LETTERS
Sarah Wyman Whitman
Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1907.
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CONTENTS
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This little collection is made for Mrs. Whitman's friends.
If it awakens some echo of that courage and faith which her living presence
inspired, the object of its publication will be fulfilled.
"When she went out of this world, it seemed as if the high light had gone from everything." "We cannot really lose a friend like her, thank Heaven! There never was such beautiful ready affectionateness, such self-forgetfulness or such eagerness to help her friends at every turn to make the most of their own conditions and surroundings and associates; and this without any petty love of power over other people's lives, or jealousy, or wounded self-love, if her way and advice were not followed. She told you what she thought, but there she ended; and almost never thought wrong, it seems to me now, or held her beliefs and opinions more lightly or more strongly because others would not accept them. It was a heavenly sort of patience and self-control in a most ardent and impulsive nature; her advice never seemed, either, to spring from the least or first consideration of her own advantage." "There is much in these letters which would be illuminating to any who should read them, and fulfil our object of perpetuating that personality whose expression by act and look and spoken or written word has been the wine and joy of life to us. If we could embody in a book the conviction which she conveyed of the glory of life, and its deep ultimate meaning which made all things worth while, it would be a great light shed on the path of many. "'Give to him that asketh' seemed to be this true friend's rule of life, and as Sir Thomas Browne counselled: 'Give where men's necessities, not their tongues, loudly call for mercy.' Years ago when some one was complaining that S. W. neglected her work at the studio for other things, and that her gifts as an artist lacked a development to which the practice and discipline of entire devotion might have brought them; 'Ah!' said another friend quickly, 'but she has made the choice between living for Art's sake and living for Love's sake, and we must not quarrel with that.'" Letters of so essentially
intimate a character as Mrs. Whitman's can only be published at some sacrifice
of reticence. Mrs. Whitman was at once the most impersonal and the most
personal of friends. She never stopped long in the outer courts of friendship.
Therefore no letters which expressed her at all could be devoid of personality.
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LETTERS
TO MISS G. SCHUYLER
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7 CHESTNUT STREET, BOSTON, October 10, 1874.
I THINK the last note was
from Newburyport, where Lizzy and I finished our sketching, and departed
reluctantly for the town. There never was a better field for work, from
the tender willows along the road, and by the edges of the marsh, all the
way through picturesque fields and sturdy apple-orchards up to groups of
austere poplar trees, which hold a wonderful charm for me.... And so, I
suppose, comes the end of out of doors for this summer, though this "deepening
of color" fills me still with a passion of desire for the sea and sky all
over again, and I feel a niggardly reluctance at the passing of each October
day. But you will not need me to tell you how fast the working wheels are
already beginning to grind, nor how at heart I am ready and willing to
begin. I feel a fresh ardor, born of summer and good things, if only the
dear gifts may prove their use to me.... I have decided to work here in
my new studio (oh, Georgy, please care a little for it, won't you?), having
made an arrangement for renting it later, and then go abroad the first
of January, and taking three or four months, see four or perhaps five of
the best galleries, and only this.
Ah, I long to talk with you of it all, this is so slow when words press, and I want to tell you what and why and when all in a breath....
Isn't it beautiful to go, as you are
going now, accumulating at every hand, and then have leave to pour it forth,
changed, magnified, even, -- if God will have it so -- even more.
After an accident in driving.
November 15, 1874.
It was a blessed escape from a great
danger, and I can only feel an almost overpowering gratitude as I think
of it. The instant before the throw was one of those great moments when
it seems as if one caught a glimpse of the beyond, and I feel now as if
I had come back from somewhere.
7 CHESTNUT ST., December 3, 1874.
Ah, dear Georgy, we will indeed "understand,"
and without the paltriness of either question or answer know and apprehend
each other. Not what, but how deeply has the soul endured? That is all
a friend demands, and that is met, not by reply, but is found in the result,
in what is here present and evident.... I am myself again now, but oh,
so glad over the escape from more serious things. Neither can I really
regret the accident, for it brought some strangely tender things in with
it, and has told me some things I did not know before. One can't help wondering
over the potency of larger things over less; one good stern fact shakes
into right relation a multitude of crude theories, and is a most valuable
tonic.
PARIS, February 2, 1875. (Hotel de l'Amirauté.)
I must send you one little word just
to say that we are safe and comfortable and delighted, here in Paris....
Arrived at the Hotel, our little Madame was smiling upon the steps, and
we were established with a bright fire, a delicious little dinner and smiles
galore.... I shall not soon forget the day in London, nor what you were
in it to me. Dear Georgy, it was so sweet of you and you humored our little
enthusiasms with such sympathy.... It is so good too, to have seen my first
really great sights with you. Now I have seen others too, going every day
to the Louvre, and finding joy and inspiration in it, as you will know.
FLORENCE, Hotel Corona d'Italia, February, 1875.
The first look at Italy was fraught
with a fine touch of satire, for the morning broke only to discover a heavy
snow storm.... However, having telegraphed to the Hotel, we were received
at the station and soon established, and oh, Georgy, didn't I wake the
next morning to see first of all out of my window the very leaves on a
tree such as Titian and Veronese painted! With the yellow walls beyond,
and a little child singing at the casement! This strange beautiful Florence,
how mellow it seems after the crisp modern look of Paris, as if the group
of buildings with dark eaves and sober windows had grown up out of the
ground along with the grave cypresses and cedars which bear them company.
Already we have seen much, the chapel of the Medici first with the Michael
Angelo statues. Ah, he is indeed "Angelo against the world."
ROME, March 1, 1875.
It strengthens my fibres to know you
believe in me, and some day we will indeed "beat our music out."... We
are established at the Costanzi in the most perfect place, an apartment
overlooking the city, and fronting the street west, with a balcony on which
one may stand and aspire! I can think of nothing else that expresses the
sense of the great presence spread out before one.... Even yet I turn a
longing thought back to Florence. We found such rich places there, and
going daily to the galleries grew familiar with certain most delicious
pictures, which one cannot easily lose the presence of. Giorgione was revealed
to me in Florence, and it is in Florence that the spirit of Michael Angelo
seems everywhere present and compelling, and Lucca della Robbia, the Beato
Angelico, -- ah, how high and beautiful they all were, and what long lessons
one learns and in how many ways, as one comes face to face with the great
verities of Art which their hands have fashioned! It is the old, old story
of life, a "patient continuance;" an abiding purpose.
PARIS, Easter Day, 1875.
I must take you to myself in a little
loving word, on this dearest day, which seems to come with a curious distinctness
and beauty, here in a strange land, and so far from home and its associations.
But Easter is Easter everywhere, and perhaps one is all the more conscious
of its essence when the surroundings that usually bear it company are no
longer present. I woke this morning with a little homesick pang at first,
I will own, and you will know what pleasure it was, when I found a note
and such a wealth of flowers from my dear Class. They had sent by Lizzy
this little choice commission, and it was a very dear thought that gladdened
the glad day.... I must run back a little way, for I long to tell you one
word of Venice and what it was to me. I feel like writing over Italy, Visions;
for it was there that there came such a revelation of greatness, such a
new faith in the possibilities of Art. And Venice is the crown of Italy,
with its royal gallery and endless churches, full of beauty. Of course
everywhere I would except the Sistine Chapel, which is incomparable; but
that belongs no longer to the realm of possible work, being a fresco, and
so one comes to the Venetian school with a sense of having found the ultimatum
(of all things that have been) of Painting in its several departments,
where color, light, and composition are all in perfection. So day by day,
we went about, finding those rare pictures, which begin with the Assumption,
and are beautiful all the way through, and though I had imagined much,
they far outran me! Tintoretto was a joy and surprise all at once. I had
no thought of his being so great, though to be sure I had occasionally
heard him spoken of in comparison with Titian. I should never think of
comparing him, for that is one of the things which cannot be done with
really great men, and so I feel that whether it is Titian, with his melodious
painting, or Tintoretto, amazing you by his marvellous and unmatched imagination,
or Veronese, with that royal elegance which is all his own, they stand
out in their own integrity, offering their own gifts.... It was a temptation,
yes, a very great one, to stay at Venice, but we never altered our first
conviction that the place to work in was Paris; and both Lizzy and I were
equally sure that some work was the best thing for us: something which
should give us a chance to test this and that process in the very face
of good things. So we went on, making the through trip from Venice here
without stopping and reached our dear old quarters at seven o'clock Saturday
evening. Madame, indeed the whole household, was ready for us with roses
and violets in our rooms, and everything sweet and fresh, while a pile
of forty-two letters were on the table!... Well, we were not very long
in beginning, and every day go to the Louvre, painting many things, learning
something, I must believe. And as we did all our little jobs when we were
here before, we have uninterrupted time for study, and often go in the
afternoon to the Luxembourg, while we turn the evenings to account by sitting
for each other alternately! In this way we get a chance to work from life,
which is delightful.
LIVERPOOL, April 19, 1875.
Lizzy and I were not sorry to see the
National Gallery again (where you took us for that first look!) and beside
we had the Bethnal Green Collection, which was a feast indeed more than
we had dreamed of, with best of all three beautiful Velasquez, such as
all we had seen before had not given of his. With the exception of one
of Titian's portraits, none (no portrait I mean) had seemed to me so great
as one of these of a little boy. It is full of that sweet seriousness of
childhood which is so ineffable, a rare picture indeed.
BOSTON, May 23, 1875.
Oh, Georgy, my thought has gone to
you a hundred times in all the rich delight of returning to so much that
I love; for in spite of all Europe, I came back with that strange joy that
belongs to home and country, and found a new meaning in many things. You
had my very last word from the other side; so you know all up to that place,
and there is little to tell of the sea, as one grewsome word would cover
the whole voyage. I was sick -- oh, very sick -- nearly all the way and
have lost most of my pride and won a large humility in consequence!...
That mysterious trunk was unpacked with universal satisfaction and its
contents are now scattered afar, only we wished we had brought many more
autres
comme ça! The duty on pictures now is only ten per cent, but
it was against one's liking somewhat to pay that even, when velvet gowns
and all manner of gauds can be brought
ad infinitum! But some day
we shall have a free country that is free.
August 5 , BEVERLY FARMS (1880 or 1881).
Don't you know those periods when all
one cares for seem like active presences within? Most vital and most strong?
