'2^4 Satly M>etiet4 George Wm. Curtis to John S. Dwight oSzooA cmtm and Concoicb George Willis Cooke NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 1898 Copyright, 1898, by Harper & Brothers. All ri£hu ruintd. ^5 2^ e CONTENTS Early Like at Brook Farm and Concord. ... i Early Letters to John S. Uwioiit 107 Letters of Later Date 274 U8-body seemed full of the bright idea that had struck somebody just in the nick of time. We never knew we had so many friends." In September, i?,^i, th.t Jour Jial of ifitsic cdime to an end. The position taken by Dwight was not that of the self-seeker; he had no gift for turn- ing his love for the art of music into financial re- sults. He would not lower the critical attitude of his journal for the sake of pleasing the pub- lishers of music; and he would not pretend to a 54 BROOK FARM AND CONCORD love of those popular forms of music which lie held to be inferior in their character. It may be he was not a great critic, certainly he had not the technical knowledge of music which is de- sirable in its scientific expositor; but his whole soul was in the art, and he gave it the devotion of his life. His preference was for the older com- posers, and he did not yield a ready homage to those of the newer schools. Of this he speaks in the closing number of his journal: " Startling as the new composers arc, and novel, curious, brill- iant, beautiful at times, they do not inspire us as we have been inspired before, and do not bring us nearer heaven. We feel no inward call to the proclaiming of the new gospel. We have tried to do justice to these works as they have claimed our notice, and have omitted no intelligence of them which came within the limits of our col- umns, but we lack motive for entering their doubtful service ; we are not ordained their prophet." Dwight frankly admitted that the causes for the limited success of his journal lay in himself, and said, truly, " We have long realized that we were not made for the competitive, sharp enter- prise of modern journalism. The turn of mint! which looks at the ideal rather than the practi- cal, and the native indolence of temperament which sometimes goes with it, have made our movements slow. To be the first in the field 55 EARLY LIFE AT with an announcement, or a criticism, or an idea, was no part of our ambition ; how can one recognize competitors, or enter into competi- tion, and at the same time keep his eye on truth ?" The real value of Dwight's work in his /our?!al of Music was expressed in a letter sent him by Richard Grant White, when the closing number appeared : " I regret very much this close of your valuable editorial labors. You have done great work ; and have that consciousness to be sure — some comfort, but it should not be all. There is not a musician of respectability in the country who is not your debtor." In the " Easy Chair " Curtis gave a worthy account of the labors of his friend, and showed how deserving he was of a far greater success than he had reached. " In the midst of the great musical progress of the countrj'," he wrote, "it is a curious fact that the oldest, ablest, and most independent of mu- sical journals in the United States has just sus- pended publication, on the eve of the comple- tion of its thirtieth year, for want of adequate support. We mean, of course, Diuighfs Journal of Music, \s\C\<^ ended with an admirably manly, candid, and sagacious, but inevitably pathetic, valedictory from its editor — veteran editor, we should say, if the atmosphere of good music in which he has lived had not been an enchanted air in which youth is perpetually renewed. . . . 56 BROOK FARM AND CONCORD A more delightful valedictory it would not be easy to find in the swan song of any journal. . . . " Mr. Dwight does not say, what the history of music in this country will show, that to no one more than to him are we indebted for the intel- ligent taste which enjoys the best music. His lectures upon the works of the great Germans at the time of their performance by the Boston Academy of Music in tlie old Odeon forty years ago were a kind of manual for the intelligent audience. They showed that an elaborate or- chestral musical composition might be as serious a work of art, as full of thought and passion, and, in a word, of genius, as a great poem, and that no form of art was more spiritually elevating. They lifted the performance of such music from the category of mere amusement, and asserted for the authors a dignity like that of the master poets. If to some hearers the exposition seemed sometimes fanciful and remote, it was only as all criticism of works of the imagination often seems so. If the spectator sometimes sees in a picture more than the painter consciously intended, it is because the higher power may work with uncon- scious hands, and because beauty cannot be hid- den from the eye made to see it. Beethoven, for instance, had never a truer lover or a subtler interpreter than Dwight, and Dwight taught the teachers, and largely shaped the intelligent ap- preciation of the unapproached master. EARLY LIFE AT " Those were memorable evenings at the old Odeon. Francis Beaumont did not more pleas- antly recall the things that he and Ben Jonson had seen done at the Mermaid than an old Brook Farmer remembers the long walks, eight good miles in and eight miles out, to see the tall, wil- lowy Schmidt swaying with his violin at the head of the orchestra, to hear the airy ripple of Auber's ' Zanetta,' the swift passionate storm of Beetho- ven's ' Egmont,' the symphonic murmur of woods and waters and summer fields in the limpid 'Pas- torale,' or the solemn grandeur of sustained pa- thetic human feeling in the ' Fifth Symphony.' The musical revival was all part of the new birth of the Transcendental epoch, although none would have more promptly disclaimed any taint of Transcendentalism than the excellent officers of the Boston Academy of Music. The building itself, the Odeon, was the old Federal Street The- atre, and had its interesting associations. , . . To all there was now added, in the memory of the happy hearers, the association of the sym- phony concerts. " As the last sounds died away, the group of Brook Farmers, who had ventured from the Ar- cadia of co-operation into the Gehenna of com- petition, gathered up their unsoiled garments and departed. Out of the city, along the bare Tre- mont road, through green Roxbury and bowery Jamaica Plain, into the deeper and lonelier coun- BROOK FARM AND CONCORD try, they trudged on, cliatting and laughing and singing, sharing the entluisiasm of Dwight, and unconsciously taught by him that the evening had been greater tiian they knew. Brook Farm has long since vanished. The bare Trcmont road is bare no longer. Qrccn Roxbury and Jamaica Plain are almost city rather tlian sub- urbs. From the symphony concerts dates much of the musical taste and cultivation of Boston. The old Odeon is replaced by the stately Music Hall. The Journal of Music, which sprang from the impulse of those days, now, after a genera- tion, is suspended ; nor need we speculate why musical Boston, which demands the Passion mu- sic of Bach, permits a journal of such character to expire. Amid all these changes and disappear- ances two things have steadily increased — the higher musical taste of the country, and the good name of the critic whose work has most contrib- uted to direct and elevate it. If, as he says, it is sad that the little bark which the sympathetic encouragement of a few has kept afloat so long goes down before reaching the end of its thirtieth annual voyage, it does not take down with it the name and fame of its editor, which have secured their place in the histor>' of music in America." From the beginning Dwight was intimately connected with the Harvard Musical Associa- tion, which has done so much to promote the interests of music in Boston. He was its first 59 EARLY LIFE AT vice-president and chairman of its board of di- rectors. He was active in providing its meet- ings with attractive musical programmes ; about 1844 he secured for it a series of chamber con- certs; he took part in procuring the building of Music Hall, and in bringing to it the great organ which was for many years an attraction. From 1855 to 1873 he continuously filled the position of vice-president of the association ; and in the latter year was elected president, which place he held until his death. Beginning about 1 850 he worked steadily for securing a good musical li- brar>', that should be as nearly complete as pos- sible; and his desire was to make this a special feature in the activities of the association. In 1867 a room was secured for it; and in 1869 a suite of rooms was rented for the gather- ings, both social and musical, of the members of the association. On his election as president, Dwight went to live in those rooms, cared for the librar)^ and received the members and guests of the association whenever they chose to fre- quent them. This was in Pemberton Square ; but in 1886 there was a removal to Park Square, and another in 1892 to West Cedar Street. Dwight's connection of forty or fifty years with the Harvard Musical Association was most intimate, so that he and the associa- tion came to be almost identical in the minds of Boston people. Whatever it accomplished 60 BROOK FARM AND CONCORD was through his initiative or with his active co- operation. In 1865 Dwight proposed the organization of a Philharmonic Society among the members of the association, and also that a series of concerts be undertaken. This suggestion was carried out, and the concerts were for many years very suc- cessful. In time their place was taken by the concerts of Theodore Thomas, and the Sym- phony Concerts generously sustained by Mr. H. L. Higginson ; but it must be recognized that Dwight and the Harvard Musical Association taught the Boston public to appreciate only those concerts at which the best music was pro- duced. One special object in the organization of the Harvard Musical Association was the securing of a place for music in the curriculum of Harvard College. That was an object very dear to the heart of Dwight, and one which he brought for- ward frequently in the pages of his Journal of Music. He maintained that music was not mere- ly for amusement, but that it is the most human and spiritual of all the arts, and must find its place in any systematic effort to secure a full- rounded culture. In a few years Harvard ap- pointed an instructor in music. Mr. John K. Paine was called to that position in 1862, and was made a professor in 1S76. Dwight gave a most generous welcome to all 61 EARLY LIFE AT young musicians of promise as they came for- ward. Such men as John C. D. Parker, John K. Paine, Benjamin J. Lang, George W. Chadwick, Arthur Foote, and VViUiam F. Apthorp were gen- erously aided by him ; and t\\Q Journal of Music never failed to speak an appreciative word for them. However Dwight might differ from some of them, he could recognize their true merits, and did not fail to make them known to the public. When Mr. Paine, who had been watch- ed by Dwight with appreciation and approval from the beginning of his musical career, was made a professor of music in Harvard Univer- sity, when his important musical compositions were published, and when his works were given fit interpretation in Cambridge and elsewhere, these events were welcomed by him as true in- dications of the development of music in this country. For many years John S. Dwight was the mu- sical autocrat of Boston, and what he approved was accepted as the best which could be ob- tained. His knowledge of music was literary rather than technical, appreciative rather than scientific; but his qualifications were such as to make him an admirable interpreter of music to the cultivated public of Boston. What a musical composition ought to mean to an intelligent per- son he could make known in language of a fine literary texture, and with a rare spiritual insight 62 BROOK FARM AND CONCORD he voiced its poetic and .xsthetic values. If the better -trained musicians of more recent years look upon his musical judgments with somewhat of disapproval, as not being sufficiently technical, they ought not to forget that he prepared the way for them as no one else could have done it, and that he had a fine skill in bringing educated persons to a just appreciatiorr of what music is as an art. As Mr. William F. Apthorp has well said, " his musical instincts and perceptions were, in a certain high respect, of the finest. He was irresistibly drawn towards what is pine, noble, and beautiful, and felt these things with infinite keenness." Dwight's last years were spent in furthering the interests of the Harvard Musical Associa- tion, in writing about his beloved art, and in the society of his many generous friends. He had a talent for friendship, and during his lifetime he was intimately associated with almost every man and woman of note in Boston. He was of a quiet, gentlemanly habit of life, took the world in the way of one who appreciates it and desires to secure from it the most of good, was warmly attached to the children of his friends and found the keenest delight in their presence, loved all that is graceful and beautiful, and devoted him- self with unceasing ardor to the art for which he did so much to secure a just appreciation. On the occasion of his eightieth birthday his 63 EARLY LIFE AT friends and admirers were brought together in the rooms of the Harvard Musical Association. It was a red-letter day in his life, and he greatly appreciated it. A few months later, September 5, 1893, his life came to an end — a life that had been in no way great, but that had been spent in the loving and faithful service of his fellow-men. At his funeral, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, an inti- mate friend of many years, read this just and appreciative tribute : " O Presence reverend and rare, Art thou from earth withdrawn ? Thou passest as the sunshine flits To light another dawn. " Surely among the symphonies That praise the Ever-blest, Some strophe of surpassing peace Inviteth thee to rest. "Thine was the treasure of a life Heart ripened from within, Whose many lustres perfected What youth did well begin. "The noble champions of thy day Were thy companions meet, In the great harvest of our race. Bound with its priceless wheat. "Thy voice its silver cadence leaves In truth's resistless court, Whereof thy faithful services Her heralds make report. 64 BROOK !• A R iM AND CONCORD " Here thou, a watcliful sentinel, Didst guard the gates of song. That no unworthy note should pass To do her temple wrong. " Dear are the traces of thy days Mixed in these walks of ours; Thy footsteps in our household ways Are garlanded with flowers. " If we surrender, earth to earth, The frame that's born to die, Spirit with spirit doth ascend To live immortally." Tlie letters contained in tliis volume give full- est indication of the cordial and intimate rela- tions which existed between Dwight and Curtis. This may be seen more distinctly, perhaps, with the help of a few letters not there given, includ- ing two or three written by Dwight to his friend. In a letter to Christopher P. Cranch, the preach- er, poet, and artist, written at the time when he was starting his Journal of Music on its way, Dwight said : " If you sec the Howadji, can you not enlist his active sympathy a little in my cause? A letter now and then from him on mu- sic or on art would be a feather in the cap of my enterprise. It is my last, desperate (not very con- fident), grand coup tfi'ttU to try to get a living; and I call on all good powers to help me launch the ship, or, rather, little boat." Curtis seconded his friend's efforts cordially, E 65 EARLY LIFE AT subscribed for the new journal, persuaded a. num- ber of his friends to subscribe, and wrote fre- quently for it. He wrote Dwight this letter of appreciation and advice : " Your most welcome letter has been received, and its contents have been submitted to the as- tute deliberations of the editorial conclave [Trid- 7ine\. We are delighted at the prospect — but we do not love the name. ist. Journal of Music is too indefinite and commonplace. It will not be sufficiently distinguished from the 3Iusica/ Times and the Musical World, being of the same gen- eral character. 2d. 'Side-glances 'is suspicious. It 'smells' Transcendentalism, as the French say, and, of all things, anyaspect of a clique is to be avoided. " That is the negative result of our delibera- tions; the positive is, that you should identify your name with the paper, and call it Diuighfs Musical Journal, and you might add, sotto voce, ' a paper of Art and Literature.' " Prepend : I shall be very glad to send you a sketch of our winter doings in music, especially as I love Steffanone, although she says, ' I smoke, I chew, I snoof, I drink, I am altogether vicious.' You shall have it Sunday morning. Give my kindest regards to your wife. I wish she could sing in your paper." In a letter written in March, 1882, Dwight ex- 66 BROOK FARiM AND CONCORD pressed to Curtis his appreciation of the most friendly words which the " Easy Chair " had said of him and his work as an editor, in making men- tion of the fact that the Journal of Music had come to the end of its career: " My dear George, — With this I send you formal invitation, on the part of the committee of arrangements, for the celebration of the anni- versary of the foundation, by Dr. Howe, of the Institution for the Blind. . . . We wish to have an address — not long, say half an hour — partly historical; and we all (committee, director, teach- ers, pupils) have set our hearts upon having you perform that service. It would delight us all ; and I know that you would find the occasion, the very sight of those sightless children made so happy, most inspiring. ... A more respon- sive audience than the blind themselves cannot be found. Dear George, do think seriously of it, and tell me you will come. Your own wishes in respect to the arrangements and conditions shall in all respects be consulted. But come, if you wish to have a good time, a memorable time, and make a good time for us. "George, how many times have I been on the point of writing to you since that delightful week we spent at dear old Twecdy's. To me it was a sweet renewal of good old days, and I came away feeling that it must have added some time to my 67 EARLY LIFE AT life. Then, too, I wished to thank you for your most friendly, hearty, and delightful talk about me and my Journal in the ' Easy Chair.' It was so like you, like the dear old George. I tell you, it made me feel good, as if life wasn't all a fail- ure. And now I am finding laziness agreeing with me too — too well. . . . And if I were not so very, very old, if it were not my fate to have been sent into the world so long before my time, I verily believe I should confess myself over head and ears in love ! At any rate, I love life. Yet nearly all my old friends seem to be dead or dying. When I write you again, I hope to be able to say that I am well at work again ; but how? — on what? Thank God, I am nota 'critic!'" The winter of 1843-44 was spent by the Curtis brothers at their father's house in New York. George studied somewhat, heard much music, and read extensively. In the spring of 1844 they went to live in Concord for purposes of study and recreation. They wished to know country life, and they regarded it as a desirable part of education that they should become acquainted with practical affairs, and especially with agri- culture. That tendency of tiie time which estab- lished Brook Farm and sent Thoreau into the 68 BROOK lARM AND CONCORD Concord woods, worked itself out in this desire of two young men to find life at first hand. Colonel Iligginson has said of the fresh life started by the transcendental movement : " Un- der these combined motives I find that I care- fully made out, at one time, a project of going into the cultivation of peaches, thus securing freedom for study and thought by moderate labor of the hands. This was in 1843, two years before Thoreau tried a similar project with beans at Walden Pond ; and also before the time when George and Burrill Curtis undertook to be farm- ers at Concord. A like course was actually adopted and successfully pursued through life by another Harvard man a few years older than my- self, the late Marston Watson, of Plymouth, Mas- sachusetts. Such things were in the air, and even tliose who were not swerved by ' the New- ness' from their intended pursuits were often greatly as to the way in which tliey were under- taken." A letter written by Burrill Curtis, and printed in part by Mr. Cary, gives the reasons for this ex- periment. He says it was " for the better fur- therance of our main and original end — the de- sire to unite in our own persons the freedom of a country life with moderate out-door occupation, and with intellectual cultivation and pursuits. At Concord we first took up our residence in the family of an elderly farmer, recommended by 69 EARLY LIFE AT Mr. Emerson. We gave up half the day (ex- cept in hay-time, when we gave the whole day) to sharing the farm -work indiscriminately with the farm-laborers. The rest of the day we de- voted to other pursuits, or to social intercourse or correspondence ; and we had a flat-bottomed rowing-boat built for us, in which we spent very many afternoons on the pretty little river. For our second season we removed to another- farm and farmer's house, near Mr. Emerson and Wal- den Pond, where we occupied only a single room, making our own beds, and living in the very sim- plest and most primitive style. A small piece of ground, which we hired of the farmer, we culti- vated for ourselves, raising vegetables only, and selling the superfluous product, and distributing our time much as before." It was to the house of Captain Nathan Bar- rett, one mile north of Concord village, west of the river, and overlooking it and its meadows, that the Curtis brothers went. Barrett was born in October, 1797, and was of the seventh genera- tion of his family in the town. His house on Punkatassett Hill was pleasantly located, and the farm was large and well cultivated. Judge John S. Keyes, in the sketch of Barrett's life printed in the second series of the " Memoirs of Members of the Social Circle in Concord," says of him : " His house was the resort of many of the con- nections of himself and wife, who had there gay 70 15 ROOK I ARM AND CONCORD and jolly frolics. He was a captain of Ihc Light Infantry company of the town. lie was natu- rally of an easy, somewhat indolent disposition, so that he did little of the harder work of the farm, but he looked after everything, and he be- came a thoroughly skilled, practical farmer. Mis position as the principal man of his section of the town, and his own good sense, made him the leading person in his neighborhood. In person he was tall, nearly si.x feet, of large frame, and good proportions, weighing two hundred pounds, had a frank, open face, a high forehead, and a large head. He lived plainly but comfortably; drove a poor horse but a good carriage to church and visiting; dressed like his brother farmers about his work, but neatly and in good style when at leisure. He loved good fruit, raised it in large amounts. Neither witty nor humorous, he was slow to appreciate a joke, but he had a hearty laugh when he did comprehend it. He was liberal in his habits, genial in his tempera- ment, and kindly in his disposition. He was very modest, though firm and reliable; honest in every fibre, without guile and cunning ; thor- oughly simple, and yet clear-headed, cool, and sensible. He was slow in his mental processes, but no one doubted that he believed all that he thought and said and did. His apples were not deaconed, his seeds were sure and reliable, and his milk was never watered. He never made a 7» EARLY LIFE AT mistake in his accounts but once, and then it was against himself. Everybody knew him and liked him and praised him, and was sorry when he died." Captain Barrett had a farm of five hundred acres, the largest in the town. He was a large raiser of sheep and milk. He was a deacon in the First Parish Church, thoroughly honest, most neighborly and accommodating in his ways, a loyal citizen, and a true-hearted man. He died in February, 1868, and was lamented by every resident of the town. A typical farmer was Captain Barrett, thoroughly human, loving life and all there is good in it, hard-headed, prac- tical, of sturdy common-sense, faithful to every obligation as he understands it, of a kindly nature, enjoying the doing of good in a plain, simple way, caring little for the supernatural, and yet having a very sturdy faith in the few convictions of a rational religion, without high spiritual insight, he lived his religion in a very honest fashion. It was quite in keeping with the character of Captain Barrett that he put the Curtis brothers at the task of getting out manure, as almost the first labor he required of them after their arrival on his farm. His idea was to " test their metal," to find what stuff they were made of, and to what extent they were in earnest in their ex- pressed wish to become acquainted with prac- i BROOK FARM AND CONCORD tical agriculture. He spoke of it with glee to his neighbors, that he had put such refined gentlemen at that kind of work. It is needless to say that they bore the test well. They were not domiciled in the farm-house, but in a small cottage somewhat lower down the hill, yet in the immediate neighborhood. The love of music which George Curtis had developed at Brook Farm continued during his stay in Concord. He sang on occasion, and he often played a flute. The young singer he men- tions was Belinda Randall, a sister of John Ran- dall, who published a volume of poems. She was a daughter of Dr. Randall, of Winter Street, Boston, who had a summer place in Stowe. From there she often visited in Concord, per- haps attended school there, and was an intimate friend of Elizabeth Hoar, the betrothed of Ed- ward Emerson, and the sister of Judge Hoar and Senator Hoar, who, when she visited Mrs. Hawthorne, was described as coming " with spirit voice and tread." Belinda Randall has recently died, and left half a million dollars to Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- nology, and the Cambridge Prospect Union. Her sister Elizabeth married Colonel Alfred Cumming, of Georgia, afterwards Governor of Utah. Dr. Randall did not approve of the mar- riage, and would not have the wedding take place in his house. They were married at the house 73 EARLY LIFE AT of Judge Hoar, the father of Elizabeth. She was an excellent musician, but Belinda was the musical genius of the family. Another person mentioned by Curtis was Al- mira Barlow, who was at Brook Farm during the time he was there. She had been a Miss Penni- man of Brookline, and had the reputation of being a famous beauty. She married David Hatch Barlow, a graduate of Harvard in 1824, and of the Theological School in 1829. Their marriage took place in Brookline about 1830, and they were regarded as the handsomest couple that had been seen in the town. He had a parish in Lynn, and was afterwards settled in Brooklyn ; but his habits became irregular, he remained but a short time in any place, and he separated from his wife in 1838. There was much gossip about her, owing to her beauty and her fondness for the society of men. With Mrs. Barlow at Brook Farm and Concord was her son Francis Channing, born in 1834, who graduated at Harvard in 1855, was a lawyer in New York, rose to the rank of Major-General during the Rebellion, and was afterwards prom- inent in his profession. He married as his second wife Miss Ellen Shaw, the sister of Colonel Robert G. Shaw and of Mrs. George William Curtis. Curtis mentions hearing Emerson's address on the anniversary of emancipation in the West Indies, which was delivered in Concord, August 74 BROOK F A R N[ AND C O N C O R D I, 1844. There had existed in Concord for a number of years a Woman's Antislavcry So- ciety, of which Mrs. Emerson was a member. Of this society, Mrs. Mary Merrick Brooks was the president, and its most active worker. Siie invited Emerson to speak on this occasion. He felt tliat he was excused from political action by virtue of his having been a clergyman, and be- cause of his life as a man of letters. Mrs. Brooks thought otherwise, and she gave him good and urgent reasons why he ought to speak, and to speak then. At last she prevailed, partly because she gave him no rest until he had com- plied with her request, and partly because his conscience went with her arguments. His at- titude hitherto had been such as in part justified the statement made by Carlyle to Theodore Parker in 1843, t'^^' the negroes were fit only for slavery, and that Emerson agreed with him. The second abiding place of Curtis and his brother in Concord was the farm of Edmund Hosmer, which was one-half mile east of Emer- son's house, about that distance from Waldon Pond, and nearly the same from Hawthorne's Wayside of later years, which faced it, and from which it could be seen. Hosmer was a native 75 EARLY LIFE AT of Concord, gave his earlier years to his trade as a tanner, and then spent the remainder of his life as a Concord farmer. He was Emerson's authority on agriculture and gardening more than any one ; though in later years Samuel Staples (usually known and spoken of as " Sam ") superseded him because he was a nearer neigh- bor. In 1843, when Emerson wrote to George Ripley declining to join the Brook Farm com- munity, he referred to the opinions of Edmund Hosmer, "a very intelligent farmer and a very upright man in my neighborhood." He gave in full his neighbor's reasons for want of faith in the community idea, that co-operation in farming was not successful, that the word of gentlemen- farmers could not be trusted, that the equal pay- ment of ten cents an hour to every laborer was unjust, and that good work could not be secured if the worker was not directly benefited. In his notes on the agriculture of Massachu- setts, published in Tlie Dial, Emerson described his neighbor in these words : " In an afternoon in April, after a long walk, I traversed an orchard where boys were grafting apple-trees, and found the farmer in his cornfield. He was holding the plough, and his son driving the oxen. This man always impresses me with respect, he is so manly, so sweet-tempered, so faithful, so disdainful of all appearances — excellent and reverable in his old weather-worn cap and blue frock bedaubed with 76 BROOK FARM AND CONCORD the soil of the field ; so honest, withal, that he always needs to be watched lest he should cheat himself. I still remember with some shame that in some dealing we had together a long time ago, I found that he had been looking to my interest, and nobody had looked to his part. As I drew near this brave laborer in the midst of his own acres, I could not help feeling for him the high- est respect. Here is the Caesar, the Alexander of the soil, conquering and to conquer, after how many and many a hard-fought summer's day and winter's day ; not like Napoleon, hero of sixty battles only, but of si.x thousand, and out of ev- ery one he has come victor; and here he stands, with Atlantic strength and cheer, invincible still. These slight and useless city limbs of ours will come to shame before this strong soldier, for his having done his own work and ours too. What good this man has or has had, he has earned. No rich father or father-in-law left him any inheri- tance ofland or money. He borrowed the money with which he bought his farm, and has bred up a large family, given them a good education, and improved his land in every way year by year, and this without prejudice to himself the landlord, for here he is, a man every inch of him, and re- minds us of the hero of the Robin Hood ballad : " ' Much, the miller's son, There was no inch of his body But it was worth a groom." 