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F. A. P. Barnard (search for this): chapter 3
ore of romance in them than they possibly could have if we were acquainted with each other. I never yet met for the first time with a person whose name I had learned to revere, without feeling on the instant that the beautiful veil with which my imagination had robed him was partially rent away. If you cannot explain this matter, you are no philosopher. Whittier had at Hartford more of social life than ever before, and made the acquaintance of Mrs. Sigourney, then famous; also of F. A. P. Barnard, afterward president of Columbia College. Whittier's first thin volume, Legend of New England (Hartford, Hanmer and Phelps, 1831), was published with some difficulty at the age of twenty-four; and was suppressed in later life by the author himself, he buying it up, sometimes at the price of five dollars a copy, in order that he might burn it. It gave little promise, either in its prose or verse, and showed, like the early works of Hawthorne, the influence of Irving. The only things
George Minot (search for this): chapter 3
older than I, lived three miles from the village of Haverhill, where my father's home was, and was nearly nineteen years old 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 than I of such matters. He went to school awhile at Haverhill Academy. There were pupils of all ages from ten to twenty-five. My brother George Minot, then about ten years old, used to say that Whittier was the best of all the big fellows, and he was in the habit of calling him Uncle Toby. Whittier was always kind to children, and under a very grave and quiet exterior there was a real love of fun and a keen sense of the ludicrous. In society he was embarrassed, and his manners were in consequence sometimes brusque and cold. With intimate friends he talked a great deal and in a wonderfully interesting manner; usually earnest, oft
Sara Coleridge (search for this): chapter 3
that proceed from a carbonate concealed in the rocks; this suggesting the Great Carbuncle of Hawthorne. All these themes, it will be noticed, are American and local, and hence desirable as selections; but the talent of the author was not precociously mature, like that of Hawthorne, nor did he continue in the same direction. Yet so far as the selection of the themes went, his work was a contribution to the rising school of native literature. Aubrey de Vere once wrote to Tennyson that Sara Coleridge, daughter of the poet, had said to him that However inferior the bulk of a young man's poetry may be to that of the poet when mature, it generally possesses some passages with a special freshness of their own, and an inexplicable charm to be found in them alone. It is just this quality which seems wanting in the earliest poems of Whittier. As we may observe in his youthful action a certain element of ordinary self-seeking and merely personal ambition which utterly vanishes in mature li
Ralph Waldo Emerson (search for this): chapter 3
lf recognised at a later time by his destruction of the volumes. Happy is he who has only this fault to deal with, and has no tinge of coarseness or mere frivolity for which to blush; and from all such elements Whittier was plainly free. Nevertheless, it must always remain one of the most curious facts in his intellectual history, that his first poetical efforts gave absolutely no promise of the future; he in this respect differing from all contemporary American poets-Bryant, Longfellow, Emerson, Holmes, Poe, and Lowell. Whittier's desires in youth were almost equally divided between politics and poetry; and there presently appeared a third occupation in the form of that latent physical disease which haunted his whole life. This obliged him to give up the editorship of the New England Review and to leave Hartford on Jan. 1, 1832. He had been editing the Literary remains of J. G. C. Brainard, an early Connecticut poet, and wrote a preface, but did not see it in print until he h
Henry Clay (search for this): chapter 3
I have rarely seen excelled. Garrison's life, I. 369, note. It is to be noticed that both these young editors were the hearty supporters of what was called Henry Clay and the American system, and that when Whittier met Clay in Washington, years after, and was asked why he did not support for office that very popular man, replClay in Washington, years after, and was asked why he did not support for office that very popular man, replied that it was because he could not support a slaveholder. Garrison's life,I. 190. The relation between Garrison and Whittier is to be further traced in this correspondence between Garrison and some young ladies in Haverhill who called themselves Inquirers after truth. W. L. Garrison to Inquirers after truth. Boston, MaPrentice. The latter afterward transferred the editorship of the New England Review to Whittier, he himself having gone to Lexington, Ky., to write the Life of Henry Clay, who was expecting a nomination for the Presidency. Nothing in the relation between Prentice and Whittier — the reckless man of the world and the shy young Qua
Francis Bacon (search for this): chapter 3
