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LETTERS OF 
 SARAH WYMAN WHITMAN 
 
LETTERS OF 
 SARAH WYMAN WHITMAN 
 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 
 PRINTED AT THE RIVERSIDE PRESS 
 
 1907 
 

EDITORIAL NOTE 
 
 This little collection is made for Mrs. 
 Whitman's friends. If it awakens some 
 echo of that courage and faith which her 
 living presence inspired, the object of its 
 publication will be fulfilled. 
 
 Through her letters we catch new real- 
 ization of the high pressure at which she 
 lived. Yet no one ever found her too oc- 
 cupied to listen to the call of friendship, 
 for to her its master word was service. 
 
 The impression which her generous 
 conception of life and friendship made on 
 those who came into close relation with 
 her is best given by a few extracts from 
 letters from one and another of her friends : 
 
 *^JVhen she went out of this worlds it 
 seemed as if the high light had gone from 
 everything" 
 
 [v] 
 
 ivi718S9 
 
^^We cannot really lose a friend like her, 
 thank Heaven ! There never was such beau- 
 tiful ready affectionateness, such self-forget- 
 fulness or such eagerness to help her friends at 
 every turn to make the most of their own con- 
 ditions and surroundings and associates; and 
 this without any petty love of power over other 
 people's lives ^ or jealousy^ or wounded self -love y 
 if her way and advice were not followed. She 
 told you what she thought, but there she ended ; 
 and almost never thought wrong, it seems to 
 me now, or held her beliefs and opinions more 
 lightly or more strongly because others would 
 not accept them. It was a heavenly sort of 
 patience and self-control in a most ardent and 
 impulsive nature ; her advice never seemed, 
 either, to spring from the least or first consid- 
 eration of her own advantage!' 
 
 " There is much in these letters which 
 would be illuminating to any who should read 
 them, and fulfil our object of perpetuating that 
 personality whose expression by act and look 
 and spoken or written word has been the wine 
 [ vi ] 
 
and joy of life to us. If we could embody in a 
 hook the conviction which she conveyed of the 
 glory of lifcy and its deep ultimate meaning 
 which made all things worth while y it would 
 he a great light shed on the path of many T 
 
 " * Give to him that asketh ' seemed to he 
 this true friend's rule of life^ and as Sir 
 Thomas Browne counselled: * Give where 
 mens necessities^ not their tongues, loudly call 
 for mercy,' Tears ago when some one was 
 complaining that S, W, neglected her work 
 at the studio for other things , and that her 
 gifts as an artist lacked a development to 
 which the practice and discipline of entire 
 devotion might have hrought them ; * ^h ! ' 
 said another friend quickly, * hut she has made 
 the choice hetween living for Art's sake and 
 living for Love's sake, and we must not quar- 
 rel with that,"' 
 
 Letters of so essentially intimate a char- 
 acter as Mrs. Whitman's can only be pub- 
 lished at some sacrifice of reticence. Mrs. 
 Whitman was at once the most impersonal 
 [vii] 
 
and the most personal of friends. She 
 never stopped long in the outer courts of 
 friendship. Therefore no letters which 
 expressed her at all could be devoid of per- 
 sonality. 
 
 If the veil of privacy seems to be unduly 
 lifted, let it be remembered how freely 
 she gave her love, experience, and wisdom, 
 so perhaps to those who cherish her mem- 
 ory her words may come as one more gift 
 from generous hands. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Letters to 
 
 Miss G. Schuyler i 
 
 The Misses Timmins i6 
 
 Miss Minna Timmins i8 
 
 Mrs. Bigelow Lawrence 28 
 
 Dr. Richard C. Cabot 44 
 
 Miss Sarah Orne Jewett 61 
 
 The Misses Smith no 
 
 Mrs. James T. Fields 120 
 
 Mrs. Richard M. Hunt 121 
 
 Mrs. Henry Parkman 126 
 
 Major Henry L. Higginson 151 
 
 J. Templeman Coolidge 152 
 
 Miss Elizabeth Franklin 156 
 
 Miss Evelyn Rich 162 
 [ix] 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Miss Charlotte G. Greeley 172 
 
 Mrs. Charles Lawton 178 
 
 Henry Parkman, Jr. 182 
 
 Penelope Parkman 183 
 
 Professor William James 185 
 
 Passages from a Note-Book 216 
 
 Undated Notes 234 
 
 To S, G, r. 254 
 
LETTERS OF 
 SARAH WYMAN WHITMAN 
 
LETTERS : iiviv. 
 