77 EARLY LIFE AT " Innocence and justice have written their names on his brow. Toil has not broken his spirit. His laugh rings with the sweetness and hilarity of a child ; yet he is a man of a strongly intellectual taste, of much reading, and of an erect good sense and independent spirit which can neither brook usurpation nor falsehood in any shape. I walked up and down the field as he ploughed his furrow, and we talked as we walked. Our conversation naturally turned on the season and its new labors." The conversation went on, leading to a discussion of the agricultural survey of the State ; Hosmer's opinions of it are quoted as of much worth, and as sounder than anything which the writer could himself say on the subject. Mr. Sanborn is of the opinion that Edmund Hosmer was described as Hassan in Emerson's fragments on the " Poet and the Poetic Gift," in the complete edition of his poems : "Said Saadi, 'When I stood before Hassan the camel-driver's door, I scorned the fame of Timour brave ; Timour, to Hassan, was a slave. In every glance of Hassan's eye I read great years of victory, And I, who cower mean and small In the frequent interval When wisdom not with me resides, Worship Toil's wisdom that abides. I shunned his eyes, that faithful man's, I shunned the toiling Hassan's glance.'" 78 BROOK FARM AND CONCORD Hosmcr was also described by William EUcry Channing in his " New England " : "This man takes pleasure o'er the crackling fire. His glittering axe subdued the monarch oak ; He earned the cheerful blaze by something higher Than pensioned blows — he owned the tree he stroke, And knows the value of the distant smoke, When he returns at night, his labor done. Matched is his action with the long day's sun." Channing spoke of him again as the "Spicy farming sage. Twisted with heat and cold and cramped with age. Who grunts at all the sunlight through the year. And springs from bed each morning with a cheer. Of all his neighbors he can something tell. Tis bad. whate'er, we know, and like it well ! The bluebird's song he hears the first in spring- Shoots the last goose bound south on freezing wing." Hosmcr was also one of the farmer friends of Thoreau, who much enjoyed his society and the vigor of his conversation. He is described in the fourteenth chapter of " Walden" as among Tho- reau's winter visitors at his hut : " On a Sunday afternoon, if I chanced to be at home, I heard the cronching of the snow made by the step of a long-headed farmer, who from far through the woods sought my house, to have a social 'crack'; one of the few of his vocation who are 'men on their farms'; who donned a frock instead of a 79 EARLY LIFE AT professor's gown, and is as ready to extract the moral out of church or state as to haul a load of manure from his barn-yard. We talked of rude and simple things, when men sat about large fires in cold, bracing weather, with clear heads; and when other dessert failed, we tried our teeth on many a nut which wise squirrels have long since abandoned, for those which have the thick- est shells are commonly empty." In W. E. Channing's book about Thoreau as the " Poet- Naturalist," there is a passage from his journal in which Thoreau speaks of Hosmer as the last of the farmers worthy of mention. " Human life may be transitory and full of trouble," he says, "but the perennial mind whose survey ex- tends from that spring to this — from Colu- mella to Hosmer — is superior to change. I will identify myself with that which will not die with Columella and will not die with Hosmer." At Hosmer's house the two young men lived in a single room, and did their own cooking and house -keeping. Mrs. Hosmer furnished them with milk, and they ate crackers, cheese, and fruit largely. They were Grahamites, and used no meat. They read much, and had with them a large number of books. It was their custom here, as well as at Captain Barrett's, to spend much time in the woods. They were enthu- siastic students of botany, and came home from BROOK FARM AND CONCORD their excursions in the woods with their arms loaded with flowers, and often searched out the r.ircst which could be found in the VValden and Lincoln woods. It was while the Curtises were living at Hos- mer's that they assisted Thorcau in building his hut at Waldcn Pond. Thorcau says that in March, 1845, he borrowed an axe and went into the woods to build him a house. The axe was procured of Emerson, and he says he returned it sharper than when he received it. He was assist- ed in building the house, he says, by some of his acquaintances, " rather to improve so good an occasion for neighborliness than from any neces- sity." These acquaintances were Emerson, Al- cott,W. E. Channing, Burrill and George Curtis, Edmund Ilosmcr and his sons John, Edmund, and Andrew. Thoreau said that he wished the help of the young men because they had more strength than the older ones, and that no man was ever more honored in the character of his raisers than he. It was Thoreau's custom while at Walden to dine on Sundays with Emerson, and to stop at Ilosmer's on his way back to the pond, often remaining to supper. After the failure of his experiment at Fruitlands, it was into Ilosmer's house that Alcott found himself welcomed ; and he was given much of help and encouragement by the farmer and his wife. F 81 EARLY LIFE AT VI At this time several of the Brook Farmers were living in Concord, and among them were Brad- ford, Pratt, and Mrs. Barlow ; and later on Mari- anne Ripley, the sister of George Ripley, found a home there, and kept a school for small chil- dren. On the third return of the Curtises to Concord, in the summer of 1846, they found a home in the house of Minott Pratt, who was living at the foot of Punkatassett Hill, on the top of which was the house of Captain Barrett. In the same neighborhood lived William Ellery Channing, the poet, whose wife was a sister of Margaret Fuller. They are frequently men- tioned in Hawthorne's and his wife's letters from the Old Manse. Pratt's cottage was in a quiet, delightful location ; and in the family George Curtis found himself quite at home. Curtis made a -very pleasant impression in Con- cord, for he was social in his ways, paid much deference to others, and always exemplified a fine etiquette. The brothers are remembered by one person who then knew them as having no mannerisms, and as being perfect gentlemen. His article on Emerson, in the " Homes of American Authors," gave much offence in the town, and by Mrs. Alcott, as well as others, was warmly resented. He was exact enough as to 82 BROOK FARM AND CONCORD facts, but he drew from them wrong inferences. He afterwards said that tlicrc was nothing ro- mantic in his paper, and that every incident mentioned was an actual occurrence. He had letters from Emerson and Hawthorne before he wrote his papers on those two authors, to enable him to verify certain details. The relations of Curtis and Hawthorne were cordial if not intimate. In a letter to Haw- thorne, written from Europe, Curtis said: "Docs Mrs. Hawthorne yet remember that she sent me a golden key to the studio of Crawford, in Rome ? I shall never forget that, nor any smallest token of her frequent courtesy in the Concord days." In another letter to Hawthorne he speaks of Concord as " our old home, which is very placid and beautiful in my memory." In his paper on Hawthorne, in the " Homes of American Au- thors," Curtis gave an interesting account of his acquaintance with that reticent genius during these Concord days : " There glimmer in my memory a few hazy days, of a tranquil and half- pensive character, which I am conscious were passed in and around the house, and their pensiveness I know to be only that touch of twilight which inhered in the house and all its associations. Beside the few chance visitors there were city friends occasion- ally, figures quite unknown to the village, who came preceded by the steam shriek of the loco- 83 EARLY LIFE AT motive, were dropped at the gate-posts, and were seen no more. The owner was as much a vague name to me as any one. " During Hawthorne's first year's residence in Concord, I had driven up with some friends to an jesthetic tea at Mr. Emerson's. It was in the winter, and a great wood fire blazed upon the hospitable hearth. There were various men and women of note assembled, and I, who listened attentively to all the fine things that were said, was for some time scarcely aware of a man who sat upon the edge of the circle, a little with- drawn, his head slightly thrown forward upon his breast, and his bright eyes clearly burning under his black brow. As I drifted down the stream of talk, this person, who sat silent as a shadow, looked to me as Webster might have looked had he been a poet — a kind of poetic Webster. He rose and walked to the window, and stood quietly there for a long time, watch- ing the dead, white landscape. No appeal was made to him, nobody looked after him, the con- versation flowed steadily on, as if every one understood that his silence was to be respected. It was the same at table. In vain the silent man imbibed esthetic tea. Whatever fancies it inspired did not flower at his lips. But there was a light in his eye which assured me that nothing was lost. So supreme was his silence that it presently engrossed me to the exclusion 84 BROOK FARM AND CONCORD of everything else. There was ver>' brilliant dis- course, but this silence was much more poetic and fascinating. Fine things were said by the philosophers, but much finer things were implied by the dumbness of this gentleman with hea\'y brows and black hair. When he presently rose and went, Emerson,with the ' slow, wise smile ' that breaks over his face like day over the sky, said, ' Hawthorne rides well his horse of the night.' "Thus he remained in my memorj', a shadow, a phantom, until more than a year afterwards. Then I came to live in Concord. Ever>' day I passed his house, but when the villagers, think- ing that perhaps I had some clew to the mys- tery, said, • Do you know this Mr. Hawthorne?' I said, ' No," and trusted to time. "Time justified my confidence, and one day I too went down the avenue and disappeared in the house. I mounted those mysterious stairs to that apocrj-phal study. I saw ' the cheerful coat of paint, and golden-tinted paper-hangings, lighting up the small apartment ; while the shad- ow of a willow-tree, that swept against the over- hanging eaves, attempered the cheery western sunshine.' I looked from the little northern window whence the old pastor watched the battle, and in the small dining-room beneath it, upon the first floor, there were " • Dainty chicken, snowr-whitc bread," 85 EARLY LIFE AT and the golden juices of Italian vineyards, which still feast insatiable memory. " Our author occupied the Old Manse for three years. \During that time he was not seen, prob- ably, by more than a dozen of the villagers. His walks could easily avoid the town, and upon the river he was always sure of solitude. It was his favorite habit to bathe every evening in the riv- er, after nightfall, and in that part of it over which the old bridge stood, at which the battle was fought. Sometimes, but rarely, his boat ac- companied another up the stream, and I recall the silence and preternatural vigor with which, on one occasion, he wielded his paddle to coun- teract the bad rowing of a friend who conscien- tiously considered it his duty to do something and not let Hawthorne work alone, but who, with every stroke, neutralized all Hawthorne's efforts. I suppose he would have struggled un- til he fell senseless, rather than ask his friend to desist. His principle seemed to be, if a man can- not understand without talking to him, it is use- less to talk, because it is immaterial whether such a man understands or not. His own sympathy was so broad and sure that, although nothing had been said for hours, his companion knew that nothing had escaped his eye, nor had a single pulse of beauty in the day or scene or society failed to thrill his heart. In this way his silence was most social. Everything seemed to have 86 BROOK FARM AND CONCORD been said. It was a Barmecide feast of discourse from which a greater satisfaction resulted than from an actual banquet. " When a formal attempt was made to desert this style of conversation, the result was ludi- crous. Once Emerson and Thoreau arrived to pay a call. They were shown into the little par- lor upon the avenue, and Hawthorne presently entered. Each of the guests sat upright in his chair like a Roman senator. ' To them,' Haw- thorne, like a Dacian King. The call went on, but in a most melancholy manner. The host sat perfectly still, or occasionally propounded a ques- tion which Thoreau answered accurately, and there the thread broke short ofT. Emerson de- livered sentences that only needed the setting of an essay to charm the world ; but the whole visit was a vague ghost of the Monday Evening Club at Mr. Emerson's — it was a great failure. Had they all been lying idly on the river brink or strolling in Thoreau's blackberry pastures, the result would have been utterly different. But imprisoned in the proprieties of a parlor, each a wild man in his way, with a necessity of talking inherent in the nature of the occasion, there was onlya waste of treasure. This was the only 'call' in which I ever knew Hawthorne to be involved. '• In Mr. Emerson's house I said it seemed al- ways morning. But Hawthorne's black-ash trees and scraggy apple boughs shaded 87 EARLY LIFE AT " ' A land in which it seemed always afternoon.' I do not doubt that the lotus grew along the grassy marge of the Concord behind his house, and that it was served, subtly concealed, to all his guests. The house, its inmates, and its life lay dream-hke upon the edge of the little village. You fancy that they all came together and be- longed together, and were glad that at length some idol of your imagination, some poet whose spell had held you, and would hold you forever, was housed as such a poet should be. " During the lapse of the three years since the bridal tour of twenty miles ended at the ' two tall gate-posts of roughhewn stone,' a little wicker wagon had appeared at intervals upon the avenue, and a placid babe, whose eyes the soft Concord day had touched with the blue of its beauty, lay looking tranquilly up at the grave old trees, which sighed lofty lullabies over her sleep. The tranquillity of the golden-haired Una was the living and breathing type of the dreamy life of the Old Manse. Perhaps, that being attained, it was as well to go. Perhaps our author was not surprised or displeased when the hints came, ' growing more and more distinct, that the owner of the old house was pining for his native air.' One afternoon I entered the study and learned from its occupant that the last story he should ever write there was written." RROOK FARM AND CONCORD In the midniglit chapter of his " Bhthcdalc Romance," Hawthorne described an incident wliicli actually took place in Concord. A young girl drowned herself, and her body was found as there set forth. Hawthorne wrote a full account of the drowning in his journal, which is printed by Julian Hawthorne in his biography of " Na- thaniel Hawthorne and His Wife." No men- tion is made of Curtis, who took part in the search, and who gave his own account of the affair in his paper on Hawthorne. When Thoreau went to New York, in 1843, '^^ put his boat into the keeping of Curtis, and he and Channing made their excursions on the river in it. In it they searched for Mary Hunt, who lived near Chan- ning. Curtis's account of this affair deserves to be placed by the side of Hawthorne's: " Martha was the daughter of a plain Concord farmer, a girl of delicate and shy temperament, who excelled so much in study that she was sent to a fine academy in a neighboring town, and won all the honors of the course. She met at the school and in the society of the place a refine- ment and cultivation, a social gayety and grace, which were entirely unknown in the hard life she had led at home, and which by their very novel- ty, as well as because they harmonized with her own nature and dreams, were doubly beautiful and fascinating. She enjoyed this life to the full, while her timidity kept her only a spectator ; and EARLY LIFE AT she ornamented it with a fresher grace, sugges- tive of the woods and fields, when she ventured to engage in the airy game. It was a sphere for her capacities and talents. She shone in it, and the consciousness of a true position and genial appreciation gave her the full use of all her pow- ers. She admired and was admired. She was surrounded by gratifications of taste, by the stim- ulants and rewards of ambition. The world was happy, and she was worthy to live in it. But at times a cloud suddenly dashed athwart the sun — a shadow stole, dark and chill, to the very edge of the charmed circle in which she stood. She knew well what it was, and what it foretold, but she would not pause nor heed. The sun shone again, the future smiled ; youth, beauty, and all hopes and thoughts bathed the moment in lam- bent light. " But school-days ended at last, and with the re- ceding town in which they had been passed, the bright days of life disappeared, and forever. It was probable that the girl's fancy had been fed, perhaps indiscreetly pampered, by her experience there. But it was no fairy - land. It was an academy town in New England, and the fact that it was so alluring is a fair indication of the kind of life from which she had emerged, and to which she now returned. What could she do ? In the dreary round of petty details, in the in- cessant drudgery of a poor farmer's household, BROOK FARM AND CONCORD with no companions or any sympath)- — for the family of a hard-working New -England farmer are not the Chloes and Clarissas of pastoral poetry, nor the cowboys Corydons — with no opportunity of retirement and cultivation, for reading and studying — which is always voted ' stuff' under such circumstances — the light sud- denly quenches out of life, what was she to do? " The simple answer is that she had only used all her opportunities, and that, although it was no fault of hers that the routine of her life was in every way repulsive, she did struggle to accom- modate herself to it, and failed. When she found it impossible to drag on at home, she be- came an inmate of a refined and cultivated household in the village, where she had oppor- tunity to follow her own fancies and to associate w itii educated and attractive persons. But even here she could not escape the feeling that it was all temporary, that her position was one of de- pendence ; and her pride, now grown morbid, often drove her from the very society which alone was agreeable to her. This was all gen- uine. There was not the slightest strain of the fcmme incotnprisc in her demeanor. She was al- ways shy and silent, with a touching reserve which won interest and confidence, but left also a vague sadness in the mind of the observer. After a few months she made another effort to rend the cloud which was gradually darkening 9' EARLY LIFE AT around her, and opened a school for young chil- dren. But although the interest of friends se- cured her a partial success, her gravity and sad- ness failed to excite the sympathy of her pupils, who missed in her the playful gayety always most winning to children. Martha, however, pushed bravely on, a figure of tragic sobriety to all who watched her course. The farmers thought her a strange girl, and wondered at the ways of the farmer's daughter who was not content to milk cows and churn butter and fry pork, with- out further hope or thought. The good clergy- man of the town, interested in her situation, sought a confidence she did not care to bestow, and so, doling out a, b, c to a wild group of boys and girls, she found that she could not untie the Gordian knot of her life, and felt with terror that it must be cut. " One summer evening she left her father's house and walked into the fields alone. Night came, but Martha did not return. The family became anxious, inquired if any one had noticed the direction in which she went, learned from the neighbors that she was not visiting, that there was no lecture nor meeting to detain her, and wonder passed into apprehension. Neigh- bors went into the adjacent woods and called, but received no answer. Every instant the aw- ful shadow of some dread event solemnized the gathering groups. Every one thought what no 92 BROOK FARM AN'D CONCORD one dared whisper, until a low voice suggested the river. Then with the swiftness of certainty all friends far and near were roused, and thronged along the banks of the stream. Torches flashed in the boats that put off in the terrible search. Hawthorne, then living in the Old Manse, was summoned, and the man whom the villagers had only seen at morning as a musing spectre in his garden, now appeared among them at night, to devote his strong arm and steady heart to their service. The boats drifted slowly down the stream, the torches flashed strangely upon the black repose of the waters, and upon the long slim grasses that weeping fringed the marge. Upon both banks silent and awe-stricken crowds hastened along, eager and dreading to find the slightest trace of what they sought. Suddenly they came to a few articles of dress, heavy with the night dew. No one spoke, for no one had doubted the result. It was clear that Martha had strayed to the river, and quietly asked of its stillness the repose she sought. The boats gath- ered around the spot. With every implement that could be of service the melancholy search began. Long intervals of fearful silence ensued, but at length, towards midnight, the sweet face of the dead girl was raised more placidly to the stars than ever it had been to the sun. " So ended a village tragedy. The reader may possibly find in it the original of the thrilling 93 EARLY LIFE AT conclusion of the ' Blithedale Romance,' and learn anew that dark as is the thread with which Hawthorne weaves his spells, it is no darker than those with which tragedies are spun, even in regions apparently so torpid as Concord." Far too much has been made of the realistic elements in the " Blithedale Romance." Haw- thorne says in his preface that " he has occasion- ally availed himself of his actual reminiscences;" but it cannot be claimed that he did anything more. The fact seems to be that he used such reminiscences and incidents merely as stimuli to his imagination, that the real romance of the story was purely of his own creation. So far as he used the facts of his life at Brook Farm it was to give an air of reality to his story ; and in no other sense can it be accepted as truthful to Brook Farm life. For instance, his Zenobia was in every sense an original creation, and not a description of any person he had known. Three persons he knew at Brook Farm gave him hints, traits of character, and points of departure for the activity of his imagination. The stately ele- ments in Zenobia resembled those of Mrs. George Ripley, her luxurious tastes were like those of Mrs. Almira Barlow, while her genius and brilliancy had a few similarities to Margaret Fuller. His habit seems to have been to take a single incident in the life of a person, and to make that the chief one in a character. In this 94 BROOK I'ARM AND CONCORD way his romances gained a realistic phase of a very impressive kind ; but the character of a person as a whole he never copied. It is a strange comment on his powerful writing that so much should have been made of his super- ficial realism, while the persistent and profound romanticism of his work is too often overlooked. Yet this was one of the weird results of his genius, that his imagination weaves for itself a world more real than life itself, and that claims for itself an acceptance as truer to facts tlian the word of the historian. In his paper on Emerson, Curtis gives further account of his life in Concord. He said that " Thoreau lives in the berry -pastures upon a bank over Waldcn Pond, and in a little house of his own building. One pleasant summer after- noon a small party of us helped him raise it — a bit of life as Arcadian as any at Brook Farm. Elsewhere ir> the village he turns up arrow-heads abundantly, and Hawthorne mentions that Tho- reau initiated him into the mystery of finding them." His account of the club which gath- ered for a few evenings in Emerson's study de- serves to be placed here in order to complete his story of Concord experiences, the fictitious names used by him being changed to the real ones : " It was in the year 1S45 that a circle of per- sons of various ages, and differing very much in 9S EARLY LIFE AT everj-thing but sympathy, found themselves in Concord. Towards the end of the autumn, Mr. Emerson suggested that they should meet every Monday evening through the winter in his library-. ' Monsieur Aubepine,' ' Miles Coverdale,' and other phantoms, since known as Nathaniel Haw- thorne, who then occupied the Old Manse ; the inflexible Henr>' Thoreau, a scholastic and pas- toral Orson, then living among the blackberry pastures of Walden Pond ; Plato Skimpole [Margaret Fuller's name for Alcott], then sub- limely meditating impossible summer-houses in a little house on the Boston Road ; the enthu- siastic agriculturist and Brook Farmer [George Bradford], then an inmate of Mr. Emerson's house, who added the genial cultivation of a scholar to the amenities of the natural gentle- man ; a sturdy farmer-neighbor [Edmund Hos- mer], who had bravely fought his weary way through inherited embarrassment -to the small success of a New England husbandman ; two city youths [George and Burrill Curtis], ready for the fragments from the feast of wit and wisdom ; and the host himself, composed the club. EUery Channing, who had that winter harnessed his Pe- gasus to the New York Tribune, was a kind of cor- responding member. The news of this world was to be transmitted through his eminently prac- tical genius, as the club deemed itself competent to take charge of tidings from all other spheres. 