These are the moments when it seems indeed as if faith and love could move
mountains, and which appear to insure the future as well as to reveal the
meanings of the past. Don't you remember that somewhere in the Bible it
speaks of "past mysteries?" And I always wonder why mysteries are supposed
to lie ahead of us, when yesterday and to-day seem to me far more deeply
hidden from our sight.... I wanted so much to hear Mr. Brooks's Sermon
on Dean Stanley, it was only the week before that he came and spent a night
with me, and he spoke of him with such devotion and warmth. This little
visit from Mr. Brooks has been one of my real pleasures this summer, he
talked with great freedom of himself and other things, and I found him
more simple and childlike than ever. Oh, how many things I want to tell
you.... Yet perhaps it could all be compressed into the one statement that
life -- life is ever more vast and full and wonderful to me. Along with
this knowledge runs the daily round -- the come and go of every day, in
a summer more than ever full of many people and much to do. But so far
I have been able to work at my own things here and there at least, and
have five portraits on hand just now.
Written after Phillips Brooks's funeral.
January 26, 1893.
It was dear to me to get your message
in the midst of these sacred days and I bless you for it! If Mr. Brooks
had died a year ago, I could not have borne it for him, but in the last
wonderful year he has made one great movement forward, has preached in
every parish, has made himself the friend of every rector, and set up a
spiritual standard in the whole state. It seems indeed as if he had set
his earthly house in order; and I have never seen him so much at peace
as this winter. So, when he went swiftly out of our sight there was in
it a kind of splendor, which cannot let one remember that one's heart aches;
one can only feel the beauty and delight of it and so go on.
TO MISS MINNA TIMMINS AND MISS GEMMA TIMMINS
[ Contents ]
May 13, 1886.
This is to say to two very dear children that they are quite as dear on the rolling prairie as in these narrow streets.... I have gone on in a dull way (when there came a lucid interval in the annals of house-building) matronizing costume parties, and having the whole artistic fraternity, in squads, to dinner, and having more studio talk than for years past. French has just made a really charming thing, a frieze for the mantle-piece of his Concord atelier, a wreath of dancing maidens, full of melody, and with the promise -- that opulent promise! -- of everything that is fair, which belongs to the happy or fortunate sketch.... And how do you fare, dear Ombra and Gemma? I have no fears; and yet I shall like a message of assurance when you are having that long San Franciscan stretch that your list prescribes, for by that time you will have had your experience as individuals and as -- most terrible! "a party." But in this case it is a delightful party, to every member of which I send my most cordial remembrance.
I think I am conscious of a slightly
malign joy in thinking of Mr. Brooks, to whom the world is a purely masculine
world, in so large an assemblage of feminine import. But it will have no
lasting effect, he will come home to his pulpit, and looking -- comme
toujours -- upon that sea of upturned bonnets will say that he speaks
to each young man, etc., etc.,
comme toujours again! All this, jest:
and yet little Beau and I are not in especially jesting mood, in fact we
are so serious, that for fear of revealing it, we had just better send
our love and be off.
TO MISS MINNA TIMMINS
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October, 1886.
It is not your birthday but yourself which has been so present a thought in these last days; and to-night, as I look out at the pale stars and the shining lighthouses, I dream a little over this quarter of a century that is to come for my dear child.
That divine gift of impulse is like an uncut jewel, and it is the edges of study and work which are to make it capable of reflecting, as so many precious things do, so I welcome a little more stringency -- a girding up of the loins, all that befits the good soldier.
When you spoke of some special work I thought of the schools; classes where you could help not only the children, but their work as well: giving those stimulating aids that go towards getting their little hearts involved with what they are about. Everywhere in the doing of what we do, more recognition of the divinity and the necessity (to God) of the task. All this those who see must make known to those who see not.
Should you feel disposed to something
in this direction? And have you any clues? Or shall we go to work to find
some? Then -- but dear, talking is better; and we will speak face to face
speedily. Indeed I only write to-night because I have you in my heart;
and because I want to tell you how dear to me was your message -- the birthday
letter -- which I shall not forget. God bless you.
March, 1887.
I can't come from the heats and contentions of the "Gay Tabor" and not report to you, my far-off child, and so you must know that we had a meeting full of illustrious ones, with W. James and Waldstein as special comets beside our own fixed stars, while --- brought a friend or two, and --- went walking about with his handsome head among the rafters (always supposing there are any rafters!). So you see it was a large evening: yet a little lonely withal. After a time we formed into a great round ring and brought Holmes to bear upon his question once more, over which there was some very good talk, and I think Royce held his own with quiet certainty; touching a fundamental principle, I think, when he said that there was really no thought without emotion, and no emotion free from thought; and so truth in its essential elements must flow to us through both these channels. Also James said that, looked at from one point of view, the artist was like any other man, except for the greater rapidity of his intuitions: what he saw at once others saw more slowly. We'll talk this all over some time, darling, when you return from the mountain slopes, and bring the messages that the hills have given you, and meantime, we in the valley go along as best we may, and keep at the treadmill and "trust the larger hope," as Mr. Tennyson said so long ago. I wonder if you took the new Browning with you? If you didn't, tell me and I will send it to you: for there are some splendid places in it; things of a large significance: and with strains like Paracelsus....
I finish this incompetent note after
a short interval, which has been crammed with affairs of all sorts, painting
which is called work, and work which is called play, until this evening
at Mr. Lowell's lecture, full of delicate and discriminating touches but
lacking somewhat, it seemed to me, vitality and largeness. But this may
have been my bad temper.
"Gay Tabor Night," March 19, 1887.
It would not be quite possible to have the evening and not bring you into it,... and so here is a little message written fresh from the studio, where, with the variety which accompanies our unity, the number was small instead of large, and marked by little groups instead of one big Saturnic ring! Gemma will have told you of it, and of the strange little Russian Jew,... who, atop of a slight, almost meagre, figure, wore a head which was like a picture, keenly and delicately drawn, with locks that were almost Hyacinthine. Altogether a most interesting personality, and one from which I think something must come, some day.
With the facility of his race he has a passion for languages and knows almost everything, including Arabic, with its myriad vocabulary.
I can't tell you how it touched me to look at this young creature and remember that the last talk I had about the Russian Jews was with Emma Lazarus, whose passionate heart was wrung by their wrongs, and who even now, as she lies dying in Paris, is dreaming of them and writing the sorrowful songs of her race.
Did you see in the last "Century" the
Prose Poems? they were almost wonderful, with here and there a touch of
real imaginative splendor, but she is worn threadbare by illness, and so
the work suffers. I think she will like to die near the place where Heine's
soul went forth.
April 26, 1887.
I have just found among loose papers an Easter letter to you,... and am somewhat "fashed" at the sight!... I wish it had gone from my hand to yours, with a white Easter rose and a white Easter wish. In its place I will put this new message, written at the end of a day a mile long, and with a great deal of civilization in it, but not much life. But I will tell you when I wanted you: last night, at Mr. Dresel's, when he gave Bach's Magnificat with his own chorus, which, all winter long, has been hammering out the deep, difficult beauty of that great work, and finally came to its presentation. I think I never had a purer musical joy. It was one splendid, celestial round ring of song, and took one, all travel-stained as one was, away where it is eternal dawn, where the eyes of Beatrice shine.
Outside the low voice of the organ was the river, and within, they who sang were so in it, that they looked like a painted picture of singing men and women. Ah, you will see how it was, and that it was a great gift to me.
There seem to be a thousand things to speak of, out of this work-a-day world to you living in the wide air, and on the edge of the sky.... Your last message left you just on the edge of Schopenhauer and his bitterly acute deductions regarding the human Spirit, and I long to know how his Will-Philosophy touched your understanding. Tell me about it; for I know that however one may look at Schopenhauer, one is sure to get from him some piercing rays of light cast upon the human machinery.
I read the other day a little book on the Foundations of Ethics which William James edited, that cleared up a good deal of philosophic underbrush, and so had value in determining the meanings of terms, and as soon as I get my copy back I will send it to you, and an article on the Mind Cure; which latter cult is taking a very tremendous hold on people hereabouts. I wish you could hear some of the really fine spiritual points which are made by those who have had experience there.... I believe everything looks towards a strange, new, uplift of the Spirit; a larger influx of the Divine,
"That heart and mind according well
May make one music as before,
But vaster."
December 5.
I have waited till the birthday has really come in, my beloved child, to tell you how much it was to me to find that gold and white token at my door, to have the note warm in my pocket and warmer in my heart. It is gifts like these with the possession of which one is newborn, and seems to enter on a new year as if it were a glorious Kingdom. Indeed the day should be sacred to giving rather than receiving, in sign of loving gratitude, and I send to you dear children a fresh measure of the love which is always yours, and to-day yours with a prayer of faith. God bless you.
The little silver thing and the little gold thing strung on one thread greeted me returning, and pleased me more than I can say, beloved children. They speak in the true "universal language," where there is every tense, but only the possessive case, and no accusative at all!
The last Dante comes to-morrow you know; the last of that great journey which we have beheld as in a vision, and in these final chapters all terrestrial elements have gone away utterly; there is nothing but the pure flame of the spirits in heaven.
I must tell you that the windows are
not so far advanced as was planned, and it will yet be some time before
we can see them -- but I shall send you word. Meantime I have apprehensions
and fears in every color of the rainbow!
TO MRS. BIGELOW LAWRENCE
[ Contents ]
June 8, 1888.
I have thought of you a great deal in these blooming, changing, spring days. I have been in the city; but I have been aware of the country, and that is the point after all. The leaves have come, but I think nothing says that the summer is here so plainly as the first shadow that the foliage throws. When I see that upon the grass I know how the year's calendar stands....
All you said of the work in glass was
very comforting; and I find it a beautiful medium for the expression of
many things. At this little Chapel of St. Andrew's there is a chance to
give so many people pleasure; for some who could not dream of having a
memorial window on the ordinary terms can arrange with me for having it
come as part of the decoration (in a way), and so I hope it will make some
of the people who worship there a little happier.
January 20, 1889.
To-night, I snatch a fearful joy! and insist upon a word with you, if indeed you will vouchsafe to forgive the dulness of my message.... I might make this dulness more complete by giving you a catalogue of the things I have not done; for that has been the most thrilling part of this three weeks' chase, with work accumulated and crying out to be done: with people going and coming, and eating and drinking, with the tying up of old responsibilities, and the taking on of new ones. In the midst of this clatter, however, one's self goes on quietly enough, and how often I wish I might step aside into the serene and blithe air of Aldie, and there with you recall glowing realities.... Meantime the daily life runs on, on the surface; men and books, and classes and committees, poets and learned ladies, and the exchange of mental commodities. Mr. Lowell adorns dinner parties very agreeably; and Mr. Brooks seems to me to have deepened and broadened if that were possible, this year; with now and then a note of bitterness in his cry.
Those who have lately read the
thousand pages in Robert Elsmere are now reading the tens of thousands
of Mr. Bryce. Have you undertaken it yet, or those of your household? A
wonderful treatise it is indeed - the whole American organism justly and
sympathetically stated - in short, a Master's work.