 TO MISS G. SCHUYLER** 
 
 7 Chestnut Street, Boston, October lo, 1874. 
 
 I THINK the last note was from Newbury- 
 port, where Lizzy and I finished our sketch- 
 ing, and departed reluctantly for the town. 
 There never was a better field for work, 
 from the tender willows along the road, 
 and by the edges of the marsh, all the 
 way through picturesque fields and sturdy 
 apple-orchards up to groups of austere 
 poplar trees, which hold a wonderful 
 charm for me. . . . And so, I suppose, 
 comes the end of out of doors for this sum- 
 mer, though this "deepening of color" fills 
 me still with a passion of desire for the sea 
 and sky all over again, and I feel a nig- 
 gardly reluctance at the passing of each 
 October day. But you will not need me 
 
 [I ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 to tell you how fast the working wheels 
 
 : (': arc' afe'eddy beginning to grind, nor how at 
 
 ; .j**:.he4i>t I gm' ready and willing to begin. 1 
 
 '"*'"* feel a fresh ardor, born of summer and good 
 
 things, if only the dear gifts may prove 
 
 their use to me. ... I have decided to work 
 
 here in my new studio (oh, Georgy, please 
 
 care a little for it, won't you?), having 
 
 made an arrangement for renting it later, 
 
 and then go abroad the first of January, and 
 
 taking three or four months, see four or 
 
 perhaps five of the best galleries, and only 
 
 this. 
 
 Ah, I long to talk with you of it all, this 
 is so slow when words press, and I want to 
 tell you what and why and when all in a 
 breath. . . . 
 
 Isn't it beautiful to go, as you are going 
 now, accumulating at every hand, and then 
 have leave to pour it forth, changed, mag- 
 nified, even, if God will have it so 
 even more. 
 
 [2] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 After an accident in driving. 
 
 November 15, 1874. 
 
 It was a blessed escape from a great dan- 
 ger, and I can only feel an almost overpow- 
 ering gratitude as I think of it. The instant 
 before the throw was one of those great 
 moments when it seems as if one caught a 
 glimpse of the beyond, and I feel now as 
 if I had come back from somewhere. 
 
 7 Chestnut St., December 3, 1874. 
 
 Ah, dear Georgy, we will indeed " under- 
 stand," and without the paltriness of either 
 question or answer know and apprehend 
 each other. Not what, but how deeply has 
 the soul endured ? That is all a friend de- 
 mands, and that is met, not by reply, but 
 is found in the result, in what is here pre- 
 sent and evident. ... I am myself again 
 now, but oh, so glad over the escape from 
 more serious things. Neither can I really 
 regret the accident, for it brought some 
 
 [3] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 strangely tender things in with it, and has 
 told me some things I did not know be- 
 fore. One can't help wondering over the 
 potency of larger things over less ; one good 
 stern fact shakes into right relation a mul- 
 titude of crude theories, and is a most val- 
 uable tonic. 
 
 Paris, February 2, 1875. (Hotel de TAmiraute.) 
 
 I must send you one little word just to 
 say that we are safe and comfortable and 
 delighted, here in Paris. . . . Arrived at 
 the Hotel, our little Madame was smiling 
 upon the steps, and we were established 
 with a bright fire, a delicious little dinner 
 and smiles galore. ... I shall not soon for- 
 get the day in London, nor what you were 
 in it to me. Dear Georgy, it was so sweet 
 of you and you humored our little enthu- 
 siasms with such sympathy. ... It is so 
 good too, to have seen my first really great 
 sights with you. Now I have seen others 
 
 [4] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 too, going every day to the Louvre, and 
 finding joy and inspiration in it, as you 
 will know. 
 
 Florence, Hotel Corona d* Italia, February, 1875. 
 