96 BROOK FARM AND CONCORD '• I went the first evening very much as Ixion may have gone to his banquet. Tlie philoso- phers sat dignified and erect. There was a con- strained but very amiable silence, which had the impertinence of a tacit inquiry, seeming to ask, ' Who will now proceed to say the finest thing that has ever been said?" It was quite invol- untary and unavoidable, for the members lacked that fluent social genius without which a club is impossible. It was a congress of oracles on the one hand, and of curious listeners upon the other. I vaguely remember that the Orphic Al- cott invaded the Sahara of silence with a sol- emn ' Saying,' to which, after duo pause, the honorable member for Blackberry Pastures re- sponded by some keen and graphic observations, while the Olympian host, anxious that so much material should be spun into something, beamed smiling encouragement upon all parties. But the conversation became more and more stac- cato. Hawthorne, a statue of night and silence, sat a little removed, under a portrait of Dante, gazing imperturbably upon the group; and as he sat in the shadow, his dark hair and ejes and suit of sables made him, in that society, the black thread of mystery which he weaves into his stories ; while the shifting presence of the Brook Farmer played like heat lightning around the room. " I remember little else but a grave eating of G 97 EARLY LIFE AT russet apples by the erect philosophers, and a solemn disappearance into night. The club struggled through three Monday evenings. Al- cott was perpetually putting apples of gold in pictures of silver ; for such was the rich ore of his thoughts coined by the deep melody of his voice. Thoreau charmed us with the secrets won from his interviews with Pan in the Waldcn woods ; while Emerson, with the zeal of an en- gineer trying to dam wild waters, sought to bind the wide-flying embroidery of discourse into a whole of clear, sweet sense. But still in vain. The oracular sayings were the unalloyed saccharine element ; and every chemist knows how much else goes to practical food — how much coarse, rough, woody fibre is essential. The club strug- gled on valiantly, discoursing celestially, eating apples, and disappearing in the dark, until the third evening it vanished altogether. But I have since known clubs of fifty times the num- ber, whose collected genius was not more than that of either of the Dii Majores of our Concord coterie. The fault was its too great concentra- tion. It was not relaxation, as a club should be, but tension. Society is a play, a game, a tour- nament ; not a battle. It is the easy grace of un- dress ; not an intellectual, full-dress parade." BROOK FARM AND CONCORD As will have been seen, Curtis never lost his interest in Brook Farm or his faith in the prin- ciples on which it was founded. In his letters to Dwight he clearly pointed out its defects, and he indicated in an emphatic manner that he could not accept some of its methods. He showed that he was an individualist rather than an associationist or socialist, that his supreme faith was in individual effort, and in each person making himself right before he undertook to re- form society. His "Easy Chair" essays make it clear that he saw with keen vision the limita- tions of Brook Farm ; but it had for him a dis- tinct charm, and one that increased rather than grew less as the years went on. The Brook Farm effort to right the wrongs of society, to give all persons an opportunity in life, and to bring the help of all to the aid of each one, he heartily accepted in its spirit and intent ; and to that faith he ever held with unswerving confi- dence. Not less did the Concord episode remain with Curtis as a bright spot in his life. He gladly went to Concord whenever the opportunity of- fered ; he frequently lectured there, and was al- ways heard with delight ; and he gave the Cen- tennial Address, April 19, 1875, on the occasion 99 EARLY LIFE AT of the one hundredth anniversary of the battle at the old north bridge. It was a part of the Brook Farm and Concord life which Curtis continued in his intimacy with Dwight. So great was the confidence of this friendship that he wrote to Dwight as soon as his marriage had been arranged, telling him of his happiness, and telling him that the promised bride was the daughter of their old Brook Farm friends, the Francis George Shaws. " Do you remember her in Brook Farm days ?" he asked. " There was never anything that made parents and children happier." In closing his letter he wrote: "When do you come to New York? I so want you to see her and know her ; then of course you will love her. Give my love to your wife — think that love is not for this world, but forever! — -and remember your friend who re- members you." In his reply, Dwight said : " You are right, George ; link your destinies ■with jout/i. I scarcely believe in anything else — except Spring and Morning. But then, there is a way of making these — the soul of them — perpetual ; and you have the secret of it, I am sure, better than most of us. "To think of that child, who used to play about Brook Farm, and go through finger drudg- ery under my piano-professorship (Heaven save the mark !), the child of our young friends, Mr. and Mrs. F. S. (how can you think of them as BROOK FARM AND CONCOR-D parents?) being the future Mrs. Ho^vadji ! fr-l a dull drudge of an editor ! I do wish indeed to see and know her, and doubt not I shall find your glowing statements all confirmed, and that in your height of joy you need not be ashamed to ' blush it east and blush it west.' There is a certain ' Maud '-like ecstasy in your note that makes me think of that. "A small bird had already sung the news in my ear. But it was doubly pleasant to have it straight from you. It was good in you to re- member me so. . . . Would that I might sec you in New York! but I must content myself with the not very remote prospect of having you by the hand here. Till then, believe me happy in your happiness, and faithfully as ever your friend." Francis George Shaw, and his wife Sarah 13. Shaw, were not members of the Brook Farm community; but they lived in the immediate vi- cinity, often visited the farm, joined in its enter- tainments, and were intimate friends of the lead- ers of the association. He was a contributor to the Harbinger, for which he wrote a number of articles in favor of the associationist social movement. He made an admirable translation of George Sand's "Consuelo" for the paper, in which that novel was for the first time printed in this country. Their children were frequently at the farm, and grew up in the midst of such '.,•:■,.•': :rE A RLY LIFE AT •irfsa^ in4 influences as it fostered. One of them was that Colonel Robert G. Shaw who was " buried with his niggers " at Fort Wagner, after having led one of the most gallant military movements of modern times. Three of the daughters married, Curtis, General Barlow, and General Charles Russell Lowell. Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell has made for herself a lasting name by her philanthropies, and her generous interest in all good causes. Mrs. Shaw wrote the bi- ography of her son Robert, which was published in the work devoted to the Harvard graduates who fell in the Civil War. The real effect of Brook Farm, and that move- ment of which it was a part, can be rightly understood only when there is taken into con- sideration what they did for such persons as Shaw, Curtis, Barlow, Lowell, and Mrs. Lowell. These persons were trained by Brook Farm and Transcendentalism ; and their aspirations, philan- thropies, chivalrous spirit, and romantic courage were fostered and developed by them. The tone and quality of Shaw's courage, and of his heroic effort for the colored men, found in Brook Farm their motive and incentive ; and in Brook Farm because it represented a phase of life much larger than itself, one that fosters the noblest faith in men and in the spiritual future of humanity. Of Barlow and Lowell it may be also said that their heroism and their patriotism BROOK FARM AND CONCORD were the legitimate products of that movement whose hope and faith were the inspiration of their youth. To this source was due Barlow's love of justice, his unflinching courage in oppos- ing self -seekers and partisan patriots, and his trust in the ultimate worth of what is right and true. The letters printed in this volume have a large interest as indications of how George William Curtis was making ready for his life-work. His independence, his love of humanity, his courage in maintaining his own convictions, his cliivalrous and romantic spirit, his literary skill and charm, his profound spiritual convictions, that would not be limited by any sectarian bounds, all find ex- pression here in such form as to give sure promise for his future. It was a somewhat erratic kind of training which Curtis received ; but for him it was better than any college of his day could have given him. Admirably fitted to his tastes, it was no less well adapted to his needs. It fos- tered in him all that was best in his character, and it served to bring out his genius to its rounded expression. The two years which Curtis spent in Concord must have been of the greatest value to him. His contact with Emerson was of itself of inesti- mable worth, for it gave him that enthusiasm for ideas, that contact with a noble life lived for the highest ends of spiritual development, «o3 EARLY LIFE AT BROOK FARM which fostered in him the enthusiasms which were so genuine a part of his life. Without Brook Farm, Transcendentalism, and Emerson, it is quite safe to say that the life of Curtis would have been less worthy of our admiration. The stay in Concord was a time of seed-planting, and the harvest came in all that the man was in later years. Without the enthusiasms then cher- ished the independent in politics would have been less courageous. And these letters may suggest anew one of the most important lessons of education, that without enthusiasms no man can do any great or noble work in the world. What will give to youth visions, ideals, and en- thusiasms is worth all other parts of culture, for out of these grow the noblest results of human willing, thinking, and doing. EARLY LETTERS TO JOHN S. DVVIGHT EARLY LETTERS TO JOHN S. DWIGHT Providence, August i8, 1843. Are you quite recovered from those divine enchantments which held us bound so long? Memory preserves for me those silvery sounds, and almost I seem to catch their echo. Have we indeed heard the Siren song — arc wc un- scathed ? Let me be your Father John, and to these reverend years commit the tale of youth- ful fervor. So good a Catholic as I, of course, has long ago made confession. But another yet remains for me — namely, that I cannot get that song. Yesterday I heard from Isaac, who can- not buy it in New York. Nothing but a copy for the guitar and that Rosalie. Would it be an e.xpcnsive thing to import? Reed told me he could do that, but as I supposed there was no doubt of its being in New York, I said nothing about it. She should have the song ; it would be so fine falling out of her mouth. Mouth-dropped EARLY LETTERS TO gems would be no longer a fable. As, indeed, we have seen already. For what so universal an Interpreter as music? That art has the gift of tongues {cccc, the Singing-School). Burrill met with a mishap on Wednesday. We were walking out of town, and he, springing from a wall, turned his ankle and sprained it. He is therefore laid up for some days. It is a disappointment to him, for he hoped to leave on Monday next, and meanwhile see several per- sons. I doubt if he can step on his foot so soon. I had yesterday a German letter from Isaac ; German in spirit, not in language. He has cer- tainly a great heart, more delicate in his charac- ter than I thought, with a constant force, ner- vous, not muscular strength. Will you accept so city -like a letter? I am busy or I should write more ; another time will sufifice. Let me accept from you a country-like letter. Yours in the bonds, G. W. C. Providence, September i, 1S43. My dear Friend, — Your letter did not reach my hands until last evening, when I re- turned from Newport, where I have passed the last eight days, how pleasantly I need not tell JOHN S. DWIGHT you. After the quiet beauty of our farm home, there was a striking grandeur in the sea that I never beheld so plainly before. There is some- thing sublimely cheerful about the ocean, altho' it is so stored with woe, and so constantly sugges- tive it is of that ocean, life, whereon we all float. It was pleasant to me that Nature confirmed my judgment of Tennyson. The little poem that closes one of the volumes, " Break, break, break," etc., is so exquisitely human and tender, with all its vague and dim beauty, that the waves dashed to its music, and silently the whole sea sung the song. Just so the jottings down of poets, the few words that must be said, tho' the Nature which they sing is so limitless, and ine-vpressible arc the blossoms of poetry and all literature. Will not the little song of Shakespeare's, "Take, oh ! take those lips away," be as immortal as Hamlet ? Not because chance may print them together, but because it is as universal and more delicate an expression. That charm pervades our favorite, Tennyson. There is no rough- marked outline, all fades away upon earnest con- templation into the tones of his songs, into the colors of the sky. So in the landscape, tint fades gently into tint, and the beauty that attracts spreads from leaf to hill, from hill to horizon, till the whole is bathed in sunlight. Is not this fact also recognized in other arts? In painting, the great picture is without marked outline ; ■"9 EARLY LETTERS TO in music, the truest and deepest is undefined. Beethoven is greater than Haydn. The preci- sion which offends in manner is as disagreeable everywhere else. Is it not because when named as Precision, the depth which necessarily means a graceful form is absent? As when we say a woman has beautiful eyes we indirectly ac- knowledge her want of universal beauty. Cer- tainly a man of elegant manners is admired not for himself, but what he represents. Indeed, all society is only thus endurable. Nature, and to me particularly the ocean, makes no such par- tial impression ; and therefore the poet who sits nearest to the great heart sings rather the sense of vague beauty and aspiration, of tender re- membrance and gentle hope, than a bald descrip- tion of the sight. The ocean is not fathomless water nor the woods green trees to him, but a presence, and a key that unlocks the chambers of his soul where the diamonds are. Therefore, when I have been into nearer conversation with Nature I have little to say, but my life is deep- ened. The poet is he who with deepened life chants also a flowing hymn which utters the music of that life. You will understand why the little poem seems to me so fine, therefore. This water I also see ; but not in me lies the power of the due expression of its influence. There was another pleasant aspect in New- port, of persons. I walked one evening towards no JOHN S. D WIGHT the town (for I was boarding in tlie outskirts), and passed an encampment of soldiers, who in their gay uniforms glittered among the lighted tents like soldier fays. The band in the shadow of the camp was playing very sweetly airs proper for that fading light, half-mournful, half-tender and hopeful. I passed by the houses brilliantly lighted and filled with finely dressed people, who also thronged the streets. Before one of the principal hotels was a band from the fort sere- nading, and surrounded with a crowd of easy lis- teners. The ice-cream resort was filled, the cot- tages shone among the trees, and an air of entire abandonment to joy filled the place. Old men and young men, women and girls, seemed to have laid aside all business, all care, and to be only gay. It was a vision of the Lotos islands, an earthly portrait of that meek repose which haunts us ideally sometimes. I was surprised upon my return to find Ikir- rill still here. He is able only to crutch about the house, but will probably return to Brook Farm with me during the latter part of next week, which is the commencement week here . . . I should have been glad to have seen the gay picnic, and to have heard the O. ; let mc hope she will not be gone when I return. I am exceedingly obliged for your kind suggestion of "Adelaide," and if you choose to present it as a joint gift, you confer a great pleasure upon me. EARLY LETTERS TO Commend me particularly to Almira; to the young men whom you will, including mainly Charles D. and James S. ; to Mr. and Mrs. R. ; and if you will write me again you will be sure that your proxy will be welcome to Your friend, G. W. Curtis. Will you say to Miss Russell that I shall see my aunt this afternoon, and will perform her commission. Moreover, that I am gratified at so distinguished a mark of her approbation as the permission to escort a plant to her garden. G. W. C. New York, Saturday eve'g, November 1 1, 1843. Your letter has just reached me, my dear friend, loaded with much that was not in it, and which needed only a person or a letter from a region so delightful to bear it to me. Already my life at the Farm is removed and transfigured. It stands for so much in my experience, and is so fairly rounded, that I know the experience could never return, tho' the residence might be renewed. When we mend the broken chain, we see ever after the point of union. To-night the wind sighs thro' the chimney, complaining and wailing and melting away in a JOHN .s. D\vu;irr depth of sadness, as if it would pacify its own sorrow, and found newer grief in that need. The clouds break and roll away in the sky, and the wan moon sails up as if to a weary duty. Yet so calm it is, so pure, that it chides weariness and preaches a deep, still hope. In the city I seem not to breathe quite freely yet, but daily I gain ground and air. It is so different, even more than I tho't ; so new, tho' I had seen it for years ; so full, tho' I walk miles without speaking or seeing a face seen before. I must constantly say to myself, " Be quiet, be quiet. This huge enigma will gradually explain itself, and out of these conventions and courtesies you shall see the same tender Nature looking that so enchanted your country life." Mere is Burrill, and we are of more worth to each other than ever before. Sometimes I fear to think how much. He was as glad to see me as the old Christians a prophet, for I know him best of all. The aspect of things here impresses me main- ly with the absolute necessity and duty of mak- ing our place good. The stern, stirring activity around mc compels mc to give account to my- self of my silence and repose. The answer is al- ways clear and steady. I have not heard the voice. Yet my mind begins to shape some out- line of life. Of this I am assured, that in this world of work, where the hum of business makes H 113 EARLY LETTERS TO music with the stars, I must work too. And how I must work, by what handle I shall grasp the world and justify my consumption of its food, that begins to appear. My Genius is not decided enough to lead me unquestioning in any one direction, and my taste is so equally culti- vated and developed that choice seems some- what arbitrary. Yet it is not so. Above all, I regret no culture, tho' it may have thus multi- plied the roads to be chosen. It is a tinge and charm to whatever is performed. A gentleman in never so ragged clothes is a gentleman still. You may be sure nothing has charmed me more than my meeting with Isaac in his mealy clothes and brown-paper cap. His manner had a grand dignity, because he was universally related by his diligent labor, and my conversation with him was as earnest and happy as any intercourse I have had with him. This general activity does not reprove me, for my si- lence respects itself and gives good reasons why judgment should not proceed. And therefore it views more lovingly what surrounds it. The God stirs within, and presently will say some- thing. Let us plant ourselves there and be lawyers that we may so dispense justice, not that we may get bread ; and priests, because the Divine will speaks thro' us ; and mer- chants and doctors and shoemakers and bakers, from the same reason. If we honestly serve 114 JOHN S. DWIGHT in any siicli profession, broad will come of course. Your letter has quickened my thought upon these things, quite active before. My impulse is to say at once, go. The worst and all you can dread is the foul breath that will befog your fair name, because E. W. has done what he has, because you were a minister and arc a Tran- scendentalist and a seceder from the holy office, and a dweller at that place, unknown to perfumed respectability and condemned of prejudice and error. This is the first great reason, and the second is not unlike unto it. It is that you retard your preparation for any permanent pursuit, as a centre of your sensuous life, by passing two or three years in Europe. With respect to the first reason, not your own feelings, but those of your friends, demand some consideration. In Heav- en's court will their sorrow at your departure and intimacy with E. W. at this time outweigh your own happiness at the trip, and because so you lend your own good character to one per- haps unjustly condemned. Such a sudden de- parture and intimacy with him might have an indirect influence upon your future attempts to base yourself in some way. If your mind is de- termining itself towards no pursuit, and j-ou anticipate the same general employment that has filled the last year or two, I should say go. If God doesn't call here, he may in Europe; ««5 EARLY LETTERS TO and if not for years, your voyage cannot inter- fere with him. There are privater reasons, which you know, of his character and of your proba- bility of assimilation, and of your independence in intimacies. Perhaps you may Hnk little fin- gers, if you cannot clasp the whole hand. On the whole, I should say go, though not without due thought of friends, to whom your name and relation may be more than your friendship. You will soon let me know of your movements, will you not ? For a week or two, I am man of the house for my cousin, whose husband is in Boston. Burrill fulfils the same duty for an aunt. It is a great separation, though only a step separates us when I am at home ; but the fine social sympathy of actual contact, in the early morn- ing and late night, the kind deeds that link the minutes and adorn the hours, the tender sweets of the dignity of friendship without its form — these are buds that bloom only ii. the warmth of hands perpetually united. To-night Charles Dana and Isaac and Burrill came to see me. I smelled summer leaves and heard summer flutes as I stood with them and talked. Charles was never so important to me ; he was himself and all Brook Farm beside. We are all going to hear William Henrj' Channing in the morning. Last Sunday at the church door I met C. P. Cranch and his wife. I mean to go ii6 JOHN S. D WIGHT and sec tlicm very soon, tliough they live slrccts away. Of Isaac I liavc seen mucli for a week's space. He lives two miles or more from us. I have heard no music yet. Max Bohrer concerts on Monday with Timm, Mrs. Sutton, Antogigni, and Schafenberg ; I mean to go. The Philharmonic concerts begin a week from this evening. They have four concerts, and the subscription is Sio, for which one obtains three tickets to each concert, and the privilege of buy- ing two occasional tickets at $i 50 each. A singular arrangement. They are to play the 8th Symphony next Saturday. I know not what else. Give Almira a great deal of love from me. I shall sing a song to her solitude and patiently await the response. I have begun to read "Wil- helm Meister " in German. I read about three or four hours a day, then an hour or two in Latin, and the rest to poetical reading — Beaumont and Fletcher, Ford, Massinger, Shakespeare, and the Bible, at present. In Worcester I found Mon- taigne, whom I devoured. What cheerful good sense ! I have begun also to learn two or three of B.'s waltzes from note. " La Dobur " I have almost accomplished. Possibly I shall thus pick up some note knowledge, though I do not build any castles. Good-night. Could I but send my- self in my letter! Your friend, G. W. C. "7 EARLY LETTERS TO Tuesday morning. I concluded to retain my letter for Charles, who leaves to-day. Charles and Isaac and Burrill and I all went to Max Bohrer's concert last evening. The hall was full, lOOO or 1500 people present. I was glad to go, for he introduced me to the Instrument, but no more. He has great skill, and has fully mas- tered it. That is what persevering talent can always do. Bohrer loved his instrument because he could display himself by its aid, not because it was through his genius a minister and revealer of the art to himself and others. His conceit is sublime. It was entire and unique. His post- ure and air were ridiculously Olympian. Mrs. Sutton is very fat and has a thin voice. There are some good tones in it, but she undertakes the most difficult music. Antignini sings pleas- antly but with great effort. All his songs were his own composition, and all Max Bohrer's his. In fact, it was not a musical festival so much as a gymnasium for musical instruments, both me- chanical and human. Timm and Scharfenberg both played admirably. I saw Fred'k Rake- mann in the crowd ; could not conveniently speak to him, and am going, as soon as I can find out where he lives, to see him. His face was so sad that I wanted to go to him and say some tenderer word than I should have said had I spo- ken. Yet after all he doesn't need tender words, but a calm, grateful demeanor