IN THE TRAIN, February, 1890.
As I fly along I think of you and venture to send you this little sheet of crooked writing which marks my flight.
Such a landscape of rainbows as there
is to-day, I have almost never beheld -- stretches of snowy fields with
little winding rivers black with slow water, the tawny grasses and reddening
shrubs, or violet distances of amazing loveliness. It makes me wonder afresh
over the mystical meanings, the unravelled secrets of what we call color,
and I long to understand it better that I may use it more nobly.
February 2, 1890.
I want very much to see you -- so much life goes on within as well as without, and one longs to compare thought and feeling at every turn of the strange tide. I have been at work too, endeavoring to make up for lost time.... But one works in the midst of a shower of flying projectiles, levelled at one's unhappy head by Society on one hand, and Culture on the other, till one feels as if one would rather go solitary and ignorant all one's days.
The Browning Memorial was, alas, dry and pallid, owing to various influences, some of omission, and some of commission; needing that fusion of audience and speakers which is essential to the true success. Yet the songs were lovely and a little poesie of Gilder's gave sanctity to the moment if all else failed.... There was, I thought, quite a deep and true word said of Browning in Miss Repplier's English Love Songs which I do not doubt you have seen, and which I think a very distinguished critical essay -- far the best, to my mind, which she has written. And oh, have you seen Tennyson's last volume, so full of melody and a certain austere tenderness of feeling. It moves one deeply to think of him and Browning standing on the threshold of the next life, and looking forth with such a serene and majestic mien.
After all I am prepared to think that
the level of spiritual things, in the 19th century, is by no means a low
one, for the poets speak for the multitude, which loves God better than
it knows.
Of the illness of one dear to her.
May 20, 1890.
So the days go on with hope and fear, but with hope still ahead: and acting, I must believe, as a panoply of defence.
The daily living with this undercurrent
of illness, seems like a show and pretence. Yet one keeps about and does
what work there is to do, and sees the spring coming visibly up the land
with her silent, flowery feet.
May 24, 1890.
The end draws near for our beloved
child. She is in perfect peace, beautiful and happy, and so all must be
well with us as it is with her. But hearts cry out.... I have not seen
her.
May 24, 1890.
Chief in the many-colored coat of pain,
Wherewith the strenuous soul is tightly clad,
There is above all hues one scarlet stain,
Most saddest in the tone where all are sad.
Not when a comrade fights in other's stead,
Blue glittering decked to meet the encroaching spear,
Nor fronts hot yellow flame without a fear:
Nor when in purple shadows he lies dead.
These heights his eager blood mounts to achieve:
These deaths the burning lover leaps to die:
Thus may he with one blow hard fate retrieve:
Thus shall he set Love's chalice in the sky.
But would he to the Heart of Grief attain,
Let him walk outcast from another's pain.
June 6, 1890.
Somehow it has not been the time for writing since we parted: yet our hearts have not failed to speak with each other across the distance.
It has been a time for recovery and
sweet gathering up the threads of memory. Of feeling less perhaps the sword
of separation, and more the renewal of companionship in an altered, but
none the less real, form. Gemma's friends have come much to me and have
been so sweet -- so full of all she was in their lives and hopes. Two mornings
as I have been at work Mr. Brooks has appeared, and brought that rush of
mingled things which one comes to associate with him. Do you know that
he went from ----'s funeral to the wedding? It is fine to be able to do
that in just the perfect way.... I wish I could go into a place of solitude
for a time -- it would seem easier than routine life. But it is a comfort
to have this one month.
June 23, 1890.
I moved to Old Place ten days ago;
and for a week I have been absolutely alone -- and it has been a wonderful
time to me: so full of voices; so far from the ordinary come and go of
the outer world.... It is strange that at a time like this the sky and
the sea seem strange, and out of tune with what one is feeling. I have
not wanted to paint out of doors -- could not feel the impulse -- but I
shall not forget what it has been to think and think, to dream and dream....
July 14, 1890.
Those days of solitude of which I wrote
you were of great help to me; so I think my head is above water again,
while every great thing seems to me to have become more great, every real
thing more real in these strange deep months that have past. The young
people who have been with me before with Gemma about the 4th, asked if
they might come this year all the more: and I had them here and was very
glad that I did; for we all felt how sweet it was to keep the strands of
intercourse unbroken, whether on earth or in heaven. And for me these days
of quiet must end before so very long I fear, and I must get me back into
the arena, but in the stillness I think I have learned something.
August 2, 1890.
There are indeed ideal heights on which
it is possible to live, even in this life; but to find the "equal yearning
towards God" in kindred souls, -- this is the rarest as it is the choicest
possession. Of this, and of much that this recalls, I have long words to
say, for revelation comes not only in study of Dante, but in experience
of life in one's self and in others: and one is amazed at the depth of
variety of even ordinary living - at the change and flux in human character
- at the "exultations and agonies" over which Wordsworth dreams.
Easter Day, returning from BERMUDA, 1892.
I am returning from the enchanted island,...
and O, what an island it is! No one can say too much of the color and fragrance
of it, -- the sea, which is mixed of violet and turquoise, the sky, radiant
with trailing clouds, everywhere beauty, and with it all a sort of strange
romance, -- set in such loneliness, yet smiling and rosy as the dawn. It
made me feel things that cannot be expressed in words.
May 26, 1892. BOLTON.
This is ----'s day -- not of Death
but of Resurrection.... The country is sweet with perfume and garlanded
with orchards of blossoms. I have never seen anything like it and the time
is a time of peace. If only you knew how often I put my hand silently into
yours, in all the busy days when I do not because I cannot write.... There
are days when the casual and the incidental has its turn; when I am holding
stirrup cups for travellers, and attending to their last jobs; when I am
getting out of Winter into Summer and wondering if the "seasons" were worthy
of Mr. Thomson's notice! Wherefore letters are full of the dulness of my
dulness, and I am loath to send one to you.... Apropos of letters I must
put within this two or three bits from a recent publication of the Emerson
-Thoreau Correspondence. There is something so rare in the white fire of
Transcendentalism -- star-stuff it is, and cannot die. In fact, of late
there have been many crumbs of literary interest, and I am wondering whether
I shall not now and then make up a little budget and send across to you?
March 12, 1896.
The little memorial to Mr. Brooks, which my Bible Class has long dreamed of, is now finished and waiting to be put up at Easter. Some day I will show you this, and meantime send a little rough sketch.
The three windows are in the Parish Room where the Class meets, and as it is also used for many practical purposes, the windows (three giving on the cloister to the south) are kept in clear glass with jewelled flowers at the intersecting of the little frames... and then the middle one with a single device. In the glass of course there is a depth and richness that this paper sketch little conveys.
And O, along with all these doings runs the great current of the inner life, as now lived. It is wonderful to know how one can suffer and yet not be destroyed. I cannot begin to understand the dreams and the intimations of this new life, but it reminds one of those great words
"If my bark sinks, 't is to another sea."
I think it is a deeper sea which the soul is now called
upon to sail.
April 15, 1896. AT SEA.
One word... across the stretch of waters, where all has gone with rather more than usual facility, less of the pernicious turmoil within, and a freer exercise of the human faculties!
And ah! what stretches of time in which to hope and to dream, and to feel afresh how near is beauty to the longing sight....
Have you seen a little book Le Trésor
des Humbles? A little simple and mystical series of chapters which
speak gently of some things which we feel more and more to be true.
January 16, 1899.
I am living at the bottom of the sea
in these days, watching the course of things and "dreaming of things to
come," at the same time that I am supposed to be in evidence in the work
shop, and in the haunts of men. A strange chequer of colours is this daily
life, -- so sad, so glad.
Whit Sunday, 1899.
Those two happy days at Aldie were like being in some island of the blest and have left behind them a sort of perfume, just as did those wonderful hours at Bayreuth, when you made me one of the gifts of my life....
This is the day of the Feast of the
Spirit, and above the pain and jar of the fretful or discordant world which
we see, one is aware of an unseen, persistent harmony which in time shall
draw all things into itself. When one has come to a time in which truth
has made many free; when the revelation is not in books but in men, and
the greater Bible being written every day. When we feel all these things
to be true, we "know that our redemption draweth nigh."
TO DR. RICHARD C. CABOT 01
[ Contents ]
August 15, 1889
My RICHARD, -- I have wanted to write to you ever since you went away; but much work and a period of ironical illness (owing to trouble with my eyes) have made day and night not long enough for the of joys letter-writing. To-day I have just despatched your things.... I seemed to know before your letter came just how you had felt while you were at Old Place. It was, I saw afterward, asking you to do a difficult thing to come into an air full of that easy intimacy which young people together soon acquire, and which is not only inclusive of themselves, but a little exclusive of others! Still the real difficulty lay deeper, and was I think in you, a lack, not of sympathy, but of the art of expressing it so simply and so spontaneously that a fine rapport is sure to follow. I should not speak of this now, nor venture to generalize from a single instance, if it were not for having wanted to say something of this sort to you in regard to the "Love and Christianity." I felt so at one with your point of view in that, dear, that I wanted to remind you of what I believe to be an integral part of one's matter, one's philosophy: and that is the manner of its application. As I say this, it seems like a contradiction in terms; and yet, as not the thought, but the life, constitutes the realm of human activity, and as that life consists of finely tempered impulses expressed in finely tempered acts, so I think we may justly demand that the context of the spiritual code should cover behavior as well as belief. Now in your essay the clues to behavior seemed to me inadequate or partial. You, as you, were too concentrated and personal in dealing with others. Behavior based on this model has too much analysis and too little laissez faire.
You do not speak of the requisite time and space essential to the problem; you do not sufficiently indicate how in human relationships (as well as in individual living) seeds are to become flowers. You are, perhaps, dwelling more upon self-conquest than upon self-surrender; yet this last holds the divinest glory of heroes. Something of this I understand to be the secret of that losing of one's soul that Christ taught, -- a loss of one's self in others, -- asking for no advantage, making no terms.
All this I know to have been in your
thought, but I find it not sufficiently insisted on as an essential element.
Does it seem so to you? or have I not wholly understood your meaning? You
will tell me.
September 1, 1889.
I knew you would understand the temper of my letter, dearest boy, and I understood yours; and this I think will always be true, -- so we can go freely on and speak simply and without preamble or introduction, -- as friends.
