campaign life of Henry Clay, he urged the owners of the ‘Review’ to engage Whittier as his substitute. Whittier was responsible for the conduct of the paper for a year and a half (July, 1830, to January, 1832). In spite of many drawbacks, his father’s death, his own illness, a disappointment in love, the period of his Hartford residence was the happiest and the most stimulating he had yet known. He printed his first volume, _Legends of New England_, a medley of prose and verse, edited _The Literary Remains of John G. C. Brainard_ (the sketch of Brainard’s life prefixed to the volume throws much light on Whittier’s reading), and brought out the narrative poem _Moll Pitcher_, a story of the once famous ‘Lynn Pythoness.’

On his return to Haverhill he played his part in local politics and was talked of for Congress. Somewhat later he was drawn into the anti-slavery movement and for the next twenty-seven years this was his life. He was a member of the legislature in 1835, and was reëlected the next year; but in general terms it may be said that in publishing _Justice and Expediency_, and in uniting himself with the small, unpopular, and exasperating party of Abolitionists, he sacrificed hope of political advancement. He gave to the cause time, health, reputation, and when he had it to give, money. In company with Abolitionist leaders and orators he encountered mobs and speculated philosophically on the chance of losing his life.

In 1837 he acted as a secretary to the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York. From 1838 to 1840 he edited ‘The Pennsylvania Freeman,’ published in Philadelphia. During an Abolitionist convention, Pennsylvania Hall, in which were the offices of the ‘Freeman,’ was sacked and burned by a pro-slavery mob. Whittier, disguised in a wig and a long overcoat, mingled with the rioters and contrived to save a few of his papers. It was a more dangerous rabble than that he encountered during the George Thomson riot at Concord, New Hampshire, three years earlier. Whittier once remarked that he never really feared for his life, but that he had no mind to a coat of tar and feathers.

A true son of Essex, he soon wearied of city life. ‘I would rather live an obscure New England farmer,’ he said. ‘I would rather see the sunset light streaming through the valley of the Merrimac than to look out for many months upon brick walls, and Sam Weller’s “werry beautiful landscape of chimney-pots.”’

He really had no choice in the matter, having been warned to give up editorial work if he would keep his precarious hold on life. He obeyed the warning. But with Whittier journalism was a disease. He had a relapse in 1844, when he took charge of the ‘Middlesex Standard’ of Lowell, and again, in 1845–46, when he was virtual editor of the ‘Essex Transcript’ in Amesbury.

No restriction was placed on his doing work at home. He wrote unceasingly, prose and verse, reaching his literary audience through the ‘Democratic Review’ and his audience of reformers through Bailey’s paper, ‘The National Era,’ both published in Washington. Whittier was corresponding editor of the ‘Era’ from 1847 to 1850, and printed in its columns, besides political articles, such now famous poems as ‘Maud Muller,’ ‘Ichabod,’ ‘Tauler,’ and ‘The Chapel of the Hermits.’

The list of Whittier’s chief publications up to the year 1857 contains seventeen titles: _Legends of New England_, 1831; _Moll Pitcher_, 1832 (revised edition 1840); _Justice and Expediency_, 1833; _Mogg Megone_, 1836; _Poems written during the Progress of the Abolition Question_, etc., 1837 (unauthorized issue); _Poems_, 1838; _Lays of my Home and Other Poems_, 1843; _The Stranger in Lowell_, 1845; _Voices of Freedom_, 1846; _The Supernaturalism of New England_, 1847; _Leaves from Margaret Smith’s Journal_, 1849; _Poems_, 1849;[36] _Old Portraits and Modern Sketches_, 1850; _Songs of Labor and Other Poems_, 1850; _The Chapel of the Hermits and Other Poems_, 1853; _Literary Recreations and Miscellanies_, 1854; _The Panorama and Other Poems_, 1856.

The founding of the ‘Atlantic Monthly’ (1857) gave Whittier a more assured place. His work was sought and the pay was generous. He became an overseer of Harvard College in 1858. In 1860 the college made him a Master of Arts, and in 1866 a Doctor of Laws.

His home for many years was in Amesbury, the farm at East Haverhill having been sold in 1836. After the death of his mother and younger sister he passed much of his time with kinsfolk at the house known as ‘Oak Knoll,’ in Danvers. For all his admiration of women, Whittier never married. He enjoyed allusions to a supposititious Mrs. Whittier. Writing to his niece, Mrs. Pickard, about some friend who was unhappy over political defeat, Whittier said: ‘I told him I had been in the same predicament ... and got abused worse than he did, for I was charged with ill-treating my wife!’

Whittier was a birthright member of the Society of Friends and influential in their councils. His advice was much sought and freely given in terms of blended modesty, good sense, and humor.

During the last twenty years of his life Whittier published the following volumes: _Home Ballads and Poems_, 1860; _In War Time and Other Poems_, 1864; _National Lyrics_, 1865; _Snow-Bound_, 1866; _The Tent on the Beach and Other Poems_, 1867; _Among the Hills and Other Poems_, 1869; _Ballads of New England_, 1870; _Miriam and Other Poems_, 1871; _The Pennsylvania Pilgrim and Other Poems_, 1872; _Mabel Martin_, 1874; _Hazel-Blossoms_, 1875; _The Vision of Echard and Other Poems_, 1878; _The King’s Missive and Other Poems_, 1881; _The Bay of Seven Islands and Other Poems_, 1883; _Saint Gregory’s Guest and Recent Poems_, 1886; _At Sundown_, 1892.