towards him. iiS JOHN S. 1) WIGHT I wisl) that I could tell all the glories of my trip to Xcw York. 1 went from Worcester over the Western R. R. to Albany and down the riv- er. Some other day shall be consecrated to their fit celebration when the recollection may be pleasant and soothing among cares that disturb. Now I expect Charles every moment to go with me to see Cranch. Ask Charles for all news about our " externe." Remember me most tenderly to my many friends at Brook Farm. G. W. C. New York. November 20, "43. Certainly, my dear Friend, the concert of the Philharmonic Society on Saturday evening was the finest concert ever given in the country. It is pleasant to see the homage paid to the art indirectly by the whole style of the concert. The room is small, holding 1000 people. Every gentleman goes in full-dress, and the ladies in half-dress. Various members of the society are appointed managers, distinguished by a ribboned button-hole, and they provide seats for the au- dience. No bills arc issued before the night, so there are only rumors of what the particular will be, with a quiet consciousness that the gen- eral will be fine. So we arrived on Saturday 119 EARLY LETTERS TO evening and found the following bill : Symphony No. 7 in A minor (Beethoven) ; Cavatina from an opera of Nini's (Signora Castellan) ; Overture to " Zauberflote " (Mozart) ; Cavatina from Doni- zetti (Signora Castellan); Overture to "The Ju- bilee " (Weber). I think we have not had many such concerts. The symphony was interpreted upon the bills as a musical presentment of the mytholog- ical story of Orpheus and Eurydice. That did very well as a figure to represent it, but it was taken by the audience as a theme ; and they all fixed their eyes upon the explanation, thereby to judge the symphony. It v/as grand, and full of his genius. It was another of those earnest, hope- less questionings of Destiny. The very first bars were full of this. It opens with a crash of the whole orchestra, determined and inexorable. Then follows a low deep wailing of the flutes and horns, full of tenderness, of aspiration, of subdued hope; and another crash of the whole, like a lightning flash, instantaneous and scath- ing the world, sweeps across the plaintiveness of the wind instruments and as instantly is gone. The sad inquiry continues, the determined Thunder of Fate drowns it constantly, and it is lost. Then it becomes more imperious and ac- tive, and the call upon the Invisible and the Un- answerable sounds on every side, rises to the top of the flutes, sinks to the lowest bases, appears JOHN S. D WIGHT now among the violins, now vanishes to the rest, until it has disciplined the whole, and the whole orchestra together thunders out the call. Then comes the adagio, where, as always, the mystery seems to be developing itself, where the earnest- seeking solemnly consecrates itself to success; and the minuet and finale conclude— the soar- ing, mocking, hellish laughter of fiends and demons of the air, at baffled curiosity and blighted hope. Is not that what these sym- phonies express? The pith of the matter is never reached. The very movement of the adagio, while it expresses a deep, solemn hope, seems to mourn with unutterable sorrow that the hope must be only consecrated and profound, never realized. The climax of the music and the sentiment seems to be always in the adagio. What remained for such a man as he, sepa- rate from all others and alone with his life, but to question the Fate that impelled him, now in this tone and now in that ? What remained for such unsatisfied, joyless strength but the stern, wild laughter of fiends that the question could not be answered — and the deep wail of Fate, which also is sung in his music, that such strength should have the ruggcdness of endurance but not the gracefulness of Faith? How I wished you had been there ! Castellan's voice is full and rich; it was very sweet, and she sang with warmth but no pas- EARLY LETTERS TO sion. She needs some cultivation yet, for her shake is not good. Why did we not hear Mali- bran? who was also so great an actor that she would have been famous without a voice. I could not for a moment suffer my idea of her to be compared with Castellan. Malibran must have been so lovely from her sensibility and passion, so commanding from the majesty of her voice, that the art and not the woman must have found newer worshippers with every new audience. I hope to hear Cinto Damoreau this week. You have heard " The Magic Flute " overture, I think, so fairy -like and graceful, full of tender shadows and heart-rejoicing sunlight and aerial shapes that fade and glint like^ stars. And the magnificent "Jubilee" concluded with "God save the King." Evening. My aunt sent for me to hcarTimm play the " Pathetique." His playing is won- derfully graceful, his touch more delicate than either of the R.'s. But he lacks genius; and time and practice will give Fred. R. all that Timm has. He is very enthusiastic. I spoke to him of "Egmont;" he seemed delighted, said he hadn't heard it for 12 years, but instantly sat down and played portions of it. He promised to play the adagio of the " Pathetique " on the organ next Sunday. We had but a few moments, for his time is all devoted to teaching, or I should have JOHN S. I) WIGHT kept him till midnight. Mo is so simple and natural about the matter that it is very pleasant to be with him. H you mention anything to him, he instantly runs to the piano and plays something from it. Imagine him the other evening .standing up straddling the stool, a roll of music under each arm, gloves in hand, and playing a movement from one of the sympho- nies! I have been to see Cranch; found his wife at home, whom I have not seen since January. They arc pleasantly situated, though a good way off. He has a room in the house where lie paints. I saw two of his landscapes, views from nature, that were very striking. If I should find fault, I should say they were too warmly colored ; and I suspect that is his error, if he has any, from what his wife told me he said of one of Durand's. Mr. Furness preached finely for us on Sun- day. Mr. Dewey does not charm me at all. Have heard W. H. C. once, as Charles will have told you. Have not yet seen him, for I have been out to sec people hardly at all. Met Isaac at the Saturday concert. He looks fresh and well. Seems better every way than I ever knew him. Has he not found his place? I must sec him again to discern the direction of Almira, to whom I have a letter written partly, and know not how to address it. Arc you singing Eastward ho ! or do you re- '-3 EARLY LETTERS TO main ? Remember that he who criticises Han- del and Mozart, as the " Democratic " witnesseth, owes something to the art — shall I say his life ? What literary work are you about, or have you still the same reluctance to assume the pen that you had ? Let the consideration that the pen is so invaluable a minister to friendship tempt you to honor it more by use. I have squeezed myself into such little space that I must defer an outline of my days till I write again. One moral inquiry for your wits, and I will withdraw into silence and the infinite. Does not one friend who indites many letters, unanswered, to another, thereby heap coals of fire upon somebody's head as effectually as if he fed the hungry ? Scatter my love as broadly as you think it will bear, and reserve the carver's share for yourself. G. W. C. Saturday night, November 25. '43. Why do I love music enough to be only a lover, and cannot offer it a life-devoted service ? Yet the lover serves in his sort, and if I may not minister to it, it cannot fail to dignify and en- noble my life. I am just from hearing Ole Bull, who this evening made his first appearance in America. How shall I fitly speak to you of JOHN S . D W I G H T him, how can I now, while the new vision of beauty tliat he caused to sweep by still lingers? Yet itself shall inspire me. The presence of so noble a man allures to light whatever nobility lies in us. He came forward to a house crowded in ev- ery part with the calm simplicity of Genius. There was no grimace, no graces, but a fine grace that adorned his presence and assured one that nothing could disappoint — that the sim- plicity of the man was the seal and crown of his genius. A fair -haired, robust, finely formed man, the full bloom of health shining on his face, he appeared as the master of the great in- strument, as the successor, in point of time, of the world-famous Paganini. Yet was one confi- dent that here was no imitator, but a pupil who had sat thoughtfully at the master's feet and felt that beneath the depth of his e.xprcssion there was yet a lower depth, who knew himself conse- crated by a will grander than his will to the service of an art so divine and so loved. In him there was that sure prophecy of latent power which surrounds genius, and assures us that the thing done is an echo only and shadow of the possible performance. The playing followed this simple, majestic appearance. It was full of music, irregular, wild, yearning, trembling. His violin lay upon his arm tenderly as a living thing; and such rich, »25 EARLY LETTERS TO mellow, silver, shining tones followed his motion that one seemed to catch echoes of that eternal melody whereof music itself is but the shadow and presentment. The adagios reminded me of Beethoven, not as they were imitated, but as all the great ones, in their appearing, summon all the rest. The mechanical execution was faultless. I detected no thick note. It was smooth as the sea of summer, embosoming only deep cloud-shadows and the full sunlight, but no lesser thing. Then he came, and he withdrew ; and my heart followed him. Do not be alarmed if the critics call him cold, and speak of him disparagingly when others are mentioned. The noble and heroes serve di- vine powers, and at last win men. Men of tal- ent and application love their instrument as it introduces the world to them ; men of genius as it interprets to them and to the world the mys- tery of music. Genius men must reverence, and they are not apt to do it boisterously. Is not the influence of fine character, which is only genius for virtue, like the brooding of God over chaos? Which is chaos only to the blind, but teems with generous, melodious laws to the spir- itually discerned. Creation is the opening of eyes, not the fabrication of objects. " Let there be light " is the creative fiat, spoken by every God-filled soul. Yet how sure is this power of Genius. 126 JOHN S. D WIGHT The world henceforth gives to 01c Bull the full and generous satisfaction of his needs. It cannot fail to esteem God's messengers when they come, if they be true and collected. Tal- ent wins the same subsistence ; earnest, unfail- ing, unshrinking endeavor wins it anywhere ; but what does Talent and Trial do but imitate the action of the result of Genius! How sublime the revelations it makes in this art ! While the rest have risen and culminated and paused, this seeks a zenith ever loftier and diviner. That deep nature, that central beauty, which all art strives to reveal, floats to us in these fine har- monies, to me more subtly and surely than else- where. But in this region, where my thought bears me, they arc all united. This soft, silent face of Urania, which looks upon me sleeplessly and untired, is not its wonderful influence woven of that same essence that has ravished me to- night in the tones of the violin ? In the coolness of thought, do not the masters of song, of paint- ing, of sculpture meet in eternal congress, for in each is the appearance of equal skill? Raphael could have sung as Shakespeare, and Milton have hewn these massy forms as Angelo. Yet a di- vine economy rules these upper spiritual regions, as sure and steadfast as the order of the stars. Raphael must paint and Homer sing, yet the same soul gilds the picture and sweetens the song. So Venus and Mars shine yellow and 127 EARLY LETTERS TO red, but the same central fire is the light of each. In the capacity of doing all things well lies the willingness to serve one duty. The Jack of all trades is sure to be good at none, for who is good at all is Jack of one only. It seemed a bitter thing to me, formerly, that painters must only paint and sculptors carve ; but I see now the wisdom. In one thing well done lies the secret of doing all. Music, painting, are labels that designate the form of action ; the soul of it lies below. The earnest merchant and the earnest anti- trades- man do join hands and work together. Not ends are demanded of them, but vital strength and soul. The world does not need that I name my work, but that the work be accomplished. The midnight warns me to pause. The stillness accords with the intercourse of friend- ship, as the silence of space with the calm, speechless recognition of the planets. Thoughts of all friends circle round me like gentle breezes from the black wing of the night. Friends are equal and noble always to friends. Lovers only know the depths and the heights of lovers. Love prophesies only a surer, diviner friendship, crowned with the dignity and composure of God. I shall re-enter the world through the white gate of dreams, yet more quiet and resolved that I have heard this man, more tender, more toler- JOHN S. D WIGHT ant. He has touched strings of that harp whose vibrations never cease, but affirm the infinitc- ness of our being and its present habitation in Eternity. Your friend, G. W. C. Wednesday. Sunday P. M. I passed with Fred. Ralvcmann. He was very glad to sec me, and I him. His fine face h"ghted with enthusi- asm as we spoke of music, of Germany and its poets. He played magnificently, among others "Adelaide," translated for the piano by Liszt, a beautiful andante of Chopin, some of Henselt, etc., until it was quite twilight. Then I went away. He promised to come and see me, nor shall I fail to see him as often as I think he will endure, though his days are so busy with teach- ing that I do not hope to find him except on Sundays. To-night 01c Bull plays the second time. I shall go to hear him. The Frenchmen arc cliqued against him, for Vieuxtemps has arrived, and they mean to maintain his superiority. He has no announcement as yet. My letter I will not close until to-morrow, and say a final word about Ole Bull. Wednesday night. I have heard him again, and the impression he made on Saturday is only deepened. He played an adagio of Mo- zart's. It was simple and severely chaste. His beautiful simplicity is just the character to ap- I 129 EARLY LETTERS TO prehend the delicate touches of the Master, which he drew to us, without any ornament or addition. It was as if Mozart had been in spirit in the instrument, and given us, with all the freshness of creation, the music that can never lose its bloom. Scharfenberg was in the box with us, Fred. Rakemann in the next box. I saw Castellan in a private box, and Isaac H. The evening was glorious. Had you only been there! Yet you will see him in Boston. Do not fail to write me how he impresses you — that is, particularly. I cannot misapprehend his power so much as not to feel that it will seem to you very grand. Observe his manner towards the orchestra, how Olympian, how supreme, yet with all the gentle grace and tenderness of pow- er ! Good - night. May you ever hear sweet N. Y. Friday, Dec. 15, 1843. Truly the musical art culminates in our ze- nith this winter. It gives me other thoughts than of music only, unfolds to me something more of art, and I am charmed constantly to see how calmly we receive the great artists, after the noise of their entry, as the world quietly accepts the light of stars and swings unastonished on its 130 JOHN S. DWIGHT wonderful way. 01c Hull and the rest arc tiic scouts \vc have sent on before us, and they re- turn to tell us of the Wonderful Lanil, and bring mementos and captives from the rich Eldorado of our hopes. That country to which nature points, of which all art is the flaming beacon, and which the weary voyager home -returning from fruitless search tells us is in ourselves — not the less far away for that. Ole Hull's quiet, rai)t manner is the full re- membrance of that land which he has seen, and which he unfolds to us — is always the character and expression of the deepest insight. Just look at our bill for the week which ends to-night: Monday, Vieuxtcmps ; Tuesday, Artot and Da- moreau; Wednesday, Ole Bull, Miss Spcrty (the new pianist), and Madame Sphor Zahn ; Thurs- day, Castellan, Antoquin Brough and Sphor Zahn in the " Stabat Mater," followed by the " Battle of Waterloo Symphony," by Beethoven; Friday, Vieuxtemps again I Monday evening I could not hear Vieuxtcmps, but went on Tues- day to hear C. Damoreau and Artot. The for- mer, with the smallest voice, sings pleasantly from her wonderful cultivation, of which, however, the technicalities, so to say, are too much obtruded. She shakes through all her songs, and this power, which would render her plain singing so sure and pleasing, demands attention for itself, not because it improves the tone of the singing. '3« EARLY LETTERS TO Artot is an elegant artist. He plays very finely, wonderfully ; but the greater his execution the more marked appeared to me the difference be- tween the highest cultivated talent and the su- premacy of Genius. He played difficult music, he shook and warbled and imitated, some of his tones were very exquisite, but it was all lifeless, the passionless semblance of beauty. I was as if walking in a Gorgon's ice-palace, with magnif- icent, clear crystals, and noble, transparent pillars, and all the artifice of beauty and comfort, but evermore a deep chill from the lavish elegance. When he had done, I knew he had done his ut- most, that he had exhausted hope. In him I found none of that depthless background which genius ever offers. He made sing in my ears the old text, "The things seen are temporal ; the things unseen are eternal." His performance is a thing seen, not a dim beacon on the out- skirts of an unexplored countrj', wherein we hear birds singing and rivers flowing, and see the great cloud-shadows fall upon the hills, where in the dim distance stately palaces are faintly traced, and the depthless woods fringe unknown seas. Artot's playing seemed to me like the full flower exhausting the plant; Ole Bull's like a star shining out of the infinite space. Flowers wither, but the stars do not fade. We gather the blossoms with joy and hurry home: but the stars light us on our way and 132 JOHN S. D WIGHT make our homes beautiful. Talent has some- thing familiar and social in its impression and greeting ; but Genius receives us with a calm dig- nity that transfigures courtesy and complaisance, and makes our relations healthy and grand. The whole tone of Artot's violin differs from Bull's. I felt they must not be compared, and so listened delightedly, but with a pale, ghastly joy. When I heard Ole, I could not sleep. It was like a fire shining out of heaven, sudden and bright. It kindled within me flames which seek heaven, disturbed the surface of my soul, evok- ing spirits out of that depth I did not know were there, and it was as if a thousand hopes, which were the substance and object of memory, rose out of their graves and held long vigil with me in those silent hours. How few of us can keep our balance when a regal soul dashes by. I presently recover myself, and serve with a milder and firmer persistence my own nature. The way is made clearer by these bright lights, universal nature shines fairer that there arc so many single stars; but they must only be stars in my heaven and fires upon my hearth, nor burn out my heart by inserting themselves in my bosom. The next night I went to hear Ole Bull again at the Tabernacle, which holds 3000 persons. The doors were open at 6, the concert began at 8. At quarter-past 6 the house was full, and at 133 EARLY LETTERS TO 7 was jammed, and hundreds went away. I ar- rived too late, but was so satisfied at the tri- umph that I went gladly home again, pleased to be one who could not hear. Last evening I heard the " Stabat." Castellan has a magnificent voice. Does she not lack pas- sion? She certainly needs cultivation. The sym- phony was merely a musical picture of the bat- tle — a battle of Prague for the orchestra! It begins with a drum, a bugle -call follows; a march — and what march do you think ? " Mal- brook." Imagine me, a fervid worshipper of Beethoven, rushing in the crowd to hear a sym- phony wherein, with all orchestral force, the old song, L-a-w, Law, was banged into my ears. I sat in motionless dismay, while there followed another trumpeting and drumming and march- ing and imitations of musketr>- by some watch- man's rattle. Then came some good passages, which confounded me only the more. Then, " God save the King," which announced the Brit- ish victory. Anon followed some marches, with the occasional bang of the bass drum to " dis- figure or present " the distant cannon ; and then there was a pause, and the people began to get up. I was confounded, looked towards the or- chestra, and they were moving away ; and I dis- covered I had heard the whole — alas ! the day. What it meant, what Beethoven meant by writ- ing it, how he could be so purely external, how 134 JOHN S. DWIGHT he could so use tlic orchestra, I cannot compre- hend. Perhaps it was a curious relaxation with him, as artists imitate other instruments upon their own — perhaps it is a joke — but that it was a sad disappointment to me admits no perhaps. Since the limitations of life appear most forcibly to correspondents in limited sheets of paper, let me bear away abruptly from music. My German progresses finely. I have read Novalis's poetry, and am just now finishing the " Lehrjahre." I read three or four hours daily, and am pleased at my progress. Burrill and I have just finished Johnson's " Elements of Agri- cultural Chemistry "and Buel's book. I read to him daily from Bunyan. I am also busy with Beaumont and Fletcher, Paul's Epistles, and St. Augustine. You will easily imagine that my whole day is devoted to literature. After din- ner, at 5 o'clock, I sally down Broadway for exer- cise ; and in the evening, if I go to no concert, usually seek my room and books. To-night, for the first time, I am going out to a ball at a friend's, the girl of whom you have heard me speak as singing so well. Cranch I meet very rarely. Have been only once to see him. W. H. Channing do not yet know. At his meeting I see Isaac and C. P. Cranch, and Rufus Dawes, and Parke Godwin, William Chace, and a host of the unconverted and heretical. Him I do not yet know personally, nor Valhek. His cnthusi- •35 EARLY LETTERS TO astic manner, and the tranquil fervor of his char- acter, charm me very much. I find that I do not care to go after people. Perhaps I have been rather too much with them ; at all events, I will go to see none for curiosity. Isaac is my good friend, and passed Sunday P.M. in my room. We spoke of the church and so- ciety, and all topics that do so excite the youth- ful mind. I must break short ofl to dress for my party. I shall speak to you again before you know that I have been. Saturday. To-day I have finished the "Lehr- jahre." It is very calm and wise. It is full of Goethe, and therefore leaves behind in its impres- sion that almost indefinite want which his char- acter leaves, a want apparently readily designated. Yet to say his intellect was disproportionately developed leaves us in doubt whether a pure natural growth of the moral nature would have harmonized with his peculiar manifestation of in- tellect. He is to me as a blind God, made wise by laborious experience, not perpetual sight. He is at least too large for the tip of a letter. What do you read, or don't you read ? Sun- day. To-day I heard a fine sermon from W. H. Channing. There I met Isaac and C. P. Cranch. Walked home with the latter, who during the week had heard Ole Bull. I suppose he will write you of it. Prof. Adam, from Northampton, was there. At our church, a few Sundays since, I saw 136 JOHN S. DWIGHT Mrs. Delano, late Kate Lyman, and her sister Susan. Tlic latter was beautiful. She seemed like a pure, passionless saint. Had I been in a Catholic church I had imagined her to have been some holy being, incarnated by her deep sympathy with the worshippers. I hardly saw her, just enough to receive a poetic impression. How little I have said ! My life is very quiet, yet very full. Your letters are very grateful to me. One dares trust so much more to paper than to conversation. Friends living intimately learn of each other from tones and glances, not by conversation. Friends meet intellectually in words, lovers heartfully in words. Macready has gone and I did not sec him ; he played nothing of Shakespeare. Shall I direct to Brook Farm or Boston ? More anon. Yrs ever, G. W. C. New York, Friday, Dec. 23, '43. A merry Christmas to you, and to all Chris- tian souls. How brave goes the year to its set- ting ! These calm, cold days impress me like the fine characters of history and the elder time, in- spired with a generous wisdom, and prophesying what shall be the newest and best word of hope in our day. The season embraces and surpasses '37 EARLY LETTERS TO those old men, even the finest. To-day, as I walked, the magnificence of the closing year, so steadfast and sure, sparing no sunshine nor rain, passing quietly out to be renewed nevermore, quite reproved the solemn martyrdoms of men, upon which we hang our hopes. Nature is great that she does not suffer us to define her influence upon ourselves. Like all greatness, she suggests to us beauty and grace, not as attributes of hers, but fair buds and flowers of the soul. Therefore, in the full presence of nature, the grandest deeds seem harmonious and the wisdom of Plato, and actions whose great- ness is the centre, not the utmost compression, of our life are harmonious and symmetrical. To the Greeks and Jews the Gospel is blindness and a stumbling-block, but joy and peace to the elect. Nothing is so stern and lofty a cordial to me as this severe inscrutability of nature. I must obey or die, and dying is no help to me, for the spirit that rules now rules evermore. How like a god sits she brooding over the world, announc- ing her laws by blows and knocks, by agonies and convulsions, by the mouths of wise men, af- firming that as the sowing so also is the harvest. And there is no alleviation, no palliation. She heeds no prayers, no sighs ; those who fall must raise themselves ; the sick must of their own force recover or perish. When thus she has set 138 JOHN S. D WIGHT us upon our legs everything works for us, and the sun and moon are great himps for our cnliglUen- ment, and men and women leaves of a wondrous book. Then, imperceptibly to us, in tliese snows and blossoms and fruits annually all history is rewritten, and the honest man who knows noth- ing of Greece and Rome derives from the swell- ing trees and the bending sky the same subtle infusion of heroism and nobility that is the vital- ity of histor}'. The vice of our mode of educa- tion is that we do not regard life from an eternal point. We want magnanimity and truth, not the names of those who have been magnanimous and true; and I see not why nature to-day does not offer to me all the grandeur of character that has illustrated any period. Men and nature and art all seek to say the same thing. Could wc search deeply enough, I doubt not we should find all matter to be one substance ; and could we appreciate the worth of every art and every landscape and man, they would be identical. As I am a better man, the more soluble is the great outspreading riddle of nature, and the more distinct and full the delicate grace of art. As an old, quaint divine said of fate and free-will, they are two converging lines which of necessity must somewhere unite, though our human vision docs not see the point ; so all mysteries are radii, and could wc follow one