To begin, then, with your first question, -- as to your want of rapport with any company of people whom you conceive to be, as you say, "fine persons," but who do not seem to you to be serving the ideal. I make my first complaint here: your attitude is one of criticism and analysis, instead of receptivity and hospitality. You do in fact not really believe that they are fine persons, for the only thing that could make them so would be that they were serving the ideal, and this you doubt; so you hope perhaps that they are noble, but you do not believe them to be. The result is that you are not giving them quite a fair chance. You are demanding that they should begin by proving their aim to you. Prove yours to them, rather, -- that is your opportunity, -- and in so doing invite their souls into chambers of welcome support and mutual confidence. Dear Richard, I am sure that this is the crux of the situation: judgment before the evidence is in. Indeed I think that this brings me to the "time and space" which you thought not intelligible. I meant that in the intercourse of spirits there must be much leeway, -- allowance of time, room to move about in, -- because the modes of spiritual manifestation are so many and so varied that we must take much for granted at first, and afterwards sift, weigh, balance, -- condemn it, maybe.
I put aside --- what said. I don't think that was the actuating principle for a moment. Of course that was poor and false (and it came out of a phase through which I think --- is passing now, and where she needs help), but it was not in the hearts of that little group as I saw them, in whom I took note of some sweet things as they went along.
But I am not now thinking of those
boys and girls as such, only as representations of many other companies
where what you think and believe would bring help and find sympathy: if
you will but set yourself to this fine art of giving. When I said you were
too concentrated, I meant too concentrated on life as you conceived it,
without reference to how it might be conceived (and still nobly by others.
For I must believe that he who will most help the Society of which he forms
a part, must be able to perceive and to make evident the central harmony:
to cry out of the best in him to the best in others, in a voice that shall
quicken and enhance the whole mass of that "yearning upward" that deifies
our clay.
Yours, dear, in love,
S. W.
October 17, 1889.
Your letter was very dear to me, my Richard: and you will know without words of mine how truly I felt with you in the pain and joy through which you have gone, in that swift passing from this world of your friend. In some strange inexplicable way Death bears such witness to itself: and so I say joy, too: because one is aware of something new and beautiful and reassuring, I think, when one bears another company through that gate....
After marking what you said some time ago about your profession, I felt content and ready to believe you were moving as your star led. To all of what you said about it I agreed: and I saw beside what great opportunity it gives for the training of all one's powers, at the same time that it opens the door of service and self-forgetful knowledge of others. This year of study will crystallize many points for you, I do not doubt; will direct your tendency, and decide which way out of the many roads in medicine you will walk.
One thing I feel pretty sure of, and that is that you can justly enter upon a very ample field of study and enrichment, can drink at more than one fountain, because you have diverse capacities and the power of concentration. These two possessions make one feel that not only your safety but your best success will lie in a large and inclusive, as well as strenuous, plan of life, a movement onward, broad as well as high.
Somehow we seem to need rich virtue: static as well as dynamic force, in these days of unregulated, or ill-regulated, energy: and I long to have you fulfil, as far as may be, whatever good gifts God has given you: striking a generous chord on your young harp.
Now just one more word on our old theme in answer to your last letter, wherein you say that until one is sure that at a given time persons are serving their ideal, we cannot join forces with them, and so on. Dear boy, you will think me only hard-hearted, but it is just here that I find your attitude wrong: not in the want of sympathetic insight, which may come from inherited tendencies, or youth, or masculinity, but in something deeper still, which is sympathy itself. For what is the true attitude toward any person, or company of persons? Not that of a critic nor a judge, nor even a spectator, but a friend. And his first duty, his first privilege (so it seems to me), is to make his love for them felt by the exercise of generosity and faith. Criticism there may be, but the establishment of a relationship comes before, may preclude criticism, turning the water into wine....
I do not here undertake to say how this great thing is to be done, but that it must be done is to me a leading principle: the method of Jesus and of Paul, of all brothers and saviours the world over.
Yours in love,
S. W.
October 27, 1889.
Dearest R. -- Your last letter not only narrows our discussions to those two questions, but it shows me that I had been talking on a basis which I had not attempted to establish, but had merely taken for granted. I do distinctly think that one's attitude in personal relations is different from one's attitude toward a book or a picture, or when listening to talk, as such; and for this reason: that these latter things are, as far as they go, results; they stand on their merits, and are here for criticism, approval, or blame, what you like. But with people this is not so, -- the best of them do not stand on their merits, and surely the worst cannot: they are, essentially as well as potentially, what they may become, -- and one's attitude must not be one of judgment reserved, but of hope and confidence expressed: an immediate appeal to that better self which is somewhere in each one, and which it is the first privilege of intercourse to invoke. Don't you see that if you came into a company of saints your attitude would really be the same as when you come into a company of sinners? You would want them to feel that your heart felt with their heart, through the heights of achievement on one side, or through the abysses of failure on the other, it might be: but there would be a point of meeting, of love -- and here lies the radical difference between sympathy and sympathetic insight, it seems to me: that the latter perceives or understands, while the former inspires and creates.
For of all the jewels of intercourse nothing is so great as this: that the touch of soul on soul may make a new product -- "music as before, but vaster." You will see many difficulties in the working out of this, and I shall be ready enough to admit them, but the difficulties don't count when we are in search of the bottom principle: and to me this is a bottom principle. I think, too, that it is a principle which counts at every level: one must act on generous presumptions; one must impute virtue; one must invest the world with its own divinity, if one is going to serve the world and lift it higher.
Dear friend, do I make this clearer?
and does it seem to you true?
My love always.
Autumn, 1889.
MY BELOVED RICHARD, -- Your letter gave me a moment of pure joy.
I knew we were at one all the way along: and yet perhaps it was the very certainty of that knowledge which made me fail to understand what were the grounds of our superficial differences.
Ah, well, it makes me feel very rich to have you near, to count our mutual sympathy, and to see you stretch your new strength to the old endeavor.
God bless you, dearest boy,
S. W.
November 13, 1893.
Your letter was beautiful to get, dearest Richard, and brought me close to your heart.
It was eleven years ago that I put in my portfolio, and have kept in there near my hand ever since, two or three pages of one of Edward's themes, in which I felt that grasp of the nature of things and knew that here came one whose eye was on the sun. That deep note of maturity, the recognition of the true relations in life, in art, -- in all things, -- this he showed so early: and in these years of heroism among the fires of experience, I know what spiritual insight must have come to him. And now that he "beacons from where the immortals are" it stirs the soul afresh and blows upon the embers of the heart, and incites, not to tears, but to joyful high endeavor....
And meanwhile we will thank God and take courage.
Yours,
S. W.
June 27, 1897.
Dearest Richard, did you happen to see in a college magazine a brief article on Originality and Consciousness, by Royce? It interested me, and the enclosed is in answer to a letter I sent him, asking if he would come some day and, so to speak, continue the conversation. I send it to you because, on that evening we spent together, you spoke of what came with death or through it, and I know that you must be thinking, as I so often am, of the next life, as well as that which now is. I agreed with you in denying the miracle of death, as you called it: yet you will agree with me I fancy in feeling that a momentous change of conditions may have something in it like birth, which is of the nature of miracle.
But what enlarged consciousness, what continuity of relationship, what immanence of the spirit -- what of all these attributes there may be sign or token -- this is the old amazing doubting, believing question.
Faith is the will made perfect, Novalis
said, and that is a deep saying, and has stood by me many a day. I send
my love to you and my dear Ella, not knowing whether you are in the valley
or on the hill-top, but wishing you the same wish everywhere.
This letter only reached Dr. Cabot after Mrs. Whitman's
death.
S. S. SAXONIA, March 24, 1902.
I have to quote St. Paul against your word, my beloved Richard: for "owe no man anything but to love one another" is the great solvent, and if at times love casts some light upon the path, or succours for a moment the eager heart, it is with hearts that the account is kept, and the profits are the possession of a mutual joy. But your letter gave me some happy tears: for ever since that day when you came to Mrs. Parkman's in your little brown raincoat, all full of music and of resolution, I have loved you, and felt the pressure of your life in mine: feeling also the processes, stern but beautiful, which went to "fitly frame together" your whole self into the live temple. Just when you became a source of strength and consolation (as she has so often told me) to your beloved mother, and later to me, I do not know: but in the strenuous life all must live; your love and sympathy, your recognition of the dream, your central fire, all this has been a gift which has warmed and fed my life, and which is a part, I feel sure, of my life everlasting.
So in memory and in hope, my Richard, I am ever yours
S.W.
LETTERS TO SARAH ORNE JEWETT
(pp. 61-109 of the collection)
[ Contents ]
In that strange, native place
towards which we walk, there will be told what cannot be said here, there
will be made known the comfort and refreshment which lay in tender acts
and in the golden healing touch of remembrance, and if I may dare say it,
of faith.
April 3, 1882.
Is it really a year of special
change and flux? or is it only that one has grown old enough to see what
moving waters run below this crust of continuance? I am not sure, but I
think it is this last.
I think that I have never yet
spoken of the
Country Doctor to you, dear
friend, though I declare to you that this is the third beginning I have
made. . . . There have been many practical reasons for delay, but perhaps
an unpractical one weighed heaviest in the scale; the fact that I wanted
to say so much, apropos to the Country Doctor, that no little scrap
of statement would serve me! I think it delightful: written with that combination
of pure literary style and aromatic individual flavor that gives one such
especial pleasure, and the people live and breathe for me and take their
place in the New England landscape. Then comes the moral of the situation,
and that's what I want to know more about. Is it that Nan really loves
her lover? or does she only feel the possibility and decide to reject it?
Yet, after all, as I ask these
questions I see what a foolish person I am; for if one begins to discuss
this strange re-iterated problem, one must go into the depths of it and
only come forth with the pearl of Truth which is hard to find.
I suppose I think, in some crude,
unformulated way, that if two souls really have found each other, in the
Divine Economy (by some highest Mathematics) they will count for more together
than they ever could apart; and that whatever loss is entailed in this
fusion of interests, is more than made good by a new and more complete
existence. But I will not bore you with this, when I may be speaking quite
wide the mark of your opinion. . . .
I want to tell you that I have
had four days of sketching at Gloucester, and
among dreams and visions, which has given me no mean lift, and provided
much consolation. There is not much to show for it, you might say: but
I got something nevertheless.
Dear friend, this is a most
garrulous letter, but sometimes there's no fun in brevity.
I have not said to you how very
sweet, how comforting and sustaining I found the letter which came to me
from your hand, nor have I said that I let it count in my hurrying days;
and did distinctly leave undone some things which pressed with the familiar
pressure, but which, in a larger vision, were not essential. I live so
much under the water as it were, that I am in danger, I know, of mis-calculating
weights and measures; and the touch of a friend's hand is a beautiful reminder
of first values. . . . Do you know the line from Epictetus?
"Rather than bread let understanding concerning God be renewed to you day
by day."
The tender majesty of this high
day is with me still, dear friend (though the hour has slipped past which
sets its limit in time), and I love to write to you in the shadow of its
associations.