 The first look at Italy was fraught with 
 a fine touch of satire, for the morning broke 
 only to discover a heavy snow storm. . . . 
 However, having telegraphed to the Hotel, 
 we were received at the station and soon 
 established, and oh, Georgy, did n't I wake 
 the next morning to see first of all out of 
 my window the very leaves on a tree such 
 as Titian and Veronese painted ! With the 
 yellow walls beyond, and a little child sing- 
 ing at the casement ! This strange beau- 
 tiful Florence, how mellow it seems after 
 the crisp modern look of Paris, as if the 
 group of buildings with dark eaves and 
 sober windows had grown up out of the 
 ground along with the grave cypresses and 
 cedars which bear them company. Already 
 
 [5] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 we have seen much, the chapel of the 
 Medici first with the Michael Angelo 
 statues. Ah, he is indeed " Angelo against 
 the world." 
 
 Rome, March i, 1875. 
 
 It Strengthens my fibres to know you 
 believe in me, and some day we will in- 
 deed "beat our music out.'' . . . We are 
 established at the Costanzi in the most 
 perfect place, an apartment overlooking 
 the city, and fronting the street west, with 
 a balcony on which one may stand and 
 aspire! I can think of nothing else that 
 expresses the sense of the great presence 
 spread out before one. . . . Even yet I turn 
 a longing thought back to Florence. We 
 found such rich places there, and going 
 daily to the galleries grew familiar with 
 certain most delicious pictures, which one 
 cannot easily lose the presence of. Gior- 
 gione was revealed to me in Florence, and 
 [6] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 it is in Florence that the spirit of Michael 
 Angelo seems everywhere present and com- 
 pelling, and Lucca della Robbia, the Beato 
 Angelico, ah, how high and beautiful 
 they all were, and what long lessons one 
 learns and in how many ways, as one comes 
 face to face with the great verities of Art 
 which their hands have fashioned ! It is 
 the old, old story of life, a "patient con- 
 tinuance; '' an abiding purpose. 
 
 Paris, Easter Day, 1875. 
 
 I must take you to myself in a little lov- 
 ing word, on this dearest day, which seems 
 to come with a curious distinctness and 
 beauty, here in a strange land, and so far 
 from home and its associations. But Easter 
 is Easter everywhere, and perhaps one is all 
 the more conscious of its essence when the 
 surroundings that usually bear it company 
 are no longer present. I woke this morning 
 with a little homesick pang at first, I will 
 
 [7] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 own, and you will know what pleasure it 
 was, when I found a note and such a wealth 
 of flowers from my dear Class. They had 
 sent by Lizzy this little choice commission, 
 and it was a very dear thought that glad- 
 dened the glad day. ... I must run back a 
 little way, for I long to tell you one word 
 of Venice and what it was to me. I feel like 
 writing over Italy, Visions; for it was there 
 that there came such a revelation of great- 
 ness, such a new faith in the possibilities 
 of Art. And Venice is the crown of Italy, 
 with its royal gallery and endless churches, 
 full of beauty. Of course everywhere I 
 would except the Sistine Chapel, which is 
 incomparable; but that belongs no longer 
 to the realm of possible work, being a 
 fresco, and so one comes to the Venetian 
 school with a sense of having found the 
 ultimatum (of all things that have been) 
 of Painting in its several departments, 
 where color, light, and composition are 
 [8] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 all in perfection. So day by day, we went 
 about, finding those rare pictures, which 
 begin with the Assumption, and are beau- 
 tiful all the way through, and though I 
 had imagined much, they far outran me ! 
 Tintoretto was a joy and surprise all at 
 once. I had no thought of his being so 
 great, though to be sure I had occasionally 
 heard him spoken of in comparison with 
 Titian. I should never think of comparing 
 him, for that is one of the things which 
 cannot be done with really great men, and 
 so I feel that whether it is Titian, with his 
 melodious painting, or Tintoretto, amaz- 
 ing you by his marvellous and unmatched 
 imagination, or Veronese, with that royal 
 elegance which is all his own, they stand 
 out in their own integrity, offering their 
 own gifts. ... It was a temptation, yes, 
 a very great one, to stay at Venice, but we 
 never altered our first conviction that the 
 place to work in was Paris ; and both Lizzy 
 