implicitly, then we have found the centre of all. Therefore the best '39 EARLY LETTERS TO critic of art is the man whose life has been hid with God in nature; and therefore the triumph of art is complete when birds peck at the grapes. I felt this yesterday while looking at Cole's paintings. Each picture of " The Voyage of Life " impressed me somewhat as the voj'age itself does. Especially the cold, subdued tone of the last, which suggests infinity by the tone merely. Perhaps you have not seen them, and will suffer a brief account. The pictures are four. The first represents a boat of golden prow and sides wrought into the images of the hours, bearing an infant in a bed of roses, and issuing from a dim cave in a dark, indefinable mountain, and hasting down a flower -crowned stream. The second shows the babe grown to manhood, and, assuming himself the guidance, leaves the guardian spirit upon the bank, and upon a wider stream, piercing a wider prospect, sails away, allured by a dim cloud-castle which seems to hang over the river, j'et from which the stream turns. The next shows him dashing along amid clouds and whirlpools and tempests, without rudder or compass, towards threatening rocks, yet serenely, with clasped hands, abiding the issue. In the last, grown to old age, he sails forth upon a fathomless, shoreless sea, leaving behind all rocks and tempests, while the guardi- an angel again at the helm points to regions of cloudless day. Though very beautiful of them- 140 JOHN S. DWIGHT selves, they suggested to me grander pictures of this grandest theme, and so interested me very much. Truly there is nothing final ; all is sugges- tive. When, entranced in summer woods, we demand that nature lend our homes somewhat of her beauty, she replies to us that beauty is so subtle, residing not in the green of this leaf nor in the curve of that branch, and not in the whole, but in the soul that contemplates it, that of herself she has none, and that we her lovers have invested her with such golden charms. The universal wish to realize is only typified by the grasping gain. Most men live to acknowl- edge in heart the superiority of young dreams over old possessions ; and the world feels that in the unshrinking aspirations of the youth lies the hope of tlie world. That is the lightning that purifies the dense atmosphere, and, glancing for an instant, reveals the keenest light known to men. So the old year sings to me as it goes crowned with cr>'stals and snow-drops to its end. Without shrinking, without sorrow, it folds its white garment around unwithered limbs, and submits gracefully to the past. Nature regards it with that calm face whereon no emotions arc written, but a wise serenity forever sits. This year, too, is to many lonely hearts a redeemer ; and no heavens will be darkly clouded when it is over, but still stars will shine unsurprised. EARLY LETTERS TO Pale scholars in midnight vigils, golden gayety wreathing the hours with flowers and gems, un- bending sorrow pressing heavy seals upon yield- ing wretchedness, it will steal surely from all these, and on the morrow be a colorless ghost in the distant past. Its constancy will secure our immortality. The grandeur of the year may be the strength of our character; and as the East receives it, we may enter the inscrutable future reverently and with folded hands. Sunday. I am going to F. Rakemann's to pass the afternoon and give him this for you. He proposes to pass a week in Boston. I have heard Wallace during the week. He has great talent ; but I had heard Ole Bull, and Wallace's violin-playing was only good. What think you of Vieuxtemps, who, I see, is in Boston ? Shall you not send Knoop hither? So many things I would say ! It is wiser to say nothing. Re- member me to my West Roxbury friends, Mrs. Russell and Mrs. Shaw and their spouses. Ever your friend, G. W. C. VIII N. Y., Thursday, January i8, '44. I have not yet answered your letter by W. H. Channing in words, though I have said a 142 JOHN S. D WIGHT great deal to you tliat you liavc not heard. What an interrupter of conversation is this ab- sence ! Neither have I told you of my Vieux- tcmps experience, nor shall I close my letter without speaking of Knoop, who by the gods' favor concerts to-night. Your letter by W. H. Channing crystallized a resolution which has been quiet in me for the winter, so still that it needed only a powerful jerk to induce crystallization at once. So the day or two succeeding its receipt found me busy in expressing some thoughts about reform and association which I meant for The Present. But the necessity for expression seems to have been satisfied without publication. The essay remains as quietly in my portfolio as did the idea in my mind. So it was with an article on Ole Bull that I wrote some weeks since for the Tribune. The need seems to give the thought expression and form, whether it then lay still or fly abroad upon paper wings. Besides, printing does give a dignity to thoughts that the author should feel that they deserve, a permanency too. The newspaper that escapes the turmoil and tear and dust of years bears the same aspect as all its fellows of the same date that were ushered into the morning parlors with it ; and so some commentator on Ole Bull and Vieuxtemps or what not shall run down to the lower generations more noiselessly, yet as cer- tainly, as Shakespeare and Plato. There is a >43 EARLY LETTERS TO singular pleasure, too, in publishing what no- body thinks is yours. It is addressing the world not as Geo. Curtis, but as some distinguished messenger, the mystery of whom is a charm, if nothing more. Yet unfortunate me! I could never maintain the secret long. Is that from pride or because you cannot endure to see men go wrong, if you can help them ? When Charles Dana came running to me with what he thought Emerson's poem, how could I help saying, " It is mine." In that case, at least, it was sympa- thy for Emerson's reputation that prompted the speech. There is something that pleases me much in the united works of young authors. Sands and who ? in our country published " Yamoyden " and some other poems together. C. Lamb and Lloyd (was not Coleridge one?) published some small verses in company. There is a sort of mean- ness in it, too, as if they should say, " Here we come, two scribblers, not worthy singly to attract your attention, but together making out something worth your money." After all, a sin- gle failure may be better than a double respecta- bility. Imagine the united literar>' works of Dwight and Curtis rotting in an odd drawer of Ticknor's or James Munroe's ; could we ever look each other in the face again ? What a still, perpetual suspicion there would be that the one swamped the other. 144 JOHN S. D WIGHT Do you not mean some day to gather your mu- sical essays together, like a whorl of leaves, and suffer them to expand into a book, though not with the cream -colored calyx that Ticknor af- fects, I beg. Nay, might you not make some arrangements with Greeley to publish them here, in a cheap way, if you would make money, for those who valued them would of course obtain more durable copies. If not, and you would think dignity compromitted, some of the regu- lar publishers might be diplomatized with. They would make an unique work. You know we have nothing similar in American literature, no book of artistic criticism, have we? Why will you not think of it, if you have not done so? And what so poor a man as Hamlet is may do, you shall command. How recreant am I to this noble art, that listen only and celebrate with feeble voice its charms. Tuesday evening, at a small musical party, I heard Euphrasia Borghcse sing, whom you may have heard, and who is to be Prima Donna at the new Opera-house, which opens on the 25th or 26th of the present month. They begin with the " Puritani." It will be altogether devoted to Italian music, I suppose, from the tendency of the New York taste and the collection of musi- cians. I heard Vieuxtemps both times he played after his return. I was very much delighted ; he K 145 EARLY LETTERS TO was so modest and composed and refined. His playing is as wonderful as Ole Bull's, but not so fascinating; his compositions more contemplative and regular, not so wild and throbbing with the irregular pulsations of unsatisfied genius, as are Ole Bull's. I felt no disposition to compare, feeling how different they were. I thanked God when I came away that no one man has sole power, but that many may serve in this bound- less temple, each in its various offices. Yet in my memory is Ole Bull the only man who has stirred me up as genius always must. When I heard Vieuxtemps, I knew what to anticipate ; the grandeur of the instrumental and the human possibility upon it had been revealed to me, therefore he could not surprise me, and for that revelation I am indebted to Ole Bull. Vieux- temps prolonged the echo of the deep tone that had been sounded into my spiritual ear. I must say that the first was grandest to me, and re- mains so. I passed Sunday P.M. with Rakcmann ; he played all the time, told me of you and Boston and his love for it, asked me if I had heard more of the concerts you mentioned. Timm on Mon- day played me the " Invitation to the W." very beautifully, beside some Mazurkas of Chopin, also the " Egmont " overture grandly. Saturday evening the second Philharmonic, the "Jupiter Symphony," and some Septuats, etc. It was not 146 JOHN S. D WIGHT a good concert. Castellan sancj for the last time. Not a note of Beethoven ! Yesterday afternoon and evening I passed with Josepliine Maman.who plays and sings finely. We had some of Bee- thoven, the " Pathetique," etc., and some songs of Schubert, which I had never heard. A singu- lar girl, but delightful to me. My musical appe- tite has been well appeased ; can it ever be satis- fied ? To-night, Knoop, for whom I have left little space, especially as I find my paper is torn. Evening. Have just come from Knoop's. It was beautiful to see the worthy mate of such men as 01c Bull and Vieuxtcmps. From what you and others had told me, I knew I should like him. So calm and grand. Yet when I left the room a mournful feeling came over me, that so ho must leave and be heard no more. Bee- thoven is not done when he is dead, nor Raphael nor Shakespeare ; but for him whose glory is ac- tion, which leaves no trace but upon the heart, what shall remain ? The notes he may tran- scribe for others, but the charm of the musical artist lies not therein; it is a personal effluence; how shall we measure it? I felt to-night that he played not for an audience, but to the private heart. He was singing to me his deep searching thought, his star-lost aspiration. Indeed, he is worthy to close the brilliant winter; a calm planet fading from us, but with a mild, steady lustre that condemns sorrow. How invisible, in- '47 EARLY LETTERS TO sensibly proceeds his fame ! My character must needs be strengthened and mellowed by such men, and so my influence upon others is moulded, till perhaps it meets him again. Surrounded by these intimate relations, we cannot touch one but all thrill. In such a subtle shrine is the in- fluence of genius fitly embalmed and there wor- shipped. How grand an era in my life, when through a winter I may justly use the word genius many times ! Good-night ! G. W. C. I am 24 1 Will you write me the numbers of the " Tempest " sonata, and some others that I liked particularly? The op. 14, No. 2, I have got, and Timm played it to me on Monday. How inexorable is this space, that will not let me crowd in that I am ever your friend, G. W. C. N. Y., Sunday evening, Feb. 25, '44. Do you remember ever to have read a novel called " The Collegians ?" A work of great inter- est, and displaying great dramatic power. I was always anxious to know the author, and chance has thrown his name and history in my way. It JOHN S. DWIGHT was Gerald Griffin, an Irishman of genius, who lived the varied life of a professed literary man. Desirous of having his dramas accepted at the London theatres, and finding no one to favor him. Too noble to be dependent, and going days without food. In i83ty something he published, "Gisippus," a tragedy, famed of the greatest merit. Finally he became weary of his literary life, and entered an Irish convent, where, within two or three years, he died. His father's family in greater part have removed to America, and his elder brother, a physician of note, has recent- ly published his memoirs, the reviews of which I have happened to meet. The reviews say the usual thing of genius, that his writings were full of promise, and that he might have achieved greatly had he lived. Must not this be always a complaint of genius? Its being, not its expres- sion, has the charm which captivates. The dramas are the least part of Shakespeare, and one would give more to have known him than to study them forever. It must seem to us promising, till we have entered into the fulness of its spirit. The necessity of expressing compromises the dig- nity of being. God is more pleasing to thought as self-contemplation, rather than creation. Ex- pression is degradation to us, not to the genius. That informs everything with its complete Love- liness. But wc who must seek in the expression for it, miss its beauty. Critics complain of '49 EARLY LETTERS TO Tennyson that he writes no epic, as if all poets must do the same thing. "Comus" is as Miltonic as the " Paradise Lost ;" and the little songs of Shakespeare as wide and fresh as the dramas. The diamond is no less wonderful than the world. Recently my reading has led me into the old English poetr>'. A friend gave me a card to the Society Library, the largest in the city; and I have found much good browsing in those fields. I have found " Amadis de Gaul " among the rest, and the complete works of Carew, Suckling, Dray- ton, Drummond, etc. It has led me to wish some more intimate knowledge of English histoiy, to which I must turn. How imperceptibly and surely spread out these meadows where the rare flowers bloom ! There is no end to these threads which place themselves in our hand, and which lead every man of the world his different way. So we sail on through the blue spaces, separate as stars. And you, they tell me, have joined the asso- ciation. I supposed you were making some move, and thought this might be it. I am glad that you do so so heartily, and more glad that I can say so.' After all, the defiance offered us by the varied positions of our friends is what life needs. Each dissimilar act of my friend, while it does not sever him from me, throws me more stern- ly upon myself. Can we not make our friendship 150 JOHN S. DWIGHT so fine that it shall be only a sympathy of thoiiglit, and let the expression dilTcr, and court it to differ? This ray of the sunlight falls upon sum- mer woods, that sinks into the wintry sea, yet arc they brothers. The severe loneliness that has sun and moon in its bosom invites us as the vig- orous health of the soul. The beautiful isolation of the rose in its own fragrance is self-sufficient. Charles wrote Burrill a manly letter during the week. The Arcadian beauty of the place is lost to me, and would have been lost, had there been no change. Seen from this city life, you cannot think how fair it seems. So calm a congregation of devoted men and true women performing their perpetual service to the Idea of their lives, and clothed always in white garments. Though you change your ritual, I feci your hope is un- changed ; and though it seems to me less beau- tiful than the one you leave, it is otherwise to you. There was a mild grace about our former life that no system attains. The unity in vari- ety bound us very closely together. I doubt if we shall be again among you, as I had hoped. I cannot, in thought, lose my hold upon the place without pain not to be spoken of. On the whole, I cannot say, even to you, just what I would about it. It will leak out from the pores of my hands before we have done with each other. I hear no music here now, except Timm and EARLY LETTERS TO Rakemann. Charlotte Dana is here ; I have heard her only once. The opera is a wretched affair. By-the-by, I gave W. H. Channing an article for The Present, very short, upon music and Ole Bull. If he publishes it, it will not be new to you, though I do not remember if I have talked with you about all at which it hints. I await orders and manuscripts about the French stories; though you are very busy, all of you, just now, perhaps too much so for that business. The rest stands adjourned. Give my love to friends. Yrs ever, G. W. C. Will you say to C. Dana that I would like to come for a short visit — at least, before going elsewhere ; and that as soon as possible, say in a week. Can I come? If not, ask him to say when. Yours, J. BuRRiLL Curtis. Feb'y 27. New York, March 3. 1S44. Your letter was very grateful to me. I had supposed the silence would be broken by some music burst of devotion, and that all friends would be dearer to you the more imperative 152 JOHN S. DWIGHT tlie call upon your strength to battle for the Ideal. It half reproved me for the meagre sheet the same day brought to your hand. And yet could we see how all the forces of heaven and earth unite to shape the particle that floats idly by us, we should never sec meagrencss more. I do not think (and what a heresy!) that your life has found more than an object, not yet a centre. The new order will systematize your course; but I do not see that it aids your jour- ney. Is it not the deeper insight you constant- ly gain into music which explains the social economy you adopt, and not the economy the music? One fine symphony or song leads all reforms captive, as the grand old paintings in St. Peter's completely ignore all sects. Associa- tion will only interpret music so far as it is a pure art, as poetry and sculpture and painting explain each other. But necessarily Brook Farm, association and all, do not regard it artis- tically, but charitably. It regenerates the world with them because it does tangible good, not be- cause it refines. We must view all pursuits as arts before we can accomplish. With respect to association as a means of reform, I have seen no reason to change my view. Though, like the monastic, a life of devo- tion, to severe criticism it offers a selfish and an unheroic aspect. When your letter first spoke 'S3 EARLY LETTERS TO of j-our personal interest in the movement, I had written you a long statement of my thought, which I did not send, and then partly spun into an article for Tlie Present, which I did not entire- ly finish. It was only a strong statement of In- dividualism, which would not be new to you, perhaps, and the essential reason of which could not be readily treated. What we call union seems to me only a name for a phase of indi- vidual action. I live only for myself; and in proportion to my own growth, so I benefit oth- ers. As Fourier seems to me to have postponed his life, in finding out how to live, so I often felt it was with Mr. Ripley. Besides, I feel that our evils are entirely individual, not social. What is society but the shadow of the single men behind it. That there is a slave on my plantation or a servant in my kitchen is no evil ; but that the slave and servant should be unwilling to be so, that is the difficulty. The wearj' and the worn do not ask of me an asylum, but aid. The need of the most oppressed man is strength to en- dure, not means of escape. The slave toiling in the Southern heats is a nobler aspect of thought than the freed black upon the shore of Eng- land. That is just now the point which pains me in association, its lack of heroism. Reform is purification, forming anew, not forming again. Love, like genius, uses the means that are, and the opportunities of to-day. If paints are want- '54 JOHN S. DWIGHT ing, it draws charcoal lieads with Michael An- gclo. These crooked features of society we cannot rend and twist into a Roman outUne and grace ; but they may be animated with a soul that will utterly shame our carved and painted faces. A noble man purges these present relations, and does not ask beautiful houses and landscapes and appliances to make life beautiful. In Wall Street he gives another significance to trade; in the City Hall he justifies its erection; in the churches he interprets to themselves the weekly assembly of citizens. He uses the pen with which, just now, the coal-man scrawled his bill, and turns ofl an epic with the fife that in the band so sadly pierced our ears. He moves our trudging lives to the beauties of golden meas- ures. He laughs heartily at our absorbing char- ities and meetings, upon which wx waste our health and grow thin. He answers our distress- ing plea for the rights of the oppressed, and the "all-men-born-to-be-free-and-equal" with a smiling strength, which assures us therein lies the wealth and the equality which we are trj'ing to manu- facture out of such materials as association, or- ganization of society, copartnership, no wages, and the like. While this may be done, why should we retire from the field behind the walls which you offer? Let us die battling or victori- ous. And this, true for me and you, is true to the uttermost. The love which alone can make EARLY LETTERS TO your Phalanx beautiful, also renders it unneces- sary. You may insure food and lodgings to the starving beggar, I do not see that strength is afforded to the man. Moreover, a stern di- vine justice ordains that each man stand where he stands, and do his utmost. Retreat, if you will, behind this prospect of comfortable living, but you do so at a sacrifice of strength. Your food must be eternal, for your life is so. I do not feel that the weary man outworn by toil needs a fine house and books and culture and free air ; he needs to feel that his position, also, is as good as these. When he has, by a full recognition of that, earned the right to come to you, then his faith is deeper than the walls of association, and the desolate cellar is a cheerful room for his shining lore. Men do not want op- portunities, they do not want to start fair, they do not want to reach the same goal ; they want only perfect submission. The gospel now to be preached is not, " Away with me to the land where the fields are fair and the waters flow," but, " Here in your penury, while the rich go idly by and scoff, and the chariot wheels choke you with dust, make here your golden age." "Who cannot on his own bed sweetly sleep, Can on another's hardly rest." So sings the saintly George Herbert, no new thought in these days of ours. 156 JOHN S. D WIGHT The effect of a residence at the Farm, I imagine, was not greater willingness to serve in the kitchen, and so particularly assert that labor was divine; but discontent that there was such a place as a kitchen. And, however aimless life there seemed to be, it was an aimlessness of the general, not of the individual life. Its beauty faded suddenly if I remembered that it was a society for special ends, though those ends were very noble. In the midst of busy trades and bustling commerce, it was a congregation of calm scholars and poets, cherishing the ideal and the true in each other's hearts, dedicate to a healthy and vigorous life. As an association it needed a stricter system to insure success; and since it had not the means to justify its mild life, it neces- sarily grew to this. As reformers, you are now certainly more active, and may promise your- selves heaven's reward for that. That impossi- bility of severance from the world, of which you speak, I liked, though I did not like that there should be such a protest against the world by those who were somewhat subject to it. This was not my first feeling. When I went, it seemed as if all hope had died from the race, as if the return to simplicity and beauty lay through the woods and fields, and was to be a march of men whose very habits and personal appearance should wear a sign of the coming grace. The longer I stayed, the more surely that thought •57 EARLY LETTERS TO vanished. I had unconsciously been devoted to the circumstance, while I had earnestly denied its value. Gradually I perceived that only as a man grew deeper and broader could he wear the coat and submit to the etiquette and obey the laws which society demands. Now I feel that no new order is demanded, but that the universe is plastic to the pious hand. Besides, it seems to me that reform becomes atheistic the moment it is organized. For it aims, really, at that which conservatism repre- sents. The merit of the reformer is his sinceri- ty, not his busy effort to emancipate the slaves or to raise the drunkards. And the deeper his sincerity the more deeply grounded seems to him the order he holds to be so corrupt. God always weighs down the Devil. Therefore the church is not a collection of puzzling priests and deceived people, but the representative, now as much as ever, of the religious sentiment. A pious man needs no new church or ritual. The Catholic is not too formal nor the Quaker too plain. If he complains of these, and build an- other temple and construct a new service, it is not the satisfaction which piety would have. Luther's protest was that of the intellect against the supremacy of sentiment. So was Unitari- anism: and now we do not seek in the Boston churches for the profound pietists. Does not our present experience show that as fast as we 158 JOHN S. D WIGHT arc emancipated from morality and the domi- nance of the intellect, we revert to the older rituals, if we need any. And if we have no need, the piety can so fully inform them, that \vc seek no other. The transcendental is a spiritual movement. It is the effort to regain the lost equilibrium between the intellect and the soul, between morals and piety. Therefore, out of its ranks come Catholics and Calvinists and mystics, and those who continue the reform movement commenced by Luther; and, proceeding at in- tervals down the stream of history, are the Ra- tionalists. There is indeed a latent movement, badly represented by these reforms, and that is the constant perception of the supremacy of the Individual. But the stronger the feet become the more delicate may be the movements. The more strictly individual I am, the more certainly I am bound to all others. I can reach other men only through myself. So far as you have need of association you are injured by it. You will gather what I think from such hints as these. I recognize the worth of the movement, as I do of all sincere action. Other reasons must bind me peculiarly to the particu- lar me at Brook Farm. " Think not of any sev- erance of our loves," though we should not meet immediately. Burrill will sec if there is any such place as we wish about you. I have not much hope of his success. The scent of the «59 EARLY LETTERS TO roses will not depart, though the many are scat- tered. I hardly hope to say directly how very beautiful it lies in my memory. What a heart- fresco it has become! All the dignity, the strength, the devotion will be preserved by you ; that graceful " aimlessness " comes no more. And yet that was necessary. Long before I knew of the changes I perceived that the growth of the place would overshadow the spots where the sun- light had lain so softly and long. We must still regret the waywardness of the child, though the man is active and victorious ; and the delicate odor of the blossom is unrivalled by the juicy taste of the fruit. The one implies necessity ; the other a self-obedient impulse. You see I do not forget it was a child ; but the philosopher has no better playfellow. I wish this was me instead of my letter, for a warm grasp of the hand might say more than all these words. Yr friend, G. W. C. New York, March 27, 1844. At last I imagine our summer destiny is fixed. This morning Burrill received a reply from Emerson informing us of a promising place near Concord. The farmer's name being Cap- 160 JOHN S. DWIGHT tain Natlianicl Barrett, of pleasant family and situation, and a farm on which more farm work than usual is done. Altogether the prospect is very alluring and satisfactory ; and I have little doubt of our acceptance of the situation. We shall not then be very far removed from you ; and at some /Esthetical tea or Transcendental club or Poet's assembly meet you, perhaps, and other Brook Farmers. At all events, wc shall breathe pretty much the same atmosphere as be- fore, and understand more fully the complete pivacy of the country life. Burrill brought pleasant accounts of your ap- pearance at Brook Farm. The summer shall not pass without my looking in upon you, though only for an hour. That time will suffice to show me the unaltered beauty of aspect, though days would be scarce to express all that they suggested. Emerson writes tliat there is a piano and music at the farm mentioned. I have no faith in pianos under such circumstances; but it shows a taste, a hope, a capability, possibly it is equal to all spiritual significances e.xcept music! which want in a piano may be termed a defi- ciency. I have become acquainted with a fine ama- teur, a niece of Dr. Chaiining's, name Gibbs. Slic is yet young, not more than 17, but plays with great grace and beauty. She played me I 161 EARLY LETTERS TO one of Mendelssohn's songs, translated by Liszt, a beautiful piece, one of F. R.'s, and spoke more sensibly of music than any girl I have met. By- the-way, yesterday I bought the January num- ber of the Democratic Review to read Mrs. Fan- ny Kemble Butler's review of Tennyson, when, to my great surprise, I found your " Haydn." O'Sullivan I have met a great deal, but made no acquaintance. The Tennyson review is very fine. I think she understands him well. Per- haps she is too masculine a woman to judge correctly his delicacy ; but she does the whole thing well. Cranch has just painted a scene from the " Lady of Shalott," the scene — "In among the bearded barley, The reaping late and early," etc. — represents two reapers standing with sickles among the grain, and turning intently towards the four " gray walls and four gray towers which overlook a space of flowers" in an island covered with foliage to the water, and lying in the midst of the stream. The criticism upon the picture is obvious ; if Cranch is as painter what Tennyson is as poet, it is good — if not, it is bad. What do you think? When a man illustrates a poem he is pledged by the poem, hence the absurdity of Martyn's drawings from the " Paradise Lost," and the various pictures of Belshazzar's feast. 