Mr. Brooks preached quite a wonderful
sermon this morning; taking man as his own Jerusalem, receiving everything
as coming from God, and greeting it with Hosanna. A "hard doctrine;" but
hard as everything worth having is hard, either in getting or holding or
loving.
June 16 (1889?).
Just when I was in a curious
trough of the sea, and when its bottom seemed so much nearer than the top,
came that dear letter with love and faith in it - not warranted, but maybe
all the more sustaining, and comforted my soul. I have done more work this
winter and at greater odds than usual, and that's all right: only there
comes a moment when - ah well, why do I use so many words? . . .
July, 1889.
The summer so far has been a
matter of jobbing, and I have only guessed at the way the sky and the trees
look. Presently I think I am to have a little time to myself; and if this
is bestowed I shall retire into Nature and work as she dictates. You will
be glad of this? And some day we shall meet again. I hope to speak of many
things which have been a-laying in lavender for a long while, dear fellow
pilgrim. Just now I am greatly involved with
-----'s
wedding, and the young people who have gathered
here for that event. One is full of joy and pain at beholding their youth
and their ignorance.
Things are many and pretty dull,
albeit they include much work and a little play; refusing to see folks
at the studio door of mornings and bowing and bending at them of evenings
(but most times declining to go where bowing and bending is in order).
----- has been making aphorisms of late, on the typewriter, so that they
are more than usually fundamental in their effect! and is dealing damnation
out against what she calls the "deep spiritual sin of the mind-cure."
May 26, 1890.
She fought
so long, my little Gemma, and this morning she went
forth in the sunrise. It was so peaceful and beautiful with her that one
can only feel as she felt; but the human heart cries out in pain and must
cry, yet knowing that God is greater than our hearts and will console and
bless.
June 28, 1890
This last fortnight, which has
been a time of almost absolute silence; and a period of great peace and
refreshment when one could sit still and listen to the voices, I have worked
in town by day and gone down and sat by the shore and seen the stars shine;
sometimes even the dawn come up, and have found it very good.
July, 1890.
Strangely enough that impulse
for out of doors work has not yet taken me in its thrall. By this time,
usually, of a summer I am dying to be out in it and at it; but the deep
solemn inner living of this year has kept me in a place apart; and I am
still there, though the routine life goes on, and I apparently with it.
August 14, 1890.
This Summer seems to give little
room for what one needs most. By this I do not mean to blame fate: only
to recognize some of the conditions which attend the ordinary life we live,
and which at a time of special stress keep one's feet in the road, while
one's heart is in the sea or the sky.
Perhaps those skyey windows
will report themselves some day in renewed working impulses, though as
yet I can't count them.
January 6, 1891.
A message of the New Year with
its trembling hopes, its intimations, its retrospect. The year always comes
as a person to me; and this one has a gentle look and perhaps will lay
a soft hand on us. At all events one can live and love in it, and so one
turns to and rallies on one's abstract propositions.
January 31, 1891.
I am led to wonder if time given
to acquaintances and enemies is really worth as much towards one's everlasting
salvation as if friends were allowed to come into the scheme of organization
a little more freely.
May 26, 1891.
I wish I had a pansy to put here
in memory of this day, - my little Gemma's; forever an open window into
Heaven.
July 8, 1891.
I have wanted awfully to write
to you, dear My Fellow Traveller; yet somehow at bad moments couldn't,
and at good ones fell to dreaming instead. . . .
It's been somehow a difficult
kind of a time, with one shining spot for which to be everlastingly grateful, thirty-six
hours at Niagara! E. L. asked me long ago to stay with
her there, and I did not want to miss all this period of solemn and tender
experience with her, so I went just for this, instead of the fortnight.
When once I saw that supreme
sight before I knew it was an altar; and all I had felt came home to me,
a thousand fold: and I shall dream forever of the picture which must be
painted there. Someday we will speak of it, and of the rainbow which came
and "stood round about the throne."
With this letter was the following sonnet.
Behold an altar radiantly fair
Lit with white flames drawn from the heart of things!
Here pour oblations of majestic
springs
Fed by the sky in some wide upland air;
Here rises incense warm with
scent of dawn.
Gold with the sunset, purple with the night,
Here shines a snowy pavement
dazzling bright
For saints and little children and the worn
Footsteps of martyrs who have
gained their palm.
O God! of Thee alone this splendor tells.
In power, in continuity, in
calm;
In air ineffable where color dwells,
Or in still voices where are
borne along
Strains of an incommunicable song.
Niagara, July 2, 1891.
I have come here from Trinity
where the Consecration Service made a great
and moving and uplifting period; a wonderful beauty lay in it all; centering
in Mr. Brooks and communicating itself to all beholders.
It is a great office this of
Bishop; but its greatness only really becomes apparent when it is filled
by a great man, and so there comes in now a strange new recognition of
all that may come out of this new splendor. . . .
I have not seen A.
F. nor indeed any one, since my three days in Williamstown,
the most charming town set in the midst of the most genial and beneficent
landscape I have ever seen in America.
October, 1891.
My thoughts and love have been
yours, ever since I saw the brief word which told that your
dear Mother had been taken into heaven, and the love stays with you
now saying no word because no word is deep, or sweet, or rich enough .
. . but I wish my steps might tend Eastward rather, and so find you in
the old places, with the pain of loss everywhere and yet with a diviner
gain beside.
November, 1891.
To-day I am making a sad little pilgrimage
to Lowell, whence has suddenly departed one who was
oh so good to me when I was a little child. The leaves fall fast from the
tree of earthly life, and one has to live on a sort of military basis:
going to the grave with muffled drums, and returning with the flag flying
yet once again.
February, 1892.
The whole living and breathing world beside has been filing in platoons before my weary eyes, but here is a Thursday afternoon with a great snow storm going on outside, and I flatter myself, - Alas for human ignorance! at this moment I hear the voice of ---- in the hall below, and all is over. . . .
Midnight.
And all was over, for the fashionable
caller who goes, rather than comes, came not, but the affectionate few
who go not but stay did appear. . . .
New York, March 24, 1892.
I am writing from New York on
my way to Bermuda for two weeks. . . . I take with me the munitions of
war, oil paints, pastel, and even water colours, for who shall say of what
complexion the emotions of Bermuda will be?
Bermuda, April 12, 1892.
It is a little world all by itself
and a world of colour, as its main attribute. Such a Sea, such a Sky! A
dream of beauty different from anything else and I can see amazing pictures
to be painted at every turn. . . .
The local incident; the white
houses built from the coral of which the island itself is made, . . . the
negroes and their picturesque methods, the acres of lilies all in fragrant
bloom, these things one can only glance at in writing, but some day I will
tell you a pretty chapter of geography and history made out of this strange
island in the sea, so lovely and so serene.
Oh, having a Show isn't half so leisurely a proceeding as I had supposed, and I have never been so busy in my life, I guess, as for the last three days. But the world, critics and otherwise, takes the Show more seriously than ever it did before; and that gives me a grave pleasure. Indeed I have felt a great many things, owing to folks and their remarks.
March 6, 1893.
I think sometimes that I have
no right to have dear friends who love me, for this strenuous life allows
so little space for the acts or even the words of love. Work and incessant
demands, together with the maintenance of habitual responsibilities and
cares, preclude simple free action and make me seem a niggard.
Easter Monday, 1893.
Easter went
as Easter must, well; for is it not a day of the future? . . . Your letters
. . . have been comfort and joy to me, and I count and know them every
one, and need them; if indeed one dares say one needs anything.
Chicago, and this is early of
a Thursday morning having arrived over night late, but in good order: and
having awaked this morning to find the brightest sunshine and warmth while
the Hotel boasts fewer lions and more rocking chairs than we were led to
suppose. The party is pretty large and I shall try to lose most of it whenever
opportunity offers, and to find it again at hours of meat and drink.
But after all I shall care really
for the main issue, which is to see that great general sight and to wonder
and dream.
I got very little at Cape Ann in my second day with everything gray and generally discrepant, but I am minded to throw it on a larger canvas and see what can be done with memory and hope, those potent factors of the spirit.
November 14, 1893.
Then came Edward
Cabot's funeral. Your thoughts and mine are not far from each other's;
for this mighty Herald comes on either hand and fills one with hope and
with grief both at once. . . . I wish the day might bless you as it did
those who stood around Mr. Parkman's grave last
Saturday (the first day of St. Martin's Summer)with
gold and violet and deepest red over all the Earth, and in the Sky - heaven.
Undated.
I missed you by one minute to-day!
and could not show you the white roses still shining as they shone when
they came to me Saturday; and the laurel stood up proudly and spoke of
strife and heroes, and all that long story that the laurel tells.
The great event of the Library
has come and passed, and still one goes to view the scheme, and see how
immense the
Sargent decoration is. I shall not talk
of it at all until I talk of it with you on the spot, and then we will
say great swelling words of pride, and some of criticism too, for some
chances are missed, inevitable in such a new departure.
July 23, 1895.
. . . Not my plans, but the arrangements
and expectations of others make up all my days, so far this summer, which
I say not by way of complaint, but just of statement. I take refuge in
dreams; a little more thick and fast than usual just now, because my eyes
have been well for three weeks and because that means a more thumping beat
of the old pulse. But I can only look and long
yet awhile, so far as getting the dream on foot is concerned. . . .
Have you read Symonds'
Life
and Letters?
He sends out such a brave courageous cry and heartens
those who hear him. And somehow it made me feel afresh some of the weak
spots in the Christian Science scheme that refuses
to allow pain to be a minister by refusing its existence. I guess we must
re-adjust the new dogmas nearer to the heart's necessities. Grief
indeed "makes the young spring wild," but grief endured and dimly understood,
seems to smite into one some of the deepest recognitions of the human Spirit.
. . . You see I am wishing and needing to see you very much.
September 5, 1895. (Day after Labor Day.)
Well, there is one thing to be
said of this summer, it has been "all of a piece;" and to those who demand
continuity as a prime factor in affairs, I doubt if any scheme of events
could suit better. It would make you merry if I might rehearse the history
of yesterday, par exemple; beginning with a series of breakfasts for a
series of blood-relations; and at 9.30 flying to the Roman Catholic Church
to witness the wedding of Ford the gardener's daughter. It was by the way
a very extraordinary spectacle to one who stepped in off a simple Beverly
Farms highway, and found a little glittering mass of candles and incense
and holy water and genuflecting men and boys. Seven prelatical persons
and a large choir did it take to marry Louisa Ford! and the lace and little
acolytes made a middle-age picture so strange as never was; and I seemed
in the space of that hour to think through more facts about the human heart
and life and death and all things, than in years of less acute meditation.