ppointed in one project, I have only to lay it aside and take another up. If I thought I deserved half the compliments you have been pleased to bestow upon my humble exertions, I should certainly be in danger of becoming obnoxious to the charge of vanity. The truth is, I love poetry, with a love as warm, as fervent, as sincere, as any of the more gifted worshippers at the temple of the Muses. I consider its gift as something holy, and above the fashion of the world. In the language of Francis Bacon, The Muses are in league with time, --which spares their productions in its work of universal desolation. But I feel and know that To other chords than mine belong The breathing of immortal song. And in consequence, I have been compelled to trust to other and less pleasant pursuits for distinction and profit. Politics is the only field now open for me, and there is something inconsistent in the character of a poet and modern politician. People of the present day seem to have idea
Carlton (search for this): chapter 3
ast Parish]. Seriously-the situation of editor of the Philanthropist is not only respectable, but it is peculiarly pleasant to one who takes so deep an interest, as I really do, in the great cause it is labouring to promote. I would enter upon my task with a heart free from misanthropy, and glowing with that feeling that wishes well to all. I would rather have the memory of a Howard, a Wilberforce, and a Clarkson than the undying fame of Byron. ... I should like to see or hear from Mr. Carlton [the principal of the academy] before I do anything. He is one of the best men — to use a phrase of my craft — that ever trod shoe-leather. Pickard, I. 70. After leaving the academy, Whittier plunged with unexpected suddenness into journalism, which took with him the form of a nursery for ardent political zeal. In Boston he was put in, as has been supposed, through Garrison's influence, as editor of the American Manufacturer. He was paid but nine dollars a week, half of which he
Russell (search for this): chapter 3
n 1828. These were given under various signatures, of which Adrian was the chief, while Donald, Timothy, Micajah, and Ichabod were others, and the modest initial W. filled up the gaps. The first which appeared under his full name was a long one, The Outlaw, printed in the Gazette on Oct. 28, 1828. He seems to have made an effort in early life to preserve the Greenleaf, which was always his home name, he differing curiously at this last point from Lowell, who was always James at home and Russell, especially in England, to the world outside. Out of all these poems written before 1829, Whittier himself preserved, in the collected edition of his works, only eight, and these in an appendix, in discouragingly small type, as if offering very little encouragement to the reader. Probably these would have passed into oblivion with the rest, had they not been, as he says in his preface, kept alive in the newspapers for the last half-century, and some of them even in book form. They repr
Cotton Mather (search for this): chapter 3
hemes and the power to discover them. In The Rattlesnake hunter the theme is an old man who devotes his life, among the mountains of Vermont, to the extirpation of rattlesnakes, one of which has killed his wife. The Unquiet sleeper is based on the tradition of an old man in a New Hampshire village who died suddenly near his home, and whose cries were heard at night from the grave; the author claiming to have known people who had actually heard them. The spectre ship is from a tradition in Mather's Magnalia. The Midnight attack is a narrative of adventure with the Indians on the Kennebec River in 1722, on the part of Captain Harmon and thirty forest rangers. The human sacrifice records the escape of a young white girl from Indians, who are terrified by rumbling noises that proceed from a carbonate concealed in the rocks; this suggesting the Great Carbuncle of Hawthorne. All these themes, it will be noticed, are American and local, and hence desirable as selections; but the talent
Friend A. W. Thayer (search for this): chapter 3
led The Philanthropist, in Boston, and wrote the following letter to his friend Thayer, asking his advice as to acceptance. It shows, better than anything else, his condition of mind at the period. Shad Parish, 28th of 11th mo., 1828. Friend A. W. Thayer,--I have been in a quandary ever since I left thee, whether I had better accept the offer of Friend Collier, or nail myself down to my seat,--for, verily, I could not be kept there otherwise,--and toil for the honourable and truly gratifyif rhyming, must swell the already enormous number, struggle awhile with debt and difficulties, and then, weary of life, go down to my original insignificance, where the tinsel of classical honours will but aggravate my misfortune. Verily, friend Thayer, the picture is a dark one--but from my heart I believe it to be true. What, then, remains for me? School-keeping -out upon it! The memory of last year's experience comes up before me like a horrible dream. No, I had rather be a tin-peddler,
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