162 JOHN S. DWIGHT Only the Madonnas of the greatest painters arc satisfactory. But I shall not abandon myself to the tracking of these mysteries of art. I have been reading Goethe's "Tasso." Now I am at the " Sorrows of Werther." I am wonder- fully impressed with his dramatic power. The " Egmont," " Iphigenia," and " Tasso " are grander than anything I know in modern literature, than anything else of his which I have read. The serene simplicity of the "Iphigenia" is like a keen blast of ocean air. It stands like a Grecian temple, but in the moonlight. Is not that be- cause, as Fanny Kemble says, and so many have thought, he was a Heathen ? He did not enter into the state called the Christian. He served gods, not a God ; and had it been otherwise this tragedy had been full-bathed in sunlight. And yet I hardly dare to say anything decidedly of such a man. I shall condemn myself a little while hence if I do. Let me hear from you before I leave New York, which will be in two or three weeks. I shall not leave all my good friends, and all the fine music here, without a pang. But if we stop for pangs! Will you send me the number of the " Mondschein," and the " Tempest " sonata ? Yr friend, G. W. Clrtis. >63 EARLY LETTERS TO N. Y., Monday morning, April Zth, 1844. The last few days have been hke glimpses of Brook Farm, seeing so constantly Mr. Ripley, and Charles, and Liszt, and Isaac, and Georgiana, and Margaret Fuller. The last three days of the past week were occupied by the sessions of the Convention, about which there was no enthusi- asm, but an air of quiet resolution which always precedes success. To be sure, the success, to me, is the constant hope in humanity that in- spires them, the sure, glowing prophecies of para- dise and heaven, being individual not general prophecies, and announcing the advent in their own hearts and lives of the feet beautiful of old upon the mountains. In comparison with this what was done, and what was doing, lost much of its greatness. Leave to Albert Brisbane, and id onine gcmis, these practical etchings and phalan- steries ; but let us serve the gods without bell or candle. Have these men, with all their faith and love, not yet full confidence in love ? Is that not strong enough to sway all institutions that are, and cause to overflow with life? does that ask houses and lands to express its power? does it not ride supreme over the abounding selfish- ness of the world, and so raise men from their .64 JOHN S. DVVIGHT sorrow and degradation, or so inspire them that their hovels are good enough for them ? But all difference of thought vanished before the profound, sincere eloquence of these men. Last night, at W. H. Channing's church, the room was full, and the risen Lord Jesus might have smiled upon a worthy worship. From all sections were gathered in that small room men led by the same high thought, and in the light of that thought joining hearts and hands, unknown to each other, never to be seen again, and in the early dawn setting forth with hard hands and stout hearts to hew down the trees which shall be wrought into the stately dwellings for those who come after in the day. So knelt the de- voted Pilgrims upon the sands of Holland, and embarked upon that doubtful sea. They fought and perished ; their homes were pierced with the Indian's bullet and flames of fire ; the solitude of stern forests scared not their hearts, and we fol- low now and live in peace. It was something to have felt and seen such heroism. The meetings of the convention were made interesting by some speeches of W. H. Channing. His fervor kindles the sympathy of all who listen. I do not think he is a man of great intellect ; his views of society are not always correct. He speaks very often as an infidelin-the-capability- of-men might speak. He is fanatical, as all who perceive by the heart and not the head are, as '65 EARLY LETTERS TO deeply pious men are apt to be. But I never heard so eloquent a man, one who commanded attention and sympathy, not by his words or thoughts, but the religion that lay far below them. It is a warm, fragrant, southern wind at which the heart leaps, not the pure, cold, ocean air which braces the frame. Between him and some whom I have heard is the same difference as between Goethe and Novalis. The one a June meadow, with flower- scents and cloud- shadows and the soft, sultry music of humming- bees and singing-birds, with clear skies bending over ; a deep sea the other, whereon sail stately ships, wafted by health-bearing breezes, in whose waters the sick gain strength, in whose soundless depths the coral and the precious stones repose forever, which supplies the clouds whose shadow makes the meadow beautiful. Indeed, how glorious is the range and variety of character among which we move. Though the stars differ in glory they all make the sky fair, and do not clash in their revolutions. That dis- similarity is the secret of friendship, which edu- cates to stand alone. Indeed — to make a most heretical conclusion — the race exists to teach me to live without it. My friend, God has no need of creatures, but he is not less nearly bound to them. I send you the final number of Tlie Present. You will see my article, " a poor thing, but mine i66 JOHN S. D WIGHT own." To you it will be notliinfj new. It seems to me I have used some of the same sentences in speaking to you. The Dial stops. Is it not like the going out of a star? Its place was so unique in our literature! All who wrote and sang for it were clothed in white garments ; and the work itself so calm and collected, though springing from the same undismaj-ed hope which fathers all our best reforms. But the intellectual worth of the time will be told in other ways, though The Dial no longer reports the progress of the day. On Friday we leave for Boston. I do not know precisely if wc shall go immediately to Concord, for we arc performing at the same time a duty of affection in accompanying to Mount Auburn the body of an uncle. Wc may possibly be detained in Boston until the following Mon- day, in which case I shall not fail to come out and see you. So endcth my New York correspondence. Yours truly and ever, G. W. Curtis. MUSIC AND OLE BULL Wc know little of the art of music; though our concerts arc crowded, and the names of the composers familiar. But our reverence to the 167 EARLY LETTERS TO Masters in art is like the reverence for the Bible, not a hearty one. A late musical reviewer well says, that the admiration of the Parisians for Beethoven is a conceit. That calculation answers for our meridian. Slight Italian scholars are eloquent in their admiration of Dante, but the depths and majesty of his poem are explored by few. The dullest may recognize the beauty of feature, but the soul which inspires quite eludes them. During the performance of a symphony the audience smile and shake when the airs float out of the orchestra, not observing that they are the breathing-places, the relaxation of the com- poser. Every one who can play can compose tunes, but to the lover of the art they yield no greater pleasure than the rhymes of a poem. Often the grandest passages are most melodious, as in poems the greatest thought suggests the happiest expression. Tune and song occupy a distinct portion of the realm of music. They are attachds to the royal court. Perhaps the finest music is allied to verse, but if it be a true marriage, the music comprehends the whole. No artist would hear the words of one of Handel's or Haydn's choral hosannas. The words are the translation, but the scholar will not accept that. Music is an art distinct and self-sufificient. It represents the harmony of that interior truth which all art seeks to reveal, and whose beauty i6S JOHN S. DWIGHT and grace appear in painting and sculpture. The interpreters of that harmony are sounds, which are related to music as colors to painting, and the fullest expression is given to them by in- strumental combination. The human voice in respect of the art is valuable as an instrument, and in suppleness may exceed mechanical con- trivances; wherefore one readily understands why a mighty chorus is introduced in the finale of the grandest symphony, that the whole effect may be duly crowned, and the appeal to the heart be assured by the union of human sounds. But with such an effect words have nothing to do. The charm of the foreign opera to us Amer- icans is, that the full music of the Masters is re- ceived with syllables meaning to us no more than the fa-sol-la of the gamut. The reason of this is ver>- evident. If the poetry be good it has a rhythm and cadence of its own which re- sembles music, but in respect of art belongs to poetry and not to music. Arbitrarily united with melody the words obtrude a meaning which the music may not suggest, though the capacity of fine music is equal to any words. The beauty of Schubert's songs is their completeness. Thoy are lyrics, and the words are only an addition. Those who heard Rakemann play the translated serenade will remember that the instrumentation produced the whole effect of the song. If the music be fine, it gives all the sentiment of the .r.9 EARLY LETTERS TO words in its own way. It is like painting a statue to unite them. Sometimes, indeed, one feels that both are written from the same mood in the grandest minds. The mysterious charms of Goethe's song of Mignon, to which Beethoven wrote the music, is that the song is the expres- sion of the same awe ■ struck j'earning which wails and thunders through the music of the master. In the melody alone all the wild vague- ness and dim aspiration of the song are mani- fest, and only because the union is perfect is the impression uniform. Should Wilhelm Meister be lost to literature the blossom of Mignon's life would still bloom in the music. The same necessity which divided art into the arts ordains their practical separation. Because they are divisions of one their impression is sim- ilar. They work to the same end, but each has a way. To complete the harmony, the soprano, and the tenor, and the bass, must all strictly ob- serve their parts. So must the arts. It is a mournful degradation when the composer would make his sounds, colors, as those who heard the battle of Waterloo symphony will not soon for- get. Without his interference, the relation be- tween his art and the rest will be preserved. In his symphony he is the spiritual significance of the Apollo and the Iliad ; and the graceful, romantic songs of Mozart are in the drops of poetry scattered upon the old drama, and in 170 JOHN S. D WIGHT the infinite, tender beauty of Raphael's pict- ures. Yet this is a hl'. A face of Ophelia in- terested me. It was very simple and sweet. But I was so warm that I could do little more than lay upon a bench and catch dreamy glimpses of the walls. The sculpture gallery, full of white marble heads, seemed quite cool. 191 EARLY LETTERS TO My dear friend, I shall melt and be mailed in this letter as a spot if I do not surcease. May you be blest with frigidity, a blessing far re- moved from my hope. Of course I must be warmly, nay, hotly remembered to Charles. Yrs ever, G. W. C. Concord, August ith, 1844. My regret at not seeing you was only les- sened by the beautiful day I passed with Mr. Hawthorne. His life is so harmonious with the antique repose of his house, and so redeemed into the present by his infant, that it is much better to sit an hour with him than hear the Rev. Barzillai Frost ! His baby is the most se- renely happy I ever saw. It is very beautiful, and lies amid such placid influences that it too may have a milk-white lamb as emblem; and Mrs. Hawthorne is so tenderly respectful tow- ards her husband that all the romance we picture in a cottage of lovers dwells subdued and dig- nified with them. I see them very seldom. The people here who are worth knowing, I find, live very quietly and retired. In the country, friend- ship seems not to be of that consuming, absorb- ing character that city circumstances give it, but 192 JOHN S. D WIGHT to be quite content to feel rather tlian hear or do; and that very independence which with- draws them into the privacy of their homes is the charm which draws thither. Mr. Emerson read an address before the anti- slavery " friends " last Thursday. It was very fine. Not of that cold, clear, intellectual char- acter which so many dislike, but ardent and strong. His recent reading of the history of the cause has given him new light and warmed a fine enthusiasm. It commenced with allusions to the day "which gives the immense fortification of a fact to a great principle," and then drew in strong, bold outline the progress of British eman- cipation. Thence to slavery in its influence upon the holders, to the remark that this event hushed the old slander about inferior natures in the ne- gro, thence to the philosophy of slavery, and so through many detached thoughts to the end. It was nearly two hours long, but was very com- manding. He looked genial and benevolent, as who should smilingly defy the world, the flesh, and the devil to ensnare him. The address will be published by the society ; and he will prob- ably write it more fully, and chisel it into fitter grace for the public criticism. He spoke of your unfortunate call, but said you bore the sulkiness very well. George Bradford was also very sorry; and it was bad that you should come so far, with the faces of friends for a hospitable city N >93 EARLY LETTERS TO before you, and find a mirage only, or (begging Burrill's pardon) one house. For the last six weeks I have been learning what hard work is. Afternoon leisure is now remembered with the holiday which Saturday brought to the school-boy. During the haying we have devoted all our time and faculty to the making of hay, leaving the body at night fit only to be devoted to sheets and pillows, and not to grave or even friendly epistolary in- tercourse. Oh friends! live upon faith, say I, as I pitch into bed with the ghosts of Sunday morning resolutions of letters tickling my sides or thumping my back, and then sink into dreams where every day seems a day in the valley of Aja- lon, and innumerable Joshuas command the sun and moon to stay, and universal leisure spreads over the universe like a great wind. Then comes morning and wakefulness and boots and break- fast and scythes and heat and fatigue, and all my venerable Joshuas endeavor in vain to make oxen stand still, and I heartily wish them and I back in our valley ruling the heavens and not bending scythes over unseen hassocks which do some- times bend the words of our mouths into shapes resembling oaths ! those most crooked of all speech, but therefore best and fittest for the occa- sional crooks of life, particularly mowing. Yet I mow and sweat and get tired very heartily, for I want to drink this cup of farming to the bottom 194 JOHN S. DWIGHT and taste not only the morning (roth but tlie afternoon and evening strength of dregs and bit- terness, if there be any. When haying is over, which event will take place on Saturday night of this week, fair weather being vouchsafed, I shall return to my moderation. Towards the latter part of the month I shall stray away tow- ards Providence and Newport and sit down by the sea, and in it, too, probably. So I shall pass until harvest. Where the snows will fall upon me I cannot yet say. Say to Charles that I was sorry not to have seen him ; but if persons of consequence will travel without previous annunciation, they may chance to find even the humblest of their ser- vants not at home. I know you will write when the time comes, so I say notliing but that I am your friend ever. G. W. C. XVII CONXORD. Sept. 23. 1844. Shall we not see you on the day of the cat- tle-show? Certainly- Brook Farm will be repre- sented ; and I think you may, by this time, be farmer enough to enjoy the cattle and the plough- ing. Besides, as I remember a similar excursion last year at which I assisted, the splendor of the •95 EARLY LETTERS TO early morning, which was not yet awake when we came away from the Farm, will amply repay any extraordinary effort. And still another be- sides ; I do not want the winter to build its white, impenetrable walls between us before I have heard your voice once more. I should hope to come and look at you for one day, at least, in West Roxbury; but our Captain has work, autumnal work, the end whereof is not comprehended by the unassisted human vision. Potato -digging, apple -picking, thrashing, the gathering of innumerable seeds, must be done before winter ; and yet to-day is like a despatch from December to announce that snow and ice and wind are to be just as cold this winter as they were the last. And I have had a long vacation, too. I think, on the very day after I wrote my last letter to you, as I was whetting my scythe for the last swath of the season, my hat half fell off, and suddenly raising my hand to catch it, I thrust it against the scythe and cut my thumb just upon the joint. It has healed, but I shall never find it quite as agile as formerly. I could not use"the hand — my right hand — for more than a fortnight. It was like losing a sense to lose its use. After a week of inaction in Concord, I went to Rhode Island and remained three weeks, and am now at home a fortnight. I came back more charmed than ever with Concord, which 196 JOHN S. DWIGHT hides under a quiet surface most precious scenes. I suppose we see more deeply into the spirit of a landscape where we have been happy. Then we behold the summer bloom. It is spring or autumn or winter to men generally. We shall remain with Capt. Barrett through the winter. The spring will bring its own ar- rangements, or rather the conclusion of those which are formed during the winter. I suspect that our affections, like our bodies, have been transplanted to Massachusetts, and that our lives will grow in the new soil. Not at all am- bitious of settling and becoming a citizen, I am very well content with the nomadic life until obedience to the law of things shall plant mc in some home. And are you still at home in the Farm ? Rumors, whose faces I cannot fairly sec, pass by me sometimes, breathing your name and others. But I have long ago turned rumor out-of-doors as an impostor and impertinent person, who apes the manners and appearance of its betters. I shall receive none as from you, however loudly they may shout your name, except they show your hand and seal. Autumn has already begun to leave the traces of her golden fingers upon the brakes, and oc- casionally upon some tall nut-trees. It seems as if she w-ere trying her skill before she comes like a wind over the landscape. She warbles a '97 EARLY LETTERS TO few glittering notes before the mournful, majes- tic Death-song. Dear friend, why should I send you this chip of ore out of the mine of regard which is yours in my heart ? Come and dig in it. Your friend, G. W. Curtis. XVIII Concord, /' 12, '45. My dear Friend, — I have written Burrill to look at the Custom-house, and inquire about the method of warming by water. He replies that he has been there, but defers writing to you until he learns more about the matter. Through him I received a message from Isaac to tell you that he (I) can procure an edition of the Bee- thoven Sonatas (26, 1 believe) for about $10. I think it highly probable that I shall pass some weeks in Providence next month, and so will defer my day with you at Brook Farm until that time, of which I will inform you. Burrill has not yet returned, and leaves me still a hermit. I am well pleased with my soli- tude, nor do I care much to go out of the coun- try during the winter; but domestic circum- stances make it advisable to go to Providence. There I shall have a good library at hand, which JOHN S. D WIGHT I miss a good deal hcio. Iiulccd, I think it likely that every year while my home is in the country I may perform a pilgrimage to the city for two or throe months for purposes of art and literature and affection, for, as there seems in the minds of divines to be some doubt of personal identity when this mortal coil is shuffled off, I am fain to embrace my friends' coils while they are yet palpable. This idea of city visits implies a very free life ; but there seems now to be no hindcrance to it. When the band of Phalanxes, proceeding into desert and free air, no more allow art to rendezvous in cities, I can take one of the nearest radiating railroads and rush from my solitude into the healthily-peopled and city- ish-countrified Phalanx. I am loath to forgive Fourier the unmitigated slander upon the moon. I began to suspect that was the only influence alive since the sun lights men to cheating and deviltry; and the moon recalls the sweetest remembrance and best hope. After our evening at Almira's it lighted me home with such forgiving splendor that I could have fallen on my knees in the snow and have prayed its pardon if it would not have chilled those members. Almira I have not seen since Wednesday. She was then well, and went with me to hear Dr. Francis lecture upon Bishop Berkeley. He told the life, which is the most poetical and beautiful '99 EARLY LETTERS TO of any of his contemporary philosophers, and then suggested that the " hmits of a lecture " did not permit an extended notice of his philosophy, and so gave none. Among my hoHday gifts was Miss Barrett's poems. She is a woman of vigorous thought, but not very poetical thought, and throwing her- self into verse involuntarily becomes honied and ornate, so that her verse cloys. It is not natural, quite. Tennyson's world is purple, and all his thoughts. Therefore his poetry is so, and so naturally. Wordsworth lives in a clear atmos- phere of thought, and his poetry is simple and natural, but no more than Tennyson's. Pardon these critical distinctions. I make them to have them expressed, for Burrill did not see why I called Miss Barrett purple. It was because her highly colored robe was not harmonious with her native style of thought. Ben Jonson, too, I have been reading. After him and Beaumont and Fletcher (who are imitators, rather, of Shake- speare), I feel that Shakespeare differed not in degree only but in kind from all others, his con- temporaries and successors. In his peculiar path Jonson was unequalled, but Shakespeare includes that and so much more ! He seems to be the only one to whom poets are content to be inferior. Remember me to Charles Dana and my other compeers at Brook Farm, especially Charles New- comb. Yours sincerely, G. W. C. JOHN S. D WIGHT XIX My dear Friend, — If I should come to Brook Farm on Thursday evening will it be con- venient, and shall you be at home? If all cir- cumstances favor, I should like to remain with you until Saturday. On Thursday I shall go into Boston to hear what the Texas Convention is saying, and if I hear anything very eloquent or interesting may not see you until Friday. I was very sorry to know nothing of your con- vention until it was over. I should have run down to have seen you. On Saturday evening I was at the Academy, and on Sunday at the Handel and Haydn. I have by Burrill a letter from Cranch, and a book of German songs from Isaac. More anon. Your friend ever, G. W. Curtis. Concord, /' week, the Unitarians have been holding meetings and discussions. I do not feel impressed by them very much, they stand in such a negative position, " one stocking off and the other stocking on." At Isaac's request I have been reading the life of the founder of his order, St. Alphonse of Liguori. He was a very pious man, and the Church was very jealous of him. It is a painful book to read, for the Catholic Church seems to use heaven as a weapon whereby to conquer the earth. I have not yet written Isaac, as he 247 EARLY LETTERS TO wanted me to read the book first; but if his promised prayers fall as short as the history, I shall be delivered incontinently to the buffetings of Satan. I hope this will not find you at Brook Farm, for it cannot reach there until Monday ; the con- cert is on Wednesday, if it is pleasant. Charles Newcomb and his mother are here. Yours ever, G. W. C. CONXORD, June 6, 1846. My dear Friend, — I send you some verses for the Harbinger, which are not a conceit, although they relate to no actual personal experience ex- cept that I am sometirnes conscious of the main fact, for my dreams do sometimes so surpass the waking reality that the charm of the suggesting person, if not lost, is indefinitely subdued and postponed. It is very pleasant here at Minot's. The family are still, the household goes smoothly on, and we live in a house 150 years old, under a tree of apparently almost equal age and looking across a green meadow to a clump of pines and birches beyond. The scenery in Concord is very gentle but pleasant. I have become attached to it as to a taciturn friend who has no splen- 24S JOHN S. DWIGHT did bursts of passion but wears always a soft smile. All the morning we are busy working, and in the afternoons I have been reading Goethe's " Rome." It is very fine, and full of wisdom and beauty. His thoughts are clear and just and profound, and he looks on every side. He was so ready for Italy, too, as the home of art — he a lover and student of art, an artist by nature, and always too much a man. But Goethe, though he is constantly a wise friend, is never a lover. You could not take him always, personally, as the companion of your rambles, your jokes, your silence and sorrows. I think of several persons among those I know, who arc by no means lights upon a hill, whom I should select as companions for a journey rather than him. In Rome one would wish to see him as he would Jupiter, and hear all his simple, grave, and catholic discourse; but has he that ineffable and inexplicable human delicacy and sympathy which is worth so much more in a man, as the innocence of the dove is than the wisdom of the serpent. And yet, in the " Elective Affinities," does he not show all that one could wish? But why should he be haunted by the thought that he docs not have it and think of particular things to prove it, except that he does not have it? It is like feeling the beauty of single lines which a man writes without being impressed by the whole poem that he is a poet. 249 EARLY LETTERS TO I had yesterday a long letter from Crancli and his wife. They are now in Washington, and are enjoying the same June weather that we have here. They have a peculiar interest to me as those who are to take the leap into the ocean whence we do not know whether we shall emerge upon some fairy island or upon desolate rocks or shall sink forever deeper and deeper in the sea- caves where the mermaids are. For a residence in Italy is certainly, in its entire uncertainty, in its new enclosures of circumstances and influ- ences, like leaping into an unknown sea. It is a lover's leap, however, and love is beyond the hopes or arrangements of wisdom. The Concordians are all well. I feel a pang in going to-night to take leave of Elizabeth Hoar, who is going away for several weeks, and who will not return until after I have left Concord. She seems to me one who may at any moment become invisible, like a pure flame. Almira is well, and sends love to you. She hopes you will come and make her a visit during the summer, and I hope it may be made in June, as I shall go away by the ist of July, and move by slow stages towards New York. The summer will fly by on swift wings, and more beautiful than those of a gorgeous butterfly which we examined to- day ; it flitted away among the dark pines, as the summer will disappear in the shadowy pines of autumn, so grave and at last solemn. 