 [9] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 and I were equally sure that some work 
 was the best thing for us : something which 
 should give us a chance to test this and that 
 process in the very face of good things. So 
 we went on, making the through trip from 
 Venice here without stopping and reached 
 our dear old quarters at seven o'clock Satur- 
 day evening. Madame, indeed the whole 
 household, was ready for us with roses and 
 violets in our rooms, and everything sweet 
 and fresh, while a pile of forty-two letters 
 were on the table ! . . . Well, we were not 
 very long in beginning, and every day go to 
 the Louvre, painting many things, learn- 
 ing something, I must believe. And as 
 we did all our little jobs when we were 
 here before, we have uninterrupted time 
 for study, and often go in the afternoon to 
 the Luxembourg, while we turn the even- 
 ings to account by sitting for each other 
 alternately ! In this way we get a chance 
 to work from life, which is delightful, 
 [lo] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 Liverpool, April 19, 1875. 
 
 Lizzy and I were not sorry to see the 
 National Gallery again (where you took 
 us for that first look!) and beside we had 
 the Bethnal Green Collection, which was 
 a feast indeed more than we had dreamed 
 of, with best of all three beautiful Velas- 
 quez, such as all we had seen before had 
 not given of his. With the exception of 
 one of Titian's portraits, none (no por- 
 trait I mean) had seemed to me so great 
 as one of these of a little boy. It is full of 
 that sweet seriousness of childhood which 
 is so ineffable, a rare picture indeed. 
 
 Boston, May 23, 1875. 
 
 Oh, Georgy, my thought has gone to 
 you a hundred times in all the rich delight 
 of returning to so much that I love; for 
 in spite of all Europe, I came back with 
 that strange joy that belongs to home and 
 country, and found a new meaning in 
 
 [ "] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 many things. You had my very last word 
 from the other side ; so you know all up 
 to that place, and there is little to tell of 
 the sea, as one grewsome word would 
 cover the whole voyage. I was sick oh, 
 very sick nearly all the way and have 
 lost most of my pride and won a large hu- 
 mility in consequence ! . . . That myste- 
 rious trunk was unpacked with universal 
 satisfaction and its contents are now scat- 
 tered afar, only we wished we had brought 
 many more autre s comme ca ! The duty on 
 pictures now is only ten per cent, but it 
 was against one's liking somewhat to pay 
 that even, when velvet gowns and all man- 
 ner of gauds can be brought ad infinitum I 
 But some day we shall have a free country 
 that is free. 
 
 August 5, Beverly Farms (1880 or 1881). 
 
 Don't you know those periods when all 
 one cares for seem like active presences 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 within ? Most vital and most strong ? These 
 are the moments when it seems indeed as 
 if faith and love could move mountains, 
 and which appear to insure the future as 
 well as to reveal the meanings of the past. 
 Don't you remember that somewhere in 
 the Bible it speaks of " past mysteries ? " 
 And I always wonder why mysteries are 
 supposed to lie ahead of us, when yester- 
 day and to-day seem to me far more deeply 
 hidden from our sight. ... I wanted so 
 much to hear Mr. Brooks's Sermon on 
 Dean Stanley, it was only the week before 
 that he came and spent a night with me, 
 and he spoke of him with such devotion 
 and warmth. This little visit from Mr. 
 Brooks has been one of my real pleasures 
 this summer, he talked with great freedom 
 of himself and other things, and I found 
 him more simple and childlike than ever. 
 Oh, how many things I want to tell you. 
 . . . Yet perhaps it could all be com- 
 
 [13] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 pressed into the one statement that life 
 life is ever more vast and full and wonder- 
 ful to me. Along with this knowledge 
 runs the daily round the come and go 
 of every day, in a summer more than ever 
 full of many people and much to do. But 
 so far I have been able to work at my own 
 things here and there at least, and have 
 five portraits on hand just now. 
 
 Written after Phillips Brooks's fiineral. 
 
 January 26, 1893. 
 