The honors accorded him on his seventieth, eightieth, and eighty-fourth anniversaries gave Whittier much happiness. He was especially pleased to learn that the bells of St. Boniface, in Winnipeg, Manitoba (celebrated in his ‘Red River Voyageur’), were rung for him at midnight of December 17, 1891. Said the poet in his letter to Archbishop Tâché: ‘Such a delicate and beautiful tribute has deeply moved me. I shall never forget it.’

Nothing was left undone that the tenderest love and wisest solicitude could do for his comfort. His last illness was brief. He died at Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, on September 7, 1892.

II

WHITTIER’S CHARACTER

Whittier’s shyness was proverbial. Those who knew him also knew that beneath that shyness was a masterful spirit. Evasion and inconclusiveness on the part of those with whom he dealt would not avail. Whittier wanted to know where public men stood and for what they stood. A politician himself, he understood the art of dealing with politicians. To a certain candidate he said: ‘Thee cannot expect the votes of our people unless thee speak more plainly.’ Being in great need of the votes of ‘our people,’ the candidate was compelled to speak at once and to use the words Whittier put into his mouth.

Another possessed of like skill in controlling men might have grown despotic. Not so Whittier. Tactful and conciliatory, no grain of selfishness was to be found in his composition. He worked for the cause alone.

His physical courage, of which there are abundant illustrations, was fully equal to his moral courage. The nerve required to face a disciplined enemy, as in war, is always admirable; one would not wish to underestimate it. But it is a type of courage not difficult to comprehend. A glamour hangs about the battlefield. Men are carried on by the esprit de corps. They do wonders and marvel at their own courage afterwards. Facing a mob is another matter. A mob is an assassin; the last thing it wants is fair play. Whittier had no experiences like those to which Bailey and Garrison were subjected, but he had enough to try his mettle.

He was one of the most modest of men, holding his achievements, literary and otherwise, at far lower estimate than did the public. To an anxious inquirer Whittier said that he did not think ‘Maud Muller’ worth serious analysis. He asked for criticism on his verses, and was not slow to act upon it when given. His open-mindedness is shown in the way he accepted Lowell’s suggestion about the refrain of ‘Skipper Ireson’s Ride.’ He defended himself when the criticism touched his motives or impugned his love of truth. Charged with having boasted that his story of ‘Barbara Frietchie’ would live until it got beyond reach of correction, Whittier replied: ‘Those who know me will bear witness that I am not in the habit of boasting of anything whatever, least of all of congratulating myself upon a doubtful statement outliving the possibility of correction.... I have no pride of authorship to interfere with my allegiance to truth.’

He was a stanch friend, and a helpful neighbor. His filial piety was deep--no trait of his character was more pronounced. He was the most devoted of sons, the best of brothers.

The seriousness of Whittier’s temper and mind was relieved by a keen sense of humor which found expression in many engaging ways. His letters written in young manhood are at times almost boisterously mirthful. His humor grew subdued as he became older, but it never lost its charm. Those who were nearest him realized how much it contributed to making him the most companionable of men.

III

THE LITERARY CRAFTSMAN

‘I have left one bad rhyme ... to preserve my well known character in that respect,’ says Whittier in a letter to Fields, his publisher. The charge of laxity in rhymes was the one most often brought against him. He labored under two capital disadvantages; he was self-taught and he wrote always for a moral purpose. His objection to reprinting _Mogg Megone_ grew out of the feeling, not that it was bad poetry,--though he had no delusions about its artistic value,--but that it was not calculated to do good. Ethics, rather than art, were uppermost in his thought. There has never been question of his native power. He could be exquisitely felicitous, but, having acquired the habit of writing for a cause, of sacrificing nicety of phrase for vigor of thought and rapidity of utterance, being eager always to strike a blow at the critical moment, he found it difficult to write with a dominant artistic motive. He wrote better (technically speaking) the older he grew. It is difficult to realize as we listen to the rich strains of his later years that Whittier could have been as inharmonious as he often was in the first period of his poetic life. He confessed his defect. To Fields he once said: ‘It’s lucky that other folks’ ears are not so sensitive as thine.’

His variety of metres, if not great, was sufficiently ample to preclude the feeling of sameness. His verse never comes laden with scholarly suggestion in rhythm or thought, with the faint sweet echoes of old-time poetry, as does Longfellow’s. Whittier was not ‘literary,’ though he made a noble addition to the literature of his country.

Whittier’s prose has been ignored rather than underestimated. It is clear and forceful, often impassioned, and sometimes eloquent. Whether a reputation could be based on it is another matter. Certainly it has not been accorded the popular favor it deserves. Among a thousand readers, for example, who know _Snow-Bound_ there are possibly two or three who have read _Margaret Smith’s Journal_.

Of the seven prose sketches in _Legends of New England_ not one was thought by the author worth preserving. He also suppressed much of the contents of the two volumes published some fifteen years after the _Legends_. Both these later books, _The Stranger in Lowell_ and _The Supernaturalism of New England_, ought to be reprinted as they came first from Whittier’s hand.