O how wonderful it all is, and how the pulse of humanity is beating like
a trip-hammer in every crevice and under every tree. Well, that is the
way my day began, but I must take you through its convolutions. Suffice
it to say that in the early morning I had asked myself why this new festa
had not been called felicitously Play Day; but in the stilly night I perceived
that the Fathers were wiser than I; for a day more full of Labor (there
were so called "Sports" going on for hours) I had never known. . . . Also
there was a sound of coming Bourgets in the air;
and a sort of Gallic stir within me, as well as a New England fear of all
the consequences involved by their approach. . . . Just now I am returning
from a morning of jobs of an altruistic sort, with one little shy at the
glass-work thrown in.
September 17, 1895.
I make little fugitive sketches
of things seen from car windows as I fly back and forth from glass and
marble shops - or of a belated moon which waits for the game of billiards
to be over and then comes creeping from the rim of earth, smoky with earth's
vapors, but burning with O such inward fire!
These things console me; and
I so report to you. This is one of the summers when there is nothing to
tell unless you tell everything. I think I have felt more molten
within, if you'll forgive so clumsy a term, than in any summer I ever spent,
yet it would puzzle me to mention any one incident. If fact there have
been none, only persistent tumultuous feeling, highly controlled as must
ever be and non-resultant, save perhaps for some inner mobilization.
October 8, 1895.
O wasn't I disappointed and am
I not disappointed still! and thanking you for your kind letter, but still
feeling that Literature had no Claims which Friendship ought to respect!
But seriously, beloved friend, I knew just how it was and I like to hear
of the work singing in your head to be done, and I hope every falling leaf
makes contribution to the Theme, and each white star approves the same.
. . . I haven't written because I have been at it in such a relentless
fashion. People have penetrated every corner of my being, there have been book-covers
. . . and Dr. Holmes' memorial tablet, and pastel
heads of growing infants, and moans of memory, and meetings, and all the
other innumerable happenings of the Fall. Which I now perceive is all Summer
and all Winter squeezed together!
Thus even my letter becomes
a catalogue, and I am somewhat ashamed even to write to you at all, but
nevertheless I love you well enough not to mind these infringements of
the proprieties of friendship and so shall despatch this silly sheet.
November 12, 1895.
In the train for Newport.
I have indeed had a wonderful little vacation, seeing the landscape which is always to me the largest, the most full of intimation; and at Newport the "passion of Autumn" is more felt than anywhere I think in the world! The sea turns from violets into pansies; the great clouds entrench themselves in more substantial ramparts. And I am full of gratitude for having a few days of wonder before the actual and immediate come rattling about my ears.
I fell to work and began thinking
of the winter, a thought I have not hitherto allowed myself because that
way madness lay! But now I grow bolder and venture to plan somewhat for
things to be. And to think of the Window in a thousand
different ways, a way of thinking through which I must pass before I decide
upon one way. And I have now had definite talk with the powers at Trinity
and there is no doubt that the Class will be allowed
to put its memorial to Mr. Brooks there, in the triple window which we
have in our own room. So that is for the immediate future, and I guess
not much portrait painting this year, except that it is never safe to prophesy!
But enough of Shop.
I have been this evening to
dine at Shady Hill with that hot, pulsing and amazing creature R.
Kipling; and he was exceedingly interesting, real and full of talk.
He seemed in fact like a focus of creative energy, with that dark imaginative
eye behind the glass. I had never seen the Banjo Song which he recited
in a sort of still, molten way, and which I think the most humane and large
word, albeit couched in the short syllables of a sort of refrain, he has
ever written. It all made me feel very strangely as I came into town again
under a gray sky . . . . I think Mrs. Ward has given a fresh turn on the
wheel, so far as strength and texture in the fabric of her work goes. Sir
George Tressady opens with a stout clutch on her material and firm
and easy movement. It seems a very live world to me to-night, as you see,
my friend; and I am dying for talk and those things which come with speech
and companionship when one knows there is everything to be said. A hot
silence has some gleams of delight in it, but one is left rather like a
crater thereafter.
But my one word is made of many
syllables and I must reduce it to two and say good-night.
Shall I not say also God bless
you?
Birthday,1895.
Your note and the lovely book
came almost together and made me feel a great warmth about the heart. One
never recovers from the intensity of association with anniversaries and
festivals, but one would gladly evade them; they open such doors into the
chambers which everyday life and everyday work enable one to avoid.
And the touch of a friend's
hand is full of consolation.
March 4, 1896.
I think I have not written much
of late, you seemed to be out of reach of letters, and beside I have been
in a great valley of silence in which I seemed to have learned much that
I knew not of before. I have been alone long days together; I have worked
and dreamed, and have felt the days blessed and the lesson of continuance
begun.
The "deep" wasn't very bad, but
somehow I succumbed with more than my usual facility (spite of the presence
of dear S. C. W.'s Elixir); that admirable weapon
the Human Will going to pieces as if it were made of flax; and reducing
one to terms of which we will not speak for very scorn. But now I have
regained a human composure. . . . Not having thought I naturally have not
read, till now I find myself wandering in the sweet mystic pages of Le
Tresor des Humbles, where I find some words that have much truth
and beauty. I think you will have read it too, and will have believed that
the soul is entering upon such possessions as are therein described. Ah,
how the "dream saves the world," how real is that which lies just out of
sight it may be, but not out of feeling.
Last night having 16,000 letters
and jobs to do, I turned aside and just, first, read the last chapters
from that most real country where someone is living with the
Pointed Firs. Just altogether beautiful I call it, dear, and wish to
tell you so, because there is gratitude, and then the heart's gratitude,
that strange deep joy of the soul at touch or sight of a new sympathy with
the soul's life; I love to have you write and write in these levels; where
star and pebble make part of the divine chord. . . . I am working as hard
as I can, with no intention of ever stopping, if I can help it, this side
heaven.
I have really been working day
and night for weeks, the little portraits of the little children, and then
Dr.
Mitchell appearing with a view to portraiture and yet with a relish
for Society; these things have kept me on a stretch not wholly admirable.
However one got something out of it, and some moments of intercourse with
the children - some hints of the untried secrets of those little hearts
have seemed to me deep chapters in experience. But without time I will
not speak of the eternities.
Old Place, October 25, 1896.
It was a great comfort to get
that dear letter and it gave me beside a swift impulse to go sailing down
the coast to Berwick. . . . I did not do it; but
that is only an incident, the impulse was the large, round, whole scheme.
Now it's Sunday, and on Wednesday I shall strike my tent and be off for
the winter campaign, with a terrible sense of weakness at the heart, but
a great many straps and buckles about the belt, wherewith I hope to make
some stout show.
March 10, 1897.
I must have one word with those
who tarry in Virginia and see the Spring walking with visible sweet feet
over the edges of the Hills. . . . Here there is a sort of molten condition
which is perhaps the way it is going to be always, and the more I endeavor
to pull out of the hot, hopeless sea of events, the more the whirlpools
suck me down; and I am about to make a cut clean across the face of human
relationships. But not till after the ----- have come for this Sunday and
perhaps ----- for the next and intermittent folks appearing, reappearing,
disappearing for the Masterpieces and all the rest of it. I keep saying
to myself, how good it was that I once read a book, or learned a verse
of poetry, because now it's such a Big book I can't more than hold it ---
this Book of Life, and the Poem's got to be written not read.
April, 1897.
O my friend, this is hard indeed
to bear, and my heart aches with all your hearts
in this deep loss and pain! How to comfort each other
--- but this God knows and will make plain, and we who love you so much
must wait for the coming of this consolation. I bless Him that you were
there, sustaining and helping all, and going down with your dear sister
so far as the edge of that wonderful river -- that sea of life. Ah, across
its wave how many have come into port and are in that perfect felicity
towards which we yearn.
April 5, 1897.
This is just a little letter
. . . for this day of peace, when grief had in it no sort of bitterness,
and when all the sweetness and goodness of noble living in its generations
seemed to glorify the day and mingle with the spring which hung along the
watercourses and in the wide air. It helped and consoled me to be there.
. . . These messengers of death do indeed come thick and fast to us now,
but one finds a voice full of life which sings above the flowers. . . .
I ask a blessing for you every day.
April 16, 1897.
You will find that open door
this Easter which no one can shut.
April 30, 1897.
The sap mounts in the human tree
with the spring; and I wish I could go into the wilderness and do one long,
rich job freely beneath the stars and the sunshine. You will know the surge
of impulse which sets in with the little blades of the grass, which matches
the maple buds and the willow's yellowing bark. Ah, to step, some day,
further westward!
June 14, 1897. Old Place.
If you knew how grave I am at
sight of this sea! What wonder it wakes in me, what surmise, what anguish,
what hope!
July 14, 1897. Old Place.
I think this year I am more deeply
aware than ever before of what is going on at the Centre, that is of the
real thing in reality. From which statement I do not want you to think
this a psychological disquisition, but just an allusion to a state of feeling.
I wish I could tell you what
this particular day (and many others) is like. It's like being set to deal
with elements as varied as the gift in Pandora's
box. I might summarize by enumeration for illustration.
Mrs. Lawrence,
Victor's necessities,
Jack's disappearance,
A sick servant,
People who are coming and don't
come,
People
who are not coming and come,
Together with personal impressions
and predilections; together with inveterate tendencies, and the law of
diminishing returns.
But I cannot write to send you
catalogues and forbear.
Bar Harbour
is Washington out-of-doors, so far as its being really a little cosmopolis,
with traces of all climes and conditions in a fine mêlée,
and social impulse fusing the material. Well, for two or three days, it
is not bad, and I am glad to get for a moment off rails which have more
persistent grip in them than usual even.
August 28, 1897.
I went down yesterday and spent
the night at
Saunderstown . . . the Rhode Island
landscape; always one step nearer Heaven than any other landscape for me.
The conditions were small at this little town, which is no town at all,
but only a few houses dropped by accident in the fields, and an old pier
straggling idly out to meet some tiny boats which puff in from Jamestown
to Newport every now and then, only this, but divine! . . . Much talk
with Jack about politics and the critique of Nelson.
A splendid order and we had some arguments as to the construction of a
piece of work which would leave Nelson in his due blaze of glory, and then
have room to say one word concerning something greater than Glory. But
I am sure Mahan has forgotten that one cannot consider a romantic hero
like Nelson apart from his star, has failed to recognize that this fiery
genius, sincere, passionate, simple and amazingly child-like, loved as
he fought, and the proportions make his love forever heroic. . . . Your
letter was a great comfort, coming on a dull day. I am all right; and never,
you know, can lead an easy life. For which we must always give thanks.
September 24, 1897.
O isn't it splendid to feel the
sap running up and see the new bud forming itself to its supreme end! These
things send one to the altar anew. . . . I put in this some letters just
come which made me weep those strange tears of grateful love, which never
find a voice, but which keep the heart nourished and refreshed as with
the dew of Heaven.
