CHAPTER III

WHITTIER’S FAMILY

Most people are blessed with brothers and sisters, with whom they grow up. First one and then the other is sent away to school. Soon they are all out in the world, earning livings for themselves; they get married and have families of their own; and before long they seem to forget the home of their childhood. But Whittier did not get married, and one of his sisters did not marry. He lived on the farm most of the time till he was thirty years old, when he moved with his mother and sister to Amesbury. We are therefore more than usually interested in knowing about the members of the family in which he was born.

First, there was his father. He was a plain matter-of-fact man, and did not believe in poetry; and so, in this, young Greenleaf received very little encouragement from him.

The encouragement in his poetic efforts, which the father failed to give, he got from his mother, sisters, and brother, who were all proud of him. His mother was a dear, sweet Quaker lady, as saintly as she was lovely. Her face was full and fair, and she had fine, dark eyes. She appreciated poetry and all fine and delicate sentiments, and for fifty years she was the guide, counselor, and friend of her illustrious son.

Greenleaf had a brother, Matthew Franklin, several years younger than himself, who outlived every one else in the family except the poet. He had also two sisters, the eldest of the family, and the youngest. The elder sister, Mary, married and lived in Haverhill; but the younger never married, and was the poet’s intimate friend and housekeeper until both were old. In “Snow-Bound” the reader will find this beautiful description of her, lines as sweet and beautiful as the poet ever wrote:

Upon the motley-braided mat Our youngest and our dearest sat, Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes, Now bathed within the fadeless green And holy peace of Paradise.... I tread the pleasant paths we trod, I see the violet-sprinkled sod Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak The hillside flowers she loved to seek, Yet following me where’er I went With dark eyes full of love’s content.

...

And yet, dear heart! remembering thee, Am I not richer than of old? Safe in thy immortality, What change can reach the wealth I hold? What chance can mar the pearl and gold Thy love hath left in trust with me?— And when the sunset gates unbar, Shall I not see thee waiting stand, And, white against the evening star, The welcome of thy beckoning hand?

The poem “Snow-Bound” was written perhaps as a memorial of her. He and she had been for fifty years as loving and fond as husband and wife, but held together by a purer, more spiritual bond.

She was a poet like her brother; and to this day, in any complete edition of Whittier’s poems you will find, towards the end of the volume, “Poems by Elizabeth H. Whittier,” which he wished to be always printed with his.

In this family there were two other kindly souls. One was Uncle Moses, a brother of the poet’s father, “innocent of books, but rich in lore of fields and brooks.” The other was Aunt Mercy, Mrs. Whittier’s sister:—

The sweetest woman ever Fate Perverse denied a household mate, Who, lonely, homeless, not the less Found peace in love’s unselfishness, And welcome wheresoe’er she went.

Such was the Whittier family, all good Quakers, dressing in Quaker fashion, and talking in the quaint Quaker way; but they were all cheerful and ready for enjoyment, and all were fond and devoted and gentle and ambitious to live well.