 It was dear to me to get your message 
 in the midst of these sacred days and I 
 bless you for it ! If Mr. Brooks had died 
 a year ago, I could not have borne it for 
 him, but in the last wonderful year he has 
 made one great movement forward, has 
 preached in every parish, has made him- 
 self the friend of every rector, and set up 
 a spiritual standard in the whole state. It 
 seems indeed as if he had set his earthly 
 [ H] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 house in order ; and I have never seen him 
 so much at peace as this winter. So, when 
 he went swiftly out of our sight there was in 
 it a kind of splendor, which cannot let one 
 remember that one*s heart aches; one can 
 only feel the beauty and delight of it and 
 so go on. 
 
 [IS] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 TO MISS MINNA TIMMINS AND 
 MISS GEMMA TIMMINS 
 
 May 13, 1886. 
 
 This is to say to two very dear children 
 that they are quite as dear on the rolling 
 prairie as in these narrow streets. ... I 
 have gone on in a dull way (when there 
 came a lucid interval in the annals of house- 
 building) matronizing costume parties, and 
 having the whole artistic fraternity, in 
 squads, to dinner, and having more studio 
 talk than for years past. French has just 
 made a really charming thing, a frieze for 
 the mantle-piece of his Concord atelier, a 
 wreath of dancing maidens, full of melody, 
 and with the promise that opulent pro- 
 mise ! of everything that is fair, which 
 belongs to the happy or fortunate sketch. 
 . . . And how do you fare, dear Ombra and 
 Gemma ? I have no fears ; and yet I shall 
 
 [ 16] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 like a message of assurance when you are 
 having that long San Franciscan stretch 
 that your list prescribes, for by that time 
 you will have had your experience as indi- 
 viduals and as most terrible! "a party." 
 But in this case it is a delightful party, to 
 every member of which I send my most 
 cordial remembrance. 
 
 I think I am conscious of a slightly 
 malign joy in thinking of Mr. Brooks, to 
 whom the world is a purely masculine 
 world, in so large an assemblage of femi- 
 nine import. But it will have no lasting 
 effect, he will come home to his pulpit, 
 and looking comme ioujours upon that 
 sea of upturned bonnets will say that he 
 speaks to each young man, etc., etc., comme 
 toujours again! All this, jest: and yet little 
 Beau and I are not in especially jesting 
 mood, in fact we are so serious, that for 
 fear of revealing it, we had just better send 
 our love and be off. 
 
 [17] 
 
LETTERS 
 TO MISS MINNA TIMMINS 
 
 October, 1886. 
 
 It is not your birthday but yourself 
 which has been so present a thought in 
 these last days ; and to-night, as I look out 
 at the pale stars and the shining light- 
 houses, I dream a little over this quarter of 
 a century that is to come for my dear child. 
 
 That divine gift of impulse is like an 
 uncut jewel, and it is the edges of study 
 and work which are to make it capable 
 of reflecting, as so many precious things do, 
 so I welcome a little more stringency a 
 girding up of the loins, all that befits the 
 good soldier. 
 
 When you spoke of some special work 
 I thought of the schools ; classes where 
 you could help not only the children, but 
 their work as well : giving those stimulat- 
 ing aids that go towards getting their little 
 
 [ 18] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 hearts involved with what they are about. 
 Everywhere in the doing of what we do, 
 more recognition of the divinity and the 
 necessity (to God) of the task. All this 
 those who see must make known to those 
 who see not. 
 
 Should you feel disposed to something 
 in this direction ? And have you any clues ? 
 Or shall we go to work to find some? 
 Then but dear, talking is better; and 
 we will speak face to face speedily. Indeed 
 I only write to-night because I have you 
 in my heart; and because I want to tell 
 you how dear to me was your message 
 the birthday letter which I shall not 
 forget. God bless you. 
 
 March, 1887. 
 