October 17, 1898.
To-day the sea has been a deep
lapis lazuli: the sky clear, and the wind one rush across the earth, and
it has not seemed to me one minute's distance to the Mountains where these
friends have held the air in fee. So I have had companionship and have
gathered some fresh impulses and in some brief intervals have hammered
out a bit of work.
March 18, 1898.
The last of the four
quatrefoils
is done to-day: and I have a momentary sensation like Christian's when
the pack fell off. . . . There's that in the Spring
which makes a strange tumult and lends wings to the Dream.
The window was up, and I saw
some things to do to it (not crucial things, but those which would make
a better balance when all was done) and then I felt dissolved and empty
and undone. Indeed in some ways I feel so still, and if I could have done
exactly as I felt I should have gone straight out somewhere . . . to-morrow
I fly to Niagara for one long solitary look at that Altar.
Well, it was shown for Class Day and again at Radcliffe's Committee, and
at half-past ten on Wednesday when the President entered and walked gloriously
between the rows of students lined up on either side, when he did this
the curtain was swiftly withdrawn and the gift was in the hands of the
College. . . . If some of those youths care a little, I shall have had
my day. . . . I feel in spite of the dust and ashes to which I have confessed
a sort of landscape passion which always surges up about this time, and
makes havoc with my composure. Perhaps there'll be little opportunities,
and there is always room for looking into the night and watching for the
morning.
July 17, 1898.
Yes, it was there color bloomed
for me on the Gothic stem; for there you have found that it is in the clerestory
that they put (as in no other) the rainbow; leaving the lower windows pale;
and no one having ever told me this I entered to find that violet twilight
lying all above and to be overwhelmed by it. . . . I did go to Niagara
and I had there forty-eight hours of silence and of solitude. Not that
I was alone, for all the hours were filled with beautiful and high companionship
- - but there was silence. I found a little plain hotel . . . with a chamber
one window of which looked upon the American Fall and
the other upon that High Altar of which I have dreamed ever since that
day I spent beside it. So I studied and sketched and wondered every minute.
. . . And some secrets I seemed to learn; some of the story of that divine
white passion of the flood. Some of its meanings when the rainbow floods
all that soft tumult into rosy fire; or when it feels the quickened throb
of the south wind blowing across Lake Erie. I think I must make many pilgrimages
there and then perhaps I can come a little nearer to the dream. . . . All
this, without one word of the tremendous days in which as citizens we live,
now, thank Heaven, with peace in sight, after the surrender
of Santiago. You must know too that one has felt a great splendor in
the heroic ways of our men, gentle and simple, and though one quakes over
the imperialist rubbish which is in the political mêlée, there
is a great patriotism in the heart of us.
November 3, 1899.
I had the first real day in the
studio to-day since June 10th, and now hope to be able to do Some Work.
But one never knows, and then what you do do, never seems to be just it,
but only just before it. All of which is part of the Philosophy.
March 23, 1900. Studio.
. . . You have been gone 1000
years, and though to you it is as one day, do not forget the American standpoint,
as you drink the wine of Attica or sip the honey of Hymettus.
Remember the difference between the active, transitive, and the neuter
verb; remember that in Europe you do what you expect to do, in America
that which is expected of you; and give thanks that
you are not as other men are! I can't even remember when you went away;
it is so long, counting by the sense of loss, and by the humbled remembrance
of human demand which has been in a state of turbulent activity. Radcliffe
has been exacting because of changes in the Board and questions of development,
the Museum School has questions to meet, there is
to be an Artists' Festival and preparations therefor, and every stranger
on earth has decided to visit Boston. Everyone, even my unworthy self,
has had grippe more or less so that the city record
may be reported as 150,000 cases for the year!
But I must tell you, friend,
that after a little visit from Georgy Schuyler,
(she came back in a week to see me,) in which she had a taste of all that
Boston can boast of Art, Literature, and Religion; then there appeared
Dr. Weir Mitchell to have his Portrait painted and be entertained by the
Tavern Club. It is a terrible thing to have your delightful sitter
staying under your roof! To be pouring coffee and urging repose for the
very person whose canvas is waiting in Boylston Street
is one of the tests of character, and I will not say how much mine has
lost or gained under this fire. But at all events the portrait has made
a reasonable good beginning, in spite of 'dining and wining,' and the fact
that the Edinboro' gown is an artistic solecism being of a red-and-blue
as if one were wrapped in the American Flag. The Tavern dinner was really
brilliant with Norton, Holmes, Wister, and Münsterberg
and all the rest. Owen made a gay beginning to a very serious and eloquent
speech, by telling what his associations were with the Club as a founder,
when they were young and ignorant. "I return after many years," he said,
"to find it changed into a Den of Lions, and what am I but a little Daniel
in the midst of them!" I record here my belief that Owen is going on,
and that his moral force is potentially very large.
But this is only written to
send love, and to complain that there is no message in the stars, and one
is only keeping content when one consults the Calendar and not the Heart,
and sees that the days are too few for report though not for expectation.
Greeting to the August Ladies
who are in your company, from S. W.
7 A. M. July 27, 1900
Stocks, Tring, England.
The doves and all the other sweet sounds of this English summer are making a sort of symphony in the air, and I am a-preparing to return early, for late breakfast, in short, after tea in this idyllic garden and an evening of large hospitality and happiness. . . . I had a real talk with Mrs. Ward under the trees; and all this has been a lasting pleasure. . . . So from out this shelter (a word which takes on such inexplicable perfume as life grows longer) and on this lyric morning, I have this one word with you. I think it is because you love me that I am here; and that is sweet. Heaven bless you!
August, 1900.
I found my escape in going straight
to the Cathedral of Chartres yesterday morning.
. . . For as I sojourned there from the morning early, till long after
sunset, I was able to know something of the Symphony of colour which is
daily played there, and anything more matchless cannot be, in this world.
October 22, 1901 (after two deaths).
And yesterday Mrs.
Dorr was set free after so long a captivity, and now one may believe
walks freely in that sky at which she has sat looking for these months
past.
The days accordingly go on with
slow dramatic footsteps, and one goes on with them or glad or sad, but
in any case strenuously set to the selfsame task. And Nature had taken
such a hand at the Game this Fall. I have never known such splendors and
symbols, such announcements of "liberal friendship" and of high augury.
My work has of necessity been in the shop, but I have listened and, I hope,
learned somewhat of these adorable open secrets of the wide air.
One word with you . . . to-night,
by the river Dart, . . . I am looking out on one of
the most romantic bits of English scenery I ever beheld, - an idyllic loveliness,
and the sea's pulse stirring every now and then the quiet breast of the
stream. One can look at England from so many points of view, and just to-day
it seems to me a garden in which dwell the most innocent and naive beings
ever known in this world of sin. I feel quite old and withered in this
cheerful young company, but take heart of grace because of their gentle
acts. . . . In this last week I have seen some delightful people; . . .
the long-dreamed-of sight in her own house of Mrs. Ritchie
has made a mark on my heart forever. And so I might go on telling you of
this strange leisurely life in this more than strange world. So many gates
open quietly where I want to go in and browse a little on the herbage.
Walpole, October 25, 1902.
I am seeing really amazing beauty,
a great fall mosaic rich as Aaron's breastplate and
multiplied with tones and overtones of color.
February 6, 1903.
I have had a day of successive
events, none of them of my own election; and I am just wondering if it
must be always thus. I contemplate a little innocent personal strike! So
watch the "Evening Transcript."
August 2, 1903.
Dear old fellow, I live in a
semi-detached condition, and do or do not as my demon bids, having an almost
fierce predetermination to do as nearly as I can "what seems best." The
result, if I dare speak of results at all, is that I keep a little work
going, fling an occasional small sop to the social Cerberus,
read a little (which I have not done for many years), write only when I
can't help it because that nerve seems the most "chawed up" of all, and
pray to be forgiven! No wonder that under these conditions my hope of heaven
seems small. . . .
TO MISS ALICE WESTON SMITH
AND MISS PAULINA CONY SMITH
[ Contents ]
IN THE TRAIN FOR AMIENS. July 10, 1894.
Such a fortnight as I have had, and first such a week as the week in London! You see it was all new to me, and strange as it may seem, no city ever took such extraordinary hold on me as this. I think it was the human creature in its mass and in its individuality which seems to be more incorporated there. One feels as if human life there found its largest centre, -- there asserted its greatest activity. One feels, ah, a thousand things! and to walk among the old walls and battlements, and enter into happy doors, and meet new friends and old, was to me like wine. Nothing but professional integrity could have forced me to wrench myself away and fly to Paris for the Champs de Mars. There I found a few really fine things, -- things not to be missed, -- and since then have seen much of Mr. Whistler, and had great joy in seeing him and his pictures, and in sitting in his garden flanked by the old hotels of the Faubourg St. Germain, where the trees are ambrosial and the blackbirds sing roundelays. But this week has been much occupied in taking my eyes in my hand, like that pious saint of old, and doing what the doctor said was "best," by means of which I am supposed to become a regenerated person and stare at the universe with fresh powers.
Yesterday, being freed from the said
doctor, I went straight to Amiens, and there saw my first Cathedral and
was so surprised and rejoiced at the sight that I am going back again to-day
to renew my vows and perchance make some studies there, which is the most
foolish thing
mais que voulez vous?
BAYREUTH, August 19, 1894.
If I could have shared the Parsifal
of to-day with you, dearest child, I should have given you one of the great
gifts. I feel sure that nowhere else to-day could the heart of man be so
lifted up by modern art, indeed there was enacted a drama of rich significance
and solemn beauty. Into such a moment there sweeps the glad remembrance
of all other great and momentous possessions; and the great theatre was
full to me to-day of friends and of associations, of memories and of hopes.
I came here in the midst of all the stress of short time and so much to
do, and just took a week of perfect quiet with my friend and have heard
the music as one does under such conditions; so that it has rested and
refreshed the spirit more than can be told; and one has had that satisfaction
which comes from hearing and then hearing again, so that one learns as
well as loves. I came here through Cathedral aisles as it were, getting
Rheims and Laon and Toul all on the road hither, each one a distinct and
glorious instance. Rheims of course more amazing than the others, and with
qualities of color and tone wholly indescribable. No one ever had told
me that the stained glass was all in the clerestory, whereby the vaults
are like twilight and the apse has a soft violet gloom which is of most
amazing loveliness. At Laon, a high battlemented town reared like a bastion
above the plain, the Cathedral makes a monumental pile; and there, among
the thousand Gothic carvings, are set in one of the towers the shapes of
the patient oxen who drew the stone from the valley below. They look like
one "Dane," and all other dear animals, and are enchanting persons. And
so I do not as you see tell you anything in these hurried notes, but do
indicate at what a terrible pace the tongue will discourse, come Michaelmas!
