CHAPTER VII

THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOOD WOMEN

If Whittier ever had a real love affair, no one seems to have known about it. The fact is, he was not of the passionate kind. But all his life his best friends were women, and many a good woman he knew and was fond of, and he and she became real friends. And of that friendship with him, all those women, without exception, were proud indeed. In a letter written a dozen years after his school life began, he says:

“For myself, I owe much to the kind encouragement of female friends. A bashful, ignorant boy, I was favored by the kindness of a lady who saw, or thought she saw, beneath the clownish exterior something which gave promise of intellect and worth. [This was the wife of Mr. Thayer, with whom he boarded.] The powers of my own mind, the mysteries of my own spirit, were revealed to myself, only as they were called out by one of those dangerous relations called cousins, who, with all her boarding school glories upon her, condescended to smile upon my rustic simplicity. She was so learned in the, to me, more than occult mysteries of verbs and nouns, and philosophy, and botany, and mineralogy, and French, and all that, and then she had seen something of society, and could talk (an accomplishment at that time to which I could lay no claim), that on the whole I looked upon her as a being to obtain whose good opinion no effort could be too great.”

One of these young lady friends, perhaps the very cousin of whom he speaks, wrote of him years afterwards:

“He was nearly nineteen when I first saw him. He was a very handsome, distinguished-looking young man. His eyes were remarkably beautiful. He was tall, slight, and very erect; a bashful youth, but never awkward, my mother said, who was a better judge of such matters than I....

“With intimate friends he talked a great deal, and in a wonderfully interesting manner; usually earnest, and frequently playful. He had a great deal of wit. It was a family characteristic.... The influence of his Quaker bringing-up was manifest. I think it was always his endeavor

to render less The sum of human wretchedness.

This, I say, was his steadfast endeavor, in spite of his inborn love of teasing. He was very modest, never conceited, never egotistic. One could never flatter him. I never tried, but I have seen people attempt it, and it was a signal failure. He did not flatter, but told some very wholesome and unpalatable truths.”

An amusing story is told of Whittier’s love of teasing. At the time it happened he must have been between thirty and forty. A Quaker sister named Sophronia Page, who went about preaching to little gatherings of the Friends, stopped one night at his mother’s house. As most Quaker bonnets are precisely alike, there is no way of telling them apart except by the name inside. When Sophronia Page went away she put on Mrs. Whittier’s bonnet by mistake. When she got to the next stopping place and saw the name inside, she sent the bonnet back. Whittier noticed it in a box in the hall, and thought he would have some fun with his mother.

“What does thee think Sophronia Page has done?” he asked her, sitting down.

“I don’t know, Greenleaf,” she said quietly. “What is it?”

“Something I’m much afraid she will be called up in Yearly Meeting for.”

“I hope she hasn’t been meddling with the troubles of the Friends,” said Mrs. Whittier, anxiously, referring to some church quarrels.

“Worse than that!” said the young man, while his mother got more and more excited. “She has been taking other people’s things, and has just begun to send some of them back.”

With that he went into the hall and brought back the bonnet.

“If thee were twenty years younger I would take thee over my knee!” said his mother when she saw what it was all about.

Among his other famous women friends was Mrs. Sigourney, the poetess, with whom he became acquainted in Hartford while he was editing a paper there. He also knew Lucy Larcom; and it was said at one time that he was engaged to marry Lucy Hooper, but there was no truth in this. Her death, shortly afterwards, made him feel very sad. In his poetic works you may find poems addressed to both these women.

While speaking of women we must not omit a description of that woman who was to him dearest of all women in the world, his sister Lizzie. This gifted sister Lizzie was “the pet and pride of the household, one of the rarest women, her brother’s complement, possessing all the readiness of speech and facility of intercourse which he wanted; taking easily in his presence the lead in conversation, which the poet so gladly abandoned to her, while he sat rubbing his hands and laughing at her daring sallies. She was as unlike him in person as in mind; for his dignified erectness, she had endless motion and vivacity; for his regular and handsome features, she had a long Jewish nose, so full of expression that it seemed to enhance, instead of injuring, the effect of the large and liquid eyes that glowed with merriment and sympathy behind it.... Her quick thoughts came like javelins; a saucy triumph gleamed in her great eyes; the head moved a little from side to side with the quiver of a weapon, and lo! you were transfixed.”

During his long life this sister was to Whittier more than sweetheart or wife, for she had the wit and the sympathy of all womankind in her one frail form; and Whittier knew it and depended on it for his happiness.