250 JOHN S. DWIGHT I hope this late afternoon is as beautiful with you as it is here. Your friend, G. W. C. Destiny That dream was life, but waking came. Dead silence after living speech, Cold darkness after golden flame. And now in vain I seek to reach In thought that radiant delight Which girt me with a splendid night. No art can bring again to me Thy figure's grace, lithe-limbed by sleep; No echo drank the melody An after-festival to keep With me. and memory from that place Glides outward with averted (ace. I loved thy beauty as a gleam Of a sweet soul by beauty nursed, But the strange splendor of that dream All other loves and hopes has cursed- One ray of the serencst star Is dearer than all diamonds are. Yet would I give my love of thee. If thus of thee I had not dreamed. Nor known that in thine eyes might be What never on my waking gleamed. For Night had then not swept away The possibilities of Day. 25« EARLY LETTERS TO For had my love of thee been less. Still of my life thou hadst been queen. And that imperial loveliness Hinted by thee I had not seen; Yet proudly shall that love expire The spark of dawn in morning's fire. How was it that we loved so well, From love's excess to such sweet woe. Such bitter honey — for will swell Across my grief that visioned glow Which steals the soul of grief away As sunlight soothes a wintry day. And so we part, who are to each The only one the earth can give. How vainly words will strive to reach Why we together may not live, When barely thought can learn to know The depth of this sublimest woe. Concord, June 29, '46. My dear Friend, — I had hoped that you would have come to Concord yesterday, because to-morrow early I leave, and shall be here only one day more, towards the close of the next week. I had not expected to have gone so soon, but I shall accompany a sick friend to Saratoga by slow stages, and, returning to Worcester, make a short 252 JOHN S. DWIGHT visit among my kindred there, and then re- turn to Concord to take my final departure. I shall try to secure some day about that time to come to Brook Farm, if only to say fare- well to you ; but just now I cannot specify the day. My trip to Monadnock was very beautiful. The minister, Jno. Brown, is the same Brook Farmer in a black coat; and I enjoyed a few days at his house exceedingly. I wrote a long journal while there, and cannot say anything about it here, therefore. This afternoon I have answered Isaac's letter which I received during the winter. With great modesty I attempted to show him how, in the nature of things, proselyting was hopeless, at least upon any who are really worth converting. But the tone, like my feeling, was friendly and gentle. If it docs not change his course towards mc, he will better understand my feeling and po- sition, for I told him that in men of his nature and tendency the zeal of prosclytism is a part of the fervor of sentiment, and therefore I expected and willingly accepted his exhortations, and only deplored them as a loss of time and misuse of opportunities of communication. The Roman Church was such an unavoidable goal for Isaac that one who knows him well cannot possibly grieve to sec him prostrate before the altar, and ought to understand and anticipate what was 253 EARLY LETTERS TO called his arrogance, which is a necessary portion of the sentiment and position. The review of Mr. Hawthorne's book in the last Harbinger is delicately appreciative. The introductory chapter is one of the softest, clearest pictures I know in literature. His feeling is so deep, and so une.xaggerated, that it is a pro- foundly subtle interpreter of life to him, and the pensiveness which throws such a mellow sombre- ness upon his imagination is only the pensive- ness which is the shadow of extreme beauty. There is no companion superior to him in genial sympathy with human feeling. He seems to me no less a successful man than Mr. Emerson, al- though at the opposite end of the village. For a week or two, if you write, continue to address me at Concord, and believe me, in con- stant unitary feeling. Your friend, G. W. C. Concord, y«/f \\th, '46, Sunday night. My dear Friend, — I have just returned from Almira's, who sends her love, and will be very happy to see you. I have written Mr. Haw- thorne to go to Monadnock with me this week, but I suppose his duties will prevent. If I go 254 JOHN S. DWIGHT I shall probably return before Sunday, as that is John Brown's working day, and we shall stay with him. The night was glorious as I came from Al- mira's. The late summer twilight held the stars at bay ; and in the meadows the fireflies were flitting everywhere. Suddenly in the north, directly before me, began the flashings of the aurora — piles of splendor, a celestial colonnade to the invisible palace. It is a fitting close for a day so soft and beautiful. We took a long saun- tering walk this morning and found the moun- tain laurel, which is very rare here. I have been busy all my afternoons reading Roman history. Niebuhr and Arnold are fine historians. They are such wise, sincere men and scholars. I sit at the western door of the barn, looking across a meadow and rye -field to a group of pines beyond. My eye fixes upon some point in the landscape which constantly grows more beautiful, winning my eyes from the rest, until they gradually slide along, finding each as pleasant until the whole has a separate and individual beauty like a fall whose expressions you know intimately. It is a " Summer of Sum- mers," as Lizzie Curzon writes me, and I am glad that my last hours in my own country will be so consecrated by beauty in my memory. Burrill goes again to the Hudson to see Mr. Downing on Thursday. He will remain a week, 255 EARLY LETTERS TO I suppose, and go again to New York in August, when I sail. Let me have my answer in person, for so short and poor a letter does not deserve the exclusive attention of writing. Remember me kindly to all at Brook Farm, to Wm. Channing particularly, if he is there. Your friend ever, G. W. C. Concord, /«/^ \lth, 1846. My dear Friend, — It is a miserable piece of business to say my farewell to this blank sheet and send it to you, instead of having you say good-bye to my blank face. But, unless you can come to Ida's on Wednesday or Thursday, it must be so. A sudden trip to Saratoga has de- ranged my plans. Will you now send my copy of the Harbinger to Almira? We have been too happy together in times past and mean to be so so much more, here or somewhere, that we will not be \Qxy serious in our farewells, for we have been as far apart since I left you as we shall be when you are at Brook Farm and I at Palmyra. So good-bye, whether for two or three years, or an indefinite period. 256 JUllX S. D WIGHT When \vc sec each otlicr again \vc sliall inat, for our friendship has been of a fine gold which the moth and rust of years cannot corrupt. Will you give my love and say good-bye to Mr. and Mrs. Ripley and my other friends with you? and remember, as he deserves, Your friend, G. W. C. Milton Hill, Midnight, July 16, '46. My de.vr Friend,— I could not come this evening, and shall only have time in the morn- ing to go to Boston and take the cars ; so we must part so. 1 will copy some of my verses for you if I can steal the time, and write you from Europe if David Jones permits me to arrive. I must say good-bye and good-night in some lines of Burns's which haunt me at this time, though they have no appropriateness; but they have a speechless woe of farewell, like a wailing wind: " Had we never loved sac kindly. Had we never loved sae blindly. Never met or never parted, We had never been broken hearted." Yr friend G. VV. C. I shall write you again. Will you give this to Jno. Cheever? I have no wafer. R 257 EARLY LETTERS TO Fort Hamilton, Long Island, /«/c 30, '46. My dear Friend, — It is very shabby, but I have been so unexpectedly and constantly sepa- rated from my manuscripts that I cannot copy, as I hoped, some of my verses. I have but one more day on land, and more than I can well do in it. Could you hear how the sea moans and roars in the moonlight at this moment, it would be a siren song to draw you far away. I strain my eyes over the water as one struggles to compre- hend the end of life, but the beauty of the future lies unseen and untouched. God bless you always, my dear Friend ; and do not fail to write me often. Affly. yr friend, G. W. C. Rome, November 22d, 1846. My dear Friend, — Italy is no fable, and the wonderful depth of purity in the air and blue in the sky constantly makes real all the hopes of our American imagination. Some- times the sky is an intensely blue and distant 258 JOHN S. DWIGHT arch, and sometimes it melts in the sunlight and Hes pale and rare and delicate upon the eye, so that one feels that he is breathing the sky and moving in it. The memory of a week is full of pictures of this atmospheric beauty. I looked from a lofty balcony at the Vatican upon broad gardens lustrously green with ever- green and bo.x and orange trees, in whose dusk gleamed the large planets of golden fruit. Palms, and the rich, rounding tuft of Italian pines, and the solemn shafts of cypresses, stood beside fountains which spouted rainbows into the air, which was silver- clear and transparent, and on which the outline of the landscape was drawn as vividly as a flame against the sky at night. Be- side me rose floating into the air the dome of St. Peter's, which is not a nucleus of the city, like the Duomo of Florence, but a crown more majestic and imposing as the spectator is farther removed. I had come to this balcony and its realm of sunny silence through the proper palace of the "Apollo "and the "Laocoon" and Raphael's " Transfiguration " and " Stanze." The Vatican is a wilderness of art and association, and in the al- lotted three hours I could only wander through the stately labyrinth and arrange the rooms, but not their contents, in my mind, but could not es- cape the "Apollo," which stands alone in a small cabinet opening upon a garden and fountain. It was greater to me than the "Venus de .Medici" 239 EARLY LETTERS TO at Florence, although it has taught me better to appreciate that when I see it again. It is cold and pure and vast, the imagination of a man in the Divine Mind, given to marble because flesh was too recreant a material. The air of the statue is proudly commanding, with disdain that is not human, and a quiet consciousness of power. It does not resemble any figure we see of a man who has drawn a bow, but the ideal of a man in action. Like the " Venus," it shows how entire was the possible abstraction of the old Sculptors into a region of pure form as an expression of what was beyond human passion, with which color seems to correspond. Deities are properly the subject of sculpture because of color ; colorless purity of marble accords with the divine supe- riority to human passion, and although the my- thology degraded the gods into the sphere and influence of men, to the mind of the artist they would still sit upon unstained thrones. This was one day. Upon another I stepped from a lovely road upon the Aventine into an old garden where, at the end of a long, lofty, and narrow alley of trimmed evergreens, stood the Dome of St. Peter's filling the vista against an afternoon sky. In these mossy and silent old places, the trees and plants seem to have sucked their vigor from the sun and soil of many long- gone centuries, and to remain ghosts of them- selves and hoary reminiscences of their day in 260 JOHN S. DWIGHT the soft splendor of modern light. Italy itself is that garden wherein everything hands you to the past, and stands dim-eyed towards the fut- ure. It is a vast university, endowed by the past with the choicest treasures of art, to which come crowds from all nations, as lovers and dreamers and students, who may be won to live among relics so dear, but who mostly return to stand as interpreters of the beauty they have seen. There- fore, Italy is a theme which cannot grow old, as love and beauty cannot. Every book should be a work of art, and Italy, like the Madonna, should have a fresh beauty in the hands of every new artist. It is no longer interesting, statisti- cally, for the names and numbers have been told often enough ; but the impression which it leaves upon the mind of men of character and taste is the picture which should be novel and inter- esting. But it is the relics of the summer prime of the Rome of distant scholars and lovers, and the art which shines with an Indian -summer soft- ness in the autumn of its decay, that rule here yet ; for the imperial days have breathed a spirit into the air which broods over the city still. Although it is a modern capital, with noise and dirt and smells and nobility and fashionable drives, and walks and shops, and the red splendor of lacquered cardinals, and the triple-crowned Pope, in the arches which rise over modern 361 EARLY LETTERS TO chapels and of which they are built, in the ruined forum and acqueducts and baths and walls, are the decayed features of what was once greatest in this world, and which rules it from its grave. My first view of old Rome was in the moonlight. We passed through the silent Forum, not on the level of the ancient city, which recoils from mod- ern footsteps and goes downward towards the dust of those who made it famous, but by the ruined temples and columns whose rent seams were shaped anew into graceful perfection by the magical light, by the wilderness of the ruined Caesar's palace, until we looked wonderingly into the intricacy of arch and corridor and column of which was built the arch-temple of Paganism, the Coliseum. The moonlight silvered the broad spaces of scornful silence as if Fate mused mourn- fully upon the work it must needs do. Grass and flowers in their luxuriant prime waved where the heads of Roman beauties nodded in theirs ; and yet how true to the instincts of their nature were the Romans, who nourished by their recrea- tions the stern will which had won the world for them. And since literature and art and science depend in a certain measure for their develop- ment and perfection upon a strong government, the same Roman beauty, in dooming to a bloody death before her eyes the man upon whose life depended other and far-away beauties and loves, may have breathed a sweeter strain into the song 262 JOHN S. DVVIGHT of the poet. The Popes have not refrained from obtruding a cross and shrines upon this defence- less ruin. They would not render unto Caesar the things which were his, and although they are shocking at first, the magnificence of silence and decay soon swallows them, and they appear no more except as emblems of modern Rome lost in the broad desolation of the imperial city. One cannot see the present Pope without a hope for Italy. I first saw him at high mass, with the cardinals, in the Palace chapel. The college of cardinals resembled a political and not a religious body, which, although the council of government, it ought to resemble upon religious occasions. When the Pope entered they kissed his hand through his mantle. He is a noble- looking man, of a dignified and graceful pres- ence, and already very dear to the people for what he has done and what he has promised. I could not look at him without sadness as a man sequestered in splendor and removed from the small sympathies in which lies the mass of human happiness. The service seemed a wor- ship of him, but no homage could recompense a man for what a Pope had lost. I have seen him often since, and his demeanor is always marked by the same air of lofty independence. It is good to sec him appear equal to a position so solitary and so commanding, and to indicate this vigor of life and the conscience which would prc- 263 EARLY LETTERS TO vent him from making his seclusion a bower for his own ease. From one of these wonderful days passed in the Villa Borghese, a spacious estate near the city, equally charming for its nature and art, I went, a day or two since, to watch by the death- bed of a young American. Hicks (a young artist, whom I love and whom the MacDaniels will know) and myself stood by him and closed his eyes. He was without immediate friends, except a connection by marriage who has recent- ly arrived, and who was with him at the last. I was glad that I was here to be with him and lay him decently in his cofifin. The handful of Americans in Rome followed him last evening at dusk, close by twilight, and buried him in the Protestant graveyard, near the grave of Shel- ley's ashes and heart. The roses were in full blossom, as Shelley says they used to be in mid- winter. It is a green and sequestered spot under the walls of old Rome, where the sunlight lingers long, and where in the sweet society of roses whose bloom does not wither, Shelley and Keats sleep always a summer sleep. Fate is no less delicate than stern, which has here united them after such lives and deaths. And yet here one feels also the grimness of the Fate which strikes such lips into silence. I force myself to send you this letter, because I want to write you. It is a shadowy hint of 264 JOHN S. D WIGHT what I think and feel, as all letters must be. Cranch and his wife are with mc, and will stay the winter. There are not many Americans, but I look every day for Burrill. Hicks I have seen a good deal and like very much. He speaks to me of the MacDaniels. Give my love to all at Ikook Farm, and forgive a letter which you will not believe was written in Italy. Cranch .sends much love. Always yr G. W. C. How I wish you were going with us this sweet sunny day (23 Nov.), on which I am writing this at my open window, without a fire, to sec the " Gladiator " at the capitol. It is a great respon- sibility to be in Italy, one may justly demand so much of you afterwards. Once more, good-bye, and some day send mc a ray from the beautiful past which Brook Farm is to me. G. \V. C. Naples, April rjth, 1847. Mv OE.VR Friend, — If it would be hopeless and dispiriting to paint the constantly shifting lights and beauties of a summer day, it is no less so to write now and then a letter from Italy EARLY LETTERS TO to one who would so warmly enjoy all that I see and hear. Every omitted day makes the case worse, a month makes it hopeless; and so I lived in Rome for five months and wrote you only one letter at the beginning. Yet is the mag- netism of friendship not yet fine enough for you to know how constantly you were remembered, how I lingered in the moonlit Coliseum, how I felt the commanding beauty of the "Apollo" thrill through me, and the " Laocoon " and the proud heads of Antinous, and the pictures which are what our imaginations demand for Raphael and Leonardo and Michel Angelo, how I stood in the flood of the " Miserere," which was and was not what I knew it must be, how I plucked roses from the graves of Shelley and Keats, and led a Roman life for a winter, not for myself only, but for you ! I have written quite regularly to my family, and described some of the many matters which were new and picturesque, but have scarcely snatched a line to a friend except to Lizzie Curson and two letters to Geo. Bradford, who had some intention of coming out to join us in this enchanted land. In my last letter to him, which I wrote at the end of the Holy Week, I mentioned the " Miserere" and the news of that time. He will show you the letter, I suppose, if you wish to see it. But from Rome I broke sud- denly off and came to Naples. 266 JOHN S. DWIGHT Is it not fine when things are beautifully dif- ferent, when you part from one as if you were leaving everything, and find satisfaction in an- other — not a superiority, but equal difference? So is Naples after Rome. There is nothing solemn or grand in it. It rises in solid banks of cheerful houses from the spacious streets upon the water to the grim castle of St. Elmo, which hovers almost perpendicularly over it. These houses are white and bright, and turn themselves into the sunlight, and stretch in long lines around the bay, blending with the neigh- boring towns so that the base of Vesuvius is marked with a line of white houses, which go on undistinguishably from Naples. Farther round is Castellamare and Sorrento, whose promontory beyond is one corner of the bay, of which Capri seems like a portion sailed away into the sea. And the bay of Naples is so spacious and stately, so broad and deep, its lines those of mountains and the sea, its gem the sunny city, and the islands of Capri, Ischia, and Procida, so large and high and springing so proudly from the water, that it satisfies the expectation ; and sometimes this broad water dashes and rolls like the ocean, then subsides into sunny ripples and gleams like glass in the moonlight. Two or three old castles stand out upon the bay from the city, pictu- resque objects for artists and lookers on, and in the hazy moonlight black and sharp masses rc- 267 EARLY LETTERS TO fleeted in the water. Sails and steamers and boats of all sorts are constantly dotting this space, and I am never weary of wandering along the shore on which lie the fishermen among their boats, with mournful looking women and black, matted- haired, gypsy-like children. The picturesqueness of cities and life in Italy is more striking to me than anything else. The people are so poetic that, although lazy and dirty and mean, what they do and wear is like an ani- mated picture. The gay costumes of the women — ribbons and bodices and trinkets — with their deep olive skins and bare heads, with hair that is most luxuriantly black, and beautifully twisted and folded in heavy, graceful braids, the broad- browed and outlined Roman women, majestic and handsome, not lovely or interesting, but showing as the remains of an imperial beauty; and in Naples the little figures and arch eyes and Ori- ental mien of the girls — these persons living in quaint old cities where the brightest flowers bloom amid hanging green over windows far and far above the street and walking in high-walled nar- row lanes over which hang the sun-sucking leaves of the indolent aloe, and in which gleam the rich orange and lemon trees, or, as now, the keen lustrous green of just-budding fig-trees, and vines, or entering with quiet enthusiasm into festivals of saints, sprinkling the churches and streets with glossy, fragrant bay -leaves, hanging gar- 268 JOHN S. D WIGHT lands upon the altars while a troop of virgins, clad in white and crowned, pass with lighted tapers to the Bishop's feet for a blessing, or more grandly drawing St. Peter's in fire upon the wild gloom of a March night, and in vast procession of two or three thousand marching down the narrow Corso sing- ing a national song to the Pope — all this, if you can unravel it, paints for the eye what can never be seen at home. " I pack my trunk and wake up in Naples," and find myself, for which I am grateful ; but I also find Italian beauty, which is like American as oranges are like apples. Such deep passionate eyes, such proud, queenly motions, such groups of peasants and girls in gardens listening to music, and lying asleep in the shade of trees, all this material of poetry is also material of life here. This is the true Lotos Eaters' island, this the grateful land of leisure ; here people walk slowly and eat slowly and ride slowly, and, I must say, think slowly. But that also is corn to my mill. I find some sympathy with the happy Guy of Emerson's book, for there is no public opinion in Italy. A man feels that he stands alone and enjoys all the joys and sor- rows of that consciousness and that position. Your room is your castle. If a man knows where it is he comes to sec you, but whatever you do or say (of course excepting what is po- litical) is your own business and not that of in- fernal society, which at home is grand arbiter of .69 EARLY LETTERS TO men's destinies. Except you care to do so, you have no state to keep up. The card for a royal ball finds you as readily in your fourth story as in the neighboring palace it finds My Lord ; and so you are released from that thraldom which one cannot explain, but which one feels at home whether he consents to it or not. And it is a broad and catholic teacher, this travelling. I have been quite unsphered since I have been here, in various ways, and have dis- covered how good every man's business is and how wide his horizon. There is a shabby Ameri- canism which prowls proselyting through Europe, defying its spirit or its beauty or its difference to swerve it from what it calls its patriotism. Because America is contented and tolerably peaceful with a Republic, it prophesies that Europe shall see no happy days until all kings are prostrated ; and belches that peculiar elo- quence which prevails in small debating-clubs in retired villages at home. This is like taunting the bay of Naples with the bay of New York, or apples with oranges, or the dark lustrous beauty of Italian women with the blond fairness of Ameri- cans. Why should all men be governed alike rather than all look alike ; the north is cold and the south is warm. These monarchies which are decried have been the fostering arms of genius and art ; and in Italy and the rest of the countries here lie the grand achievements of all time, which 270 JOHN S. DWIGHT draw the noblest and best from America to con- template them and suck the heart of their beauty for the refining and adorning their own land. And why fear imitation! Men imitate when they stay at home more preposterously than when they see what is really beautiful and grand in other places; and a fine work of art repels imitation as the virgin beauty of a girl repels licentiousness. And we are elevated by art and mingling with men to know what is noble and best in attainment. We fancy a thousand things fine at home because we do not know how much