Your letter was awful pleasing to get and tales of --- made me laugh with
joy, for I know the sensation of having her "lay off her things and stay
to tea." By this time too the thermometer must have come down, and so I
won't take the Boston weather for my theme. I have always tried to have
that art of correspondence which lies in telling one's friend just what
was in that friend's letter, for this method raises epistolary intercourse
to the dignity of an exact science; one letter will serve for all time!
PARIS, September 21, 1894.
Well, on the 6th or 7th of October
I sail. I guess it's about time, for good and rich and informing as the
vacation is, I see that I was made to keep my hand on the plough, and though
I trust I have been looking forward as well as back in Europe, it's the
real minding of the furrow that is the serious concern, and I must turn
to and get into the field again.
October 3, 1894. TRAIN FROM PARIS.
Already America has entered into the
present tense with me, and the continent of Europe is getting back on the
Map again instead of being in the Almanac for the Summer of 1894. And it
is strange to see how the limits of a holiday adjust themselves; and how
at a certain minute after the idle roaming of weeks, suddenly the plough
and the old furrow loom up, and one is aware of the irresistible impulse
to have it all again. But I have had a great look out: have found the beauty
of a time for dreaming and wondering, have, in short, I must believe, added
to the stock of the imperishable, and I feel rich and warm within, in contemplating
these gifts of Life and Time. In some strange way also, I have felt this
summer the reality of all that is real more deeply; the presence of those
who are absent. I have been more aware of Mr. Brooks than ever before,
and of other lovely ones, and this I think very strange and unexpected,
and it has made great shining moments for me, that must stay with me, for
they cannot be taken away.
October 28, 1895.
To-day is a dissected map of the very
finest possible divisions and each country is occupied by a self-constituted
constable who does not mean I shall escape him. In the face of all this
I smile (in a somewhat galvanic manner) and Bruce yawns, but the game goes
on! I did get very near to you all this morning when I rode over the Lynn
Marshes, and gold and blue and a sky-ey rose color combined to make a web
of the most entrancing mystery. Winter and Summer do not fail, only nature
will not arrange herself by the Clock of our circumstance, will not be
bullied nor cajoled, but "comes unannounced" as Emerson says of Beauty....
I perceive that we shall converse for hours on biographical themes when
we meet. And I shall bring you if you have not had it W. J.'s Is Life
Worth Living, wherein he constructs courage anew for those who must
stand upon the little foothold of the naked human Will, and "yearn upward"
according to the conditions of that Will's higher necessities. An eager
and noble cry from such a brave and tender heart.
April 13, 1896. AT SEA.
I feel perfectly free with --- and
he has a personal interest in things which make him near and remote in
that admirable manner which belongs to true comradeship. But a foot on
terra firma will determine many things which now drift as the waves drift.
Not having been able to think I naturally have not been able to read, till
now, when I have wandered in these sweet mystic pages of Maeterlinck, where
as in
Le Reveil de l'Ame and others in the same vein of feeling,
I feel there is truth and beauty in what he says. The eye of the Soul seems
to-day more able to discern the "violet ray" of the spiritual spectrum,
too, and those "dreams which are not idle" open larger vistas than have
been guessed before. One ventures to say to one's self, nothing is so near
as the Majestic Far, whither I speed, and so one is at moments rapt into
great presences.
No date.
It's a beastly period, this preceding
such a convulsion of nature as my going to Europe. In the first place everything
here has to be arranged and everything there created. I feel as if the
Continent were one long picture gallery with not a shop in all the length
and breadth of it; and if one were discovered, as if I should rather die
than stop to buy anything in it; whence I am purchasing stockings by the
dozen and shoe-strings by the gross: and was just packing up all my postage
stamps when I remembered that there national possibilities gave out. I
have a list of things that must be done, as long as the Woman Suffrage
petition in New York State; and I imagine doomed to the same lack of fulfilment;
but I go on just the same, with a sort of galvanic energy.
TO MRS. JAMES T. FIELDS
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1894.
It was of you that I thought first
and most when Mrs. Thaxter's valiant soul went on its lone way to find
heavenly cohorts of waiting friends afar.... Now that I am once more in
Paris, I hope to see Madame Blanc-Bentzon, but the lovely country holds
its lovers, and those who can linger are unwilling to return to the little
chop-sea of Parisian life as it is just now. I am cheered by having Clemence
hard by... and many other friendly faces bloom on neighboring bushes. But
I am haunted by the "sensations d'Italie," and a dream from which perhaps
one never awakes.
TO MRS. RICHARD M. HUNT
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Undated.
I am on my way to Newport, that I may
for one little moment, so sacred a moment, be near you, and lay one leaf
of tender homage at the feet of him whom it has been such a delight to
love and honor.... I know that great voices are comforting you; that Death
itself is like a mighty voice of God, speaking a new majestic word; telling
of peace and joy yet to be: deep answering to deep, and so I must be content
with silence.
77 MT. VERNON STREET, May 17, 1896.
In a deeper place, a place where weakness
cannot enter, I do indeed believe with my whole heart that those beloved
and majestic ones whose "spirits have passed beyond this earth's control"
are near our spirits, enter into our yearning hearts, comfort, sustain
and teach us.... As the Spirit witnesseth with our Spirit," in like manner
do those just ones made perfect take on the freer conditions of spiritual
life and minister, we cannot know how largely, to the necessities of those
they love. If, I say to myself, I can only be strong enough to live in
the light in which one believes; to press upward unfalteringly.
December 26.
I can only thank you, and ask for blessings
for you and yours in these Christmas days. Association seems to make the
feasts sometimes too hard to bear; but one goes deeper and then peace flows
in again. But I wish I could come and put my hand in yours, knowing of
the long reiterated pain you have had to bear. And it is because of this
that more than ever now I ask for you the blessing of Peace.
ON THE TRAIN FOR BALTIMORE
June 1, 1897.
DEAR, AND DEAR FRIEND, -- As you perceive I am executing a familiar act and am on my way to my little Mary's wedding, having at this moment just emerged from the night and Philadelphia -- or was it the night of Philadelphia? -- and now moving swiftly in the early sunlight. Since your dear letter came I have been packed with those persistent duties which attend this time of year plus the incidental coming and going of people and events, and the final climax yesterday of the Dedication of the Shaw monument, which in our little town was the occasion for a vast interest and the display of more pure feeling than often happens. On Sunday Henry Higginson gave a familiar talk to the students at Memorial Hall concerning Shaw, his character, his opportunity; a brave discourse, full of simplicity and rugged eloquence. And as I sat looking at the stage there in the College theatre, I saw and shall forever see beloved forms, and do you remember --- pouring from the pitcher into the silver cup? These presences remain, and sanctify all that shall come after.
At the dedication yesterday, walked
the survivors of the 54th Massachusetts Colored, with their tattered battle
flag, and later, in the Music Hall, after the oration by William James,
came one by Booker Washington -- a wonderful speech which lifted up the
hearts of all who heard him. And the veil was lifted from the monument,
and now the memory of Shaw and of the cause of freedom are set in imperishable
form.
October 1, 1897. OLD PLACE.
I have little to tell you of any moment,
the little world of people and things moves on, and I move with it, yet
seem somehow strangely remote; dreaming dreams, working and wondering over
the yet undiscovered secrets of life. But this long, this endless summer
has been a wonderful one to me, in proving the depth and riches of the
great realities of life; sources of hope and faith, of consolation, and
joy make themselves felt, and that which St. Paul calls "the power of our
endless life" seems newly understood; as one goes through experience after
experience, and loses one's self only to find it again, truly the same
but changed.
July 14, 1903. OLD PLACE.
I have the summer well packed with
dreams; but you know how little that may come to mean. However it is recorded
that they have saved the world!
TO MRS. HENRY PARKMAN 02
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May 26, 1900.
It is the faith of a friend that makes
such a bulwark of consolation. One knows one's failures and one's poverty
and would rather that one's friends knew them too; but if they will only
through the long conflict believe in you still, that forever sustains and
heartens; is a
point de repaire for which one is so grateful, enables
one to keep faith in one's self.... I feel fortified at knowing that you
also believe in the Dream, which as Richter said "shall remain" when we
truly awaken, only the sleep of weakness and ignorance and self-remembrance
shall have passed away.
June 20, 1900.
All the stars are shining in this quiet
town and peace lies like a mantle over the hill. The rivers which gird
in South Berwick have seven falls within a mile, and a sound like that
of some mysterious sea comes on the air; and after you know, you always,
a little, hear it, and there are many things here which give a sort of
mystic quality to this old simple New England village.
July 3, 1900.
I am I now in the grip of knowing that
whatever is to be done must be done before July 11th, and so I am engaged
with the making a sort of block-puzzle of men and things which must be
fitted together before I take ship.... I perceive, in short, that it is
a terrible piece of work to have what is called a vacation. But I perceive
also that somewhere in the so-called vacation there is a little concrete
piece of clear, sheer, reality, some point of beauty which will speak to
me, and never cease speaking. You will understand; and after all, these
are the gifts which leaven the whole air and temper of one's existence.
July 5, 1900.
Going away for five weeks is tantamount
to preparing for death; and every corner must be visited, ticketed, docketed
in this complex scheme by means of which I conduct that remote thing we
call our life.
S. S. COLUMBIA, July 16, 1900.
My years I think are counting in various
ways in reducing certain "dangerous tendencies" and I don't think it is
owing only to a good sea that I have shown unusual self-control! for after
the first day I plucked myself up and have been, not a free man, but with
fetters possible to conceal. The Ship's Company is, in the main, made up
of those who "neither give nor take," Cook's Companies, bands of Teutons,
etc., etc., with a few canonical travellers, and pleasant people in search
of health; with whom (at those long hours when dinner and music and chattering
are done), I exchange amiable commodities. For the rest, I rally on some
interior realizations.
LONDON, July 21, 1900.
All is going as planned; London empty,
almost, of one's friends; but fuller than ever of people, and profoundly
full of intimations, of wonder, of dreams. The heat excessive, till late
last night; perhaps I can indicate this in no way more impressively than
by telling you that the mighty among Coachmen and Footmen in Hyde Park
wore straw hats! This sight really unnerved me: it seemed the first concession
of a really great Nation.... To-day I saw the Academy pictures, and am
full of gloom; so much painting, so little Art. Great painting in Sargent's
group, but so far as Art lies in composition, in feeling, in the outward
and visible form of inward and spiritual grace, one is left empty before
this great canvas.
FRANCE, July 28, 1900.