finer the same may be, perhaps because wc do not know that they are copies. Indeed, I feel as if it would be a good fruit of long travel to re- cover the knowledge of the fact which we so early lose — that we arc born into the world with relations to men as men before wc are citizens of a country with limited duties. A noble cosmo- politanism is the brightest jewel in a man's crown. I have heard very little music in Italy — never so little in a winter. In Rome the opera was nothing, and there were only two or three con- certs. That of a young Pole pianiste whom I knew was good, Maurice Strakosch (perhaps he will come to America). But the great gem of music was the singer Adelaide Kemble. You know she has left the stage and the public, but this was an amateur concert for the Irish. Her 271 EARLY LETTERS TO singing of " Casta Diva " was by far the finest gem heard. Such richness and volume, such posses- sion and depth and passion, such purity and firmness and ease, I did not believe possible. Al- though a single song in a concert it seemed to em- brace the whole spirit of the opera. She sang also the moon song from " Der Freischutz " simply and exquisitely, also in a trio of Mozart's and a Barcarolle, all of which showed the same genius. I do not see that she lacks anything, for although not beautiful, her face is flexible and really grand when she is excited. Cranch thought her voice not quite sweet in some parts. The " Miserere " was exquisitely beautiful, but not entirely what I expected to hear. In Naples I have heard the "Barber of Seville" and an opera of Mcrcadanti's. The last is refined street music, and reminds me of the mien and manners of a gentleman. The bands play every day, which is much better than at Rome. But it is unhappy for me that Verdi is the musical god of Italy at present, because the bands play entirely from his operas, which remind me of a diluted Donizetti. He has brought out a new opera, "Macbeth," within the month, at Florence. On the third evening he was called out thirty -eight times; the young men escorted him home in triumph, and the next night various princes and nobles presented him with a golden crown ! I have heard various rumors of Brook Farm, 272 JOHN S. D WIGHT none agreeable. I feel as if my letter might not find you there; but what can you be doing any- where else ? I have received no letter from you, no direct news from Brook Farm, except through Lizzie Curzon and Geo. Bradford. But it floats on in my mind, a sort of Flying Dutchman in these unknown seas of life and experience, full of an old beauty and melody. I know how your time is used, and am not surprised at any length of silence. We go into the beautiful country about us for a fortnight, to Salerno, Sorrento, Pestum, and Capri, afterwards Rome again. Florence, the Apennines, Venice, Milan, Como, the Tyrol, Switzerland, and Germany lie before us. What a spring which promises such a summer! You will still go with me as silently as before. At this moment I raise my eyes to Vesuvius, which is opposite my window, and the blue bay beneath. I can see the line of the Mediterranean blending with the sky, and remember that you are at the other side. I write as if Brook Farm still was there, and am more than ever Yr friend G. W. C. EARLY LETTERS TO LETTERS OF LATER DATE Providence, Thursday, Oct. lo, '50. My dear Dwight, — I was very very sorry not to find you the other day ; but as I was only a few hours in Boston, I had no opportunity of renewing the attempt. This morning I saw a letter, I suppose from you, in the Tribune, about Jenny's Saturday concert in Boston. It reminded me to send you a most rapid criticism(?) of mine published here yesterday. I address the paper as I do this note. This Jenny Lind singing is a matter of such lofty art in the sublimest sense, and we are so young and jejune in all art, that I cannot much wonder at the general impression. It is precisely what would be the fate of really fine pictures and poems. Huge wonder, childish delight, intoxication, delirium, and disappointment — but little of the apprehensive perception of the pres- ence of an artist so profound and grand. I knew, of course, that you must be realizing 274 JOHN S. DWIGIIT somewhere the greatness of this gift. Now I have heard you say so, I am glad to send you a kind of echo. When shall I see you ? I shall be here for a day or two more, then relapse into New York, for how long I know not. Let me have a line from you, saying that among all your virtues you yet count Memory, as does yours most remem- bcringly, George W. Curtis. Providence, March lyt/t, '51, Monday. I believe, dear John, that I have not yet had the grace to congratulate you upon " the great change " that you have recently undergone. But, happily, I am equally sure that you have not ascribed my silence to anything but the habit of epistolary' silence that has come upon me since my return from the other continent, mainly distinguished, if my memory may confirm uni- versal remark, by the great number of letters written from it. May I also add the satiety of writing, which a man who has just published a book may be sup- posed to be experiencing? For I have published a book, a copy of which, with the heart of the author, pressed but not dried between the blank 27s EARLY LETTERS TO leaves, you should have had immediately but for my absence from New York. It is called " Nile Notes of a Howadji," and has thus far, being only a week old, received as flattering notice as any tremulous young author could have wished. One or two chapters are considered somewhat broad, I hear; but the whole impression is precisely what I wished. I am here because I was invited to repeat my lecture here ; and, as I was not back in New York when the " Notes " were issued, I preferred to tarry in the " ambrosial retirement," as Rev. Osgood calls it, and not serve as foot-notes to my Readers. I shall go home soon, and I trust by way of Boston. If so, I shall of course see you and — yours, I must now say. Will you present my warmest regards and pleasantest recollections to your wife, and believe still in your friend George W. C. in Mv DEAR John,— The Lady Emelyn swears by Venus and all the Goddesses that our party at your house must be postponed until Friday evening, that she may bring with us Miss Anna Loring and Miss Augusta King. What can mere men do? They submit. And they walk across 276 JOHN S. DWIGHT the fields to look at a beautiful woman, at a Poet's wife. We are all very hot and very happy down here, and wonder if your ashes are white or quite invisible, for of course, in the city, you have be- come ash. Present us most kindly to your wife, and for- get not that our coming will be much more en- chanting with Mrs. S.'s proposed addition. Yours aff., G. W. C. NaHANT. ll\-iiius,iiiy morniiii; Aug 12, '51. My dear John,— We arc tapering ofif. Mrs. Storj' is not well, and we have not our young ladies yet. Also C. P. Cranch goes to Quincy, where his wife is. So I fear you will have only William and me, and very probably his proof- sheets will retain him. I expect Cranch to come, but he is quite unwell. Yours aff., G. W. C. Friday, Aug. 15, '51. V Providence, Friday, Sep. 26, 1831. My de.\r John, — This morning I received the enclosed. If you can shed light upon the dark- 277 EARLY LETTERS TO ness it indicates will you please do so, sending me what information you have. I am up to my ears in a book I am writing in continuation of the "Notes," " Syrian Sketches "; and shall stay here perhaps two months. I shall hope to slip down to Boston occasionally and see you all. I was there a few hours on Monday, and saw William by chance. Burrill has reached England, and is ver^* much pleased with Malvern. Give my love to your wife, whom I would be glad to hear sing once more. Your aff. G. W. C. Providence, 25M Nov., '51. My dear John, — I had intended to see the B. when she came. I have sounded her trumpet here, for auld lang syne. If I can do so heartily I will write a notice of her concert, as I always do when I am here, at the request of The Journal. I enclose my last effort in that kind, apropos of Catherine Hayes. I would gladly come to Boston, but I cannot think of it just now. Should Jenny Lind threaten not to sing in Providence I shall very likely run down with my cousin Anna and hear her for an evening. We are trying to have the Germania 278 JOHN S. D WIGHT here, but for music in the general we go hang. My cousin, however, is a very accomplished player, and I enjoy with her Mendelssohn's songs and Liszt's arrangements and " Don Giovanni " and eke Schumann. I see Fred Rackemann has returned. My book is written ; but I am now very busily revising it. Hedge much prefers what I have read him to the other. He lives just across the street from me, and we have many a cigar and chat. He preaches superb sermons. Give my heartiest love and remembrances to your wife, and forget not the faithful. I have a line from the Xest of Xtophers the other day, who is painting away for dear life. Tom Hicks, ditto. The latter lives with Charles Dana. Ever your aff. G. W. C. I have unluckily forgotten your no. so I'll put the street, not being quite sure of that ! ! ! Tribune Office, N. Y., 19M March. '52. Mv i)i:.\K John,— Your most welcome letter has been received, and its contents have been submitted to the astute deliberations of the edi- torial conclave. We are delighted at the pros- 279 EARLY LETTERS TO pect — but — we do not love the name. isL Jour- nal of Music is too indefinite and commonplace. It will not be sufficiently distinguished from the Musical Times and the Musical World, being of the same general character. 2d. "Side-glances" is suspicious. It "smells" Transcendentalism, as the French say, and, of all things, any aspect of a clique is to be avoided. That is the negative result of our delibera- tions; the positive is, that you should identify your name with the paper and called it Dzuigkt's Musical Journal, and you might add, sotto voce, " a paper of Art and Literature." Prepend : I shall be very glad to send you a sketch of our winter doings in music, especially as I love Steffanane, although she says, " I smoke, I chew, I snoof, I drink, I am altogether vicious." You shall have it Sunday morning, and I will address it to you simply at the P. O. My book is ready, is only waiting for the Eng- lish publisher to move; and I have other irons heating, of which anon. I've had a long letter from Wm. Story, who is happy and busy in Rome — who wouldn't be ? I wish you could run on and see us all. Tom Hicks is right busy with his great portrait of 280 JOHN S. D WIGHT the ex-Governor. Indeed, we arc all so busy that I have only time to remember — rarely to say — that I am Your ever aff. G. W. C. /. 5. Dwight, Esq. Give my kindest regards to your wife. I wish she could sing in your paper. N. Y.. Saturday, i^h April, '52. My dear John, — I have been so busy in the last throes of my "Syrian Howadji," which is to be born on Tuesday, that I have not sent you an intended letter about the Philharmonic and the Quartette ; and I presume from to-day's number that you have other notes of them. I think, however, I will still send you something by Mon- day's mail if you will promise not to use it if you don't truly want it. There is rather a flat and barrenness just now in the world of music, but, with the Academy exhibition, Brackett's group, and the Paul Delarochc picture we can make out something. Your paper is a triumph. It is so handsome to the eye and sweet to the mind, it is so pleas- antly varied, and its sketches have such com- pleteness of grace in themselves, that the reader 2S1 EARLY LETTERS TO is not ashamed of the pleasure it gives him and the interest he has in it, which you may have re- marked is not alwaj-s the case, for instance, in liking Anna Thillard's business at Niblo's (of which very little is certainly enough). I am half ashamed of myself for really enjoying what I know is so utterly artificial. Do you conceive ? I just see in the National Era a long notice of you and yonx Journal. It was not mine or the T.'s or I should have sent it to you. But j'ou must find it. You will receive an early copy of my Syrian book, the last of the Howadji, who, leaving the East, becomes a mere traveller. It was a real work of love, and I hope you may have some of the pleasure in reading that I had in writing it. Give my love to your wife, and believe me always, G. W. C. I send you over the page a list of names of my subscribers and enclose you the funds in N. Y. money. [Enclosed were eight subscrip- tions to Divight's Journal of Music, Curtis him- self taking three copies.] N. Y., 2ZthApr., 1852. My de.\r John,— I span out my letter so far that I had no room for pictures, but I will 282 JOHN S. D WIGHT not forget them, and tlicy will remain open until the middle of July. I shall be only too delighted to see Mr. Gold- schmidt, and sincerely regret that I have enjoyed no such opportunity of seeing Jenny Lind until just as she is going. Wc are beginning to stir. White and I have both suggested one concert of the true stamp, and the Times came out against us and we pitched back again into the Times ; and the Herald and other journals have called attention to the warfare, and insist that hum- bug, Barnumania, and high prices shall be put down. I am going to write an article upon Jenny Lind's right to ask $3 if she thinks fit, on the principle that Dickens, Horace Vernct, and every molasses mcrcliant acts and properly acts. Why not send your papers to the publisher of some Saturday paper to distribute with his? The difficulty is that if people arc irregular in getting it, it will lose its character of steadiness, which is fatal to such a paper. Ripley agrees in this. By mail the majority of people who haven't boxes at the P. O. get nothing at all, or only spasmodically. You will have to send it to some agent here, I am confident. Cranch is about breaking up house-keeping preparatory to his summer rustication. He is in a tight place again, as he is too apt to be, poor fellow! The fact is art is poor pay unless 2 S3 EARLY LETTERS TO you are a great artist. He fights very cheerfully, though, which is a comfort. His children are very interesting, and at his house there is a set of us who have the best of times, the most truly genial and poetic. I enclose you the funds which I so amusingly forgot, and, if I can serve you by seeing any agent or other " fallow deer,'' I shall be most happy to do it ; and don't fail always to call upon me. Yours most truly and ever, G. W. C. Is this sum right ? XI Newport, /«/y 29//;, 1852. My dear John, — I have been running round for two or three weeks, and have forgotten to ask you to change the address of the papers which come to me. . . . I am charmingly situated here with Mr. and Mrs. Longfellow and Tom Appleton, and with some other pleasant people. It is very lovely and lazy; but I am quite busy. Give my love to your wife and believe me, always. Your aff. G. W. C. 284 JOHN S. DWIGHT XII Newport, Oct. ii///, 1852. My dear John,— I leave Newport this even- ing, and since " friend after friend departs," you will hardly be surprised to hear that I have fallen from the ranks of bachelors; and that when I said I should die such, I had no idea I should live to be married. Prosaically, then, I am en- gaged to . . . Her father is cousin of . . . and is of the elder branch of the family, so that I al- ready begin to feel sentimental about Lady Arabella Johnson. On the other side I come plump against plump old Gov. Stuyvesant of the New Netherlands. What with Dutch and Puritan blood, therefore, I shall be sufiRciently sobered, you will fancy. Wrong, astutest of Johns, for my girl plays like a sunbeam over the dulness of that old pedigree, and is no whit more Dutch or Puritan than I am. She is, in brief, 22 years old, a very, very pronounced blonde, not handsome (to common eyes), graceful and win- ning, not accomplished nor talented nor fond of books, gay as a bird, bright as sunshine, and has that immortal youth, that perennial freshness and sweetness which is the secret of permanent happiness. I am as happy as the day, and have no especial intention of marrying directly. Her father has 28s EARLY LETTERS TO a large property, but she is not, properly, a rich girl. I shall be settled at home in ten days. To-night I am going to Baltimore, and shall re- turn to New York next week. Give my warmest love to your wife, and be- lieve me — Benedict or no Benedict — always Your aff. G. \V. C. N. Y., W/i April, 1853. Caro Don Giovanni, — Any time these six months I have seen a skulking scoundrel who endeavored to avoid my notice, and always turned pale when he saw a copy of Divighfs Journal of Music. I pursued him vigorously, and he confessed to me that he was the chief of sinners, and that his name was Hafiz. " But," said he, when he saw in my eyes the firm resolve to acquaint the editor with the fact that his correspondent was still living — " but, oh ! say that I have just paid to Messrs. Schar- fenberg and Luis my subscription for the three copies owing the coming year" — and thereupon he vanished ; and I haste to discharge my duty, for if I have a failing, it is doing my duty. Should you see the editor will you please state not only the fact of the subscription paid, but 286 JOHN S. D WIGHT that I have heard this pursued Hafiz swear that not many moons should wane before he wrote to D'u'ig/it's Journal of Music a letter about things in New Yori<, " our new music and other things," for instance. Hafiz, who tries to make me believe that he docs the music in Putnam, says that in the May number he has commended your Journal. He is an abandoned fellow. How are you, and how prospers i\\c Journal ? and have you quite forgiven my wicked silences as well as my imperfect speeches; and will you please not to forget that you are never forgot- ten by Your aff. G. W. C. N. Y.. Sc-pt. 14, 'SS- My DE.VR John, — I have just returned to town, and find your letter suggestive of White Mountains, quiet, artists, and other dissipations; but I am just from the hills, where I have been for six weeks, and am ordered to the sea-shore to be salted. I am not quite sure whether I shall go to Newport or to Long Hranch ; but I in- finitely prefer Newport, although I have very valued friends upon the New Jersey shore. My old head has been bothering me all sum- 287 EARLY LETTERS TO mer; but Dr. Gray has taken it fairly in hand, and says I shall soon be all right. I hope he is not all wrong. I am coming to Boston some time during the season to lecture before your Mercantile Library, and have promised to make something of a visit ; but I fear it will hardly be possible to stay long. X was on my track yesterday, although I havn't seen him for an age. I hear he projects Europe again, but know nothing definite. To- day I am just hurrj'ing off to Staten Island to assist at the nuptials of. . . . So they go, and so, soon — let us pray — may Your aff. G. W. C. N. \.,/ufy 19, 'S3. My dear John,— It has been anything but indifference that has prevented my sending you some notices of the pictures. But my head, which was muzzy when you were here, has been muzzier ever since, and my Dr. made me relin- quish everything and run out of town, so that I have been gadding for a month, and the August Putnam hasn't a line of mine. You see I have been positively idle; but I hope I am somewhat better. At least I feel so. JOHN S. DWIGHT although I shall not work much for some time to come. I'm going up to Cranch's this evening and to Lenox next week. It is not impossible that some happy gust may blow me to Conway. Give my kindest love to your wife, and believe mc — muzzy or no muzzy — Your afT. G. W. C. Home, 9/// Feb., '54. My DE.\R Jonx, — Behold me with unspoken farewells and innumerable Boston banquets well (I hope) digested, and with only a glancing word with your wife at Mrs. Ticknor's on Monday morning. One thing thou lackcst, O Frcunde! You have not heard Miss Skelton sing! It is a young girl who not only does not like " classical " music, but does not even profess to, which I hold to be virtuous in factitious times. But she is a sweet, natural, honest girl, and sings Italian, yea, even " Ah ! Non Credea," with a sweet, full, and ten- der voice which is truly delicious. She is one of Cranch's stars. I heard her at the Green- woods. I have a vague idea of darting through Boston T 289 EARLY LETTERS TO again about the first of March. I shall be in New Bedford, and might go to Keene. Good-night. I have every reason to love your Boston. Your aff. G. W. C. Friday I hope to see Mrs. Downing, and if I hear of the great X — an unknown quantity to us — I will inform you. N. Y., Monday, April lo, '54. My dear John, — I send you my humble duty. The season is over, and I return to an accumulated mass of work. I find nothing pleas- anter in my winter's reminiscences than the Boston episode. Give my kindest love to your wife, and my regards to Hurlbut, and believe me as always, G. W. C. West New Brighton, Staten Island, N. Y., II 4/;-//. 1883. My dear John, — Your letter reached me safely, and I share your surprise and regret at what seems to me, so far as I can see, a wholly 290 JOHN S. D WIGHT unncccssar>' act. I will speak of it in the Weekly at once because the Magazine is always so long after ! I saw some notice of Cranch's seventieth birth- day. Good lack ! how the years whiz ! I did not hear from him, and I suppose it is not exactly the occasion upon which you ask your friends to make merry. Longfellow, I remember, wrote me when he was seventy that it was like turning the slate over and beginning upon the other side. We are all well and quiet. The Doctors in Now York dine Dr. Holmes to-morrow, and I have promised to go. I have heard nothing from Edmund Tweedy for many a day, but I suppose that all goes well with him and his. Good-bye. It is very good to hear from you always, and I am always affectionately yours, George William Curtis. XIX West New Brighton, Staten Island, N. Y., 8 February, 1884. My dear John, — I read your letter with sin- cere but hopeless interest, because I know how very slight her chance is in Now York. The only hope lies in a circle of ladies who know her and would take pains to help her; but who arc they, and how can they care for her? The contest 291 EARLY LETTERS TO single-armed against established teachers of pres- tige of a ci-devant Prima Donna, who had small success twenty-five years ago and is forgotten, is only pitiful. I will ask one of the best and most prosperous of our teachers, and who is much in- terested in my Lizzie, what ought to be done. He knows more than any one with whom I could advise. I had heard with great delight of your portrait and of the becoming disposition which was made of it. I have thought also how sincerely you will deplore the death of our incomparable ora- tor. And I hope that you sometimes think how affectionately I am always yours, George William Curtis. New York, October 26, 1SS4. My dear John, — Your note finds me here on my way to Ashfield. I voted for Edmunds every time, and in the uproar of the vote that made Blaine's nomination I held my peace. But had I voted for Blaine, and had afterwards found good reasons to change my mind, I should not have hesitated to take the course I have taken. I am very busy, and I send you my love always. Your ancient, George William Curtis. 292 JOHN S. DWIGHT West New Brighton, Staten Island, N. Y., May 17///, 1886. My dear John, — I do not know your address, but I am sure the Boston postmaster does, and I trust this note to his superior knowledge. It was very good to see your familiar hand again and unchanged, and best of all to read your strong, clear, masterful, and delightful plea for the true saving grace of humanity, common- sense. It is a most admirable piece of work, and a host of readers will wonder that they had never thought of it before. That is the effect of all wise writing, I suppose, which like yours lays us all under obligation. Why don't you oftener bring us reports of your interviews with Egeria? Cranch had already told me of the paper with great praise, in a letter which told me also of your birthnight orgie with Boott and John Holmes. At the Commencement dinner of the year that Harvard made me a Doctor, I said to President Eliot, " Who is that military man who looks like a captain of Dragoons?" and, after making out the one I meant, he laughed and said, "Dragoons? why that is John Holmes!" As I remember him, his whiskers had a military cut ; but I have often laughed since. I have the photograph of Carrie Cranch's re- 293 LETTERS TO JOHN S. DWIGHT markable portrait of you, which is a precious possession ; and when I see Cranch I hear of you and when I don't see him I think of you, and always with the old affection. We are all well, which means my wife and daughter here, and my son and daughter-in-law and two grandchil- dren at Newton. My whiskers are white, but my hair holds out with its old brown ! Good- bye and auf wiedersehen. Most truly yours, George William Curtis. HARPER'S AMERICAN ESSAYISTS OTHER TIMES AND OTHER SEASONS. By Lau- lUiNCB HLITOX. A LITTLE ENGLISH GALLERY. By Louise I.mo- GEN GUIXEY. LITERMJY AND SOCLVL SILHOUETTES. By Hjauiar IIjoktii Bovesen. STUDIES OF THE STAGE. By BRAXDEn Matthews. AMERICANISMS AND BRITICISMS, with Otlior Es- says on Other Isms. By Brandur Maitiiews. AS WE GO. By Ciiaiu.es Dudley Warner. With lUustratious. AS WE WERE SAYING. By Charles Dudley Warner. With lUu-striitioiis. FROM THE EASY CHAIR. By George William Curtis. FROM THE EASY CHAIR. Second Series. By George WiLUA-M Curtis. FROM THE EASY CHAIR. Third Series. By Georgk William Curtis. CRITICISM AND FICTION. By William Dean II0WELL.X. FROM THE BOOKS OF LAURENCE IIUTTON. CONCERNING ALL OF US. By Thomas Went- WORTU IIlGGIXSOX. THE WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. By Charles Walustein. PICTL^^E AND TEXT. By Hexrv James. With Ilhistrations. Wbito and Gold, PDBLigHiD DT HARPER & BKOTHERS, Nkw York. tmt abort vxrki are far $aU by all boolarlUri, or will be mailtd »» IMt jmUiihtwt, potlagc prtpaiU, on nctipl qf (Ac price HARPER'S CONTEMPORARY ESSAYISTS THE PERSONAL EQUATION. By Haeey THras- TON Peck. CERTAIN ACCEPTED HEROES, and Other Essays in Literature and Politics. By Hexet Cabot Lodge. HOW TO TELL A STORY, and Other Essays. By Makk Twain. It i3 difBcult to suggest a volume more likely to furnish entertainment than this splendid collection of sketches by a wellnigh inimitable author. — A'ew Orleans States. BOOK AND HEART. Essays on Literature and Life. By Thomas Wentworth Higginson. There is in this volume a most engaging mixture of learn- ing, anecdote, and opiaion, and the time spent over its pages is well spent. — Brooklyn Eagle. THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE. By Charles Dudley Warner. Thoughtful, scholarly, and witty discourses, in a form con- venient for reference. — Springfield Republican. IMPRESSIONS AND EXPERIENCES. By W. D. HOWELLS. We fail to see how any one who loves to spend the lei.«ure moments of the day in the company of a strong and original mind can help submitting to the charm of these essays. — Ex- aminer^ N. T. ASPECTS OP FICTION, and Other Ventures in Criti- cism. By Br.\nder Matthews. Full of sound, entertaining, and illuminating criticism. — Adoance, Chicago. Post Svo, Cloth, Ornamental, VnexU Edges and Gilt Tops, $1 50 each. NEW YORK AND LONDON: HARPER & BROTHERS, Publishers J RETURN TO the circulation desk of any University of California Library or to the NORTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY BIdg. 400, Richmond Field Station University of California Richmond, CA 94804-4698 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS • 2-month loans may be renewed by calling (510)642-6753 • 1-year loans may be recharged by bringing books to NRLF • Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date DUE AS STAMPED BELOW DD20 6M 9-03