 I can't come from the heats and con- 
 tentions of the "Gay Tabor" and not re- 
 port to you, my far-off child, and so you 
 must know that we had a meeting full of 
 
 [19] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 illustrious ones, with W. James and Wald- 
 stein as special comets beside our own fixed 
 
 stars, while brought a friend or two, 
 
 and went walking about with his 
 
 handsome head among the rafters (always 
 supposing there are any rafters!). So you 
 see it was a large evening: yet a little 
 lonely withal. After a time we formed into 
 a great round ring and brought Holmes 
 to bear upon his question once more, over 
 which there was some very good talk, and 
 I think Royce held his own with quiet cer- 
 tainty; touching a fundamental principle, 
 I think, when he said that there was really 
 no thought without emotion, and no emo- 
 tion free from thought; and so truth in 
 its essential elements must flow to us 
 through both these channels. Also James 
 said that, looked at from one point of view, 
 the artist was like any other man, except 
 for the greater rapidity of his intuitions : 
 what he saw at once others saw more 
 
 [20] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 slowly. We '11 talk this all over some time, 
 darling, when you return from the moun- 
 tain slopes, and bring the messages that 
 the hills have given you, and meantime, 
 we in the valley go along as best we may, 
 and keep at the treadmill and "trust the 
 larger hope,'' as Mr. Tennyson said so 
 long ago. I wonder if you took the new 
 Browning with you? If you didn't, tell 
 me and I will send it to you: for there 
 are some splendid places in it; things of 
 a large significance : and with strains like 
 Paracelsus. . . . 
 
 I finish this incompetent note after a 
 short interval, which has been crammed 
 with affairs of all sorts, painting which is 
 called work, and work which is called 
 play, until this evening at Mr. Lowell's 
 lecture, full of delicate and discriminating 
 touches but lacking somewhat, it seemed 
 to me, vitality and largeness. But this may 
 have been my bad temper. 
 
 [21] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 "Gay Tabor Night/' March 19, 1887. 
 
 It would not be quite possible to have 
 the evening and not bring you into it, . . . 
 and so here is a little message w^ritten fresh 
 from the studio, where, with the variety 
 which accompanies our unity, the num- 
 ber was small instead of large, and marked 
 by little groups instead of one big Saturnic 
 ring ! Gemma will have told you of it, and 
 ofthe strange little Russian Jew, . . . who, 
 atop of a slight, almost meagre, figure, wore 
 a head which was like a picture, keenly 
 and delicately drawn, with locks that were 
 almost Hyacinthine. Altogether a most 
 interesting personality, and one from which 
 I think something must come, some day. 
 
 With the facility of his race he has 
 a passion for languages and knows almost 
 everything, including Arabic, with its my- 
 riad vocabulary. 
 
 I can't tell you how it touched me to 
 look at this young creature and remember 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 that the last talk I had about the Russian 
 Jews was with Emma Lazarus, whose pas- 
 sionate heart was wrung by their wrongs, 
 and who even now, as she lies dying in 
 Paris, is dreaming of them and writing 
 the sorrowful songs of her race. 
 
 Did you see in the last " Century ** the 
 Prose Poems ? they were almost wonderful, 
 with here and there a touch of real im- 
 aginative splendor, but she is worn thread- 
 bare by illness, and so the work suffers. 
 I think she will like to die near the place 
 where Heine's soul went forth. 
 
 April 26, 1887. 
 
 I have just found among loose papers 
 an Easter letter to you, . . . and am some- 
 what "fashed'' at the sight! ... I wish it 
 had gone from my hand to yours, with a 
 white Easter rose and a white Easter wish. 
 In its place I will put this new message, 
 written at the end of a day a mile long. 
 
LETTERS 
 
 and with a great deal of civilization in it, 
 but not much life. But I will tell you when 
 I wanted you : last night, at Mr. Dresel's, 
 when he gave Bach's Magnificat with his 
 own chorus, which, all winter long, has 
 been hammering out the deep, difficult 
 beauty of that great work, and finally came 
 to its presentation. I think I never had a 
 purer musical joy. It was one splendid, 
 celestial round ring of song, and took one, 
 all travel-stained as one was, away where 
 it is eternal dawn, where the eyes of Bea- 
 trice shine. 
 
 Outside the low voice of the organ was 
 the river, and within, they who sang were 
 so in it, that they looked like a painted 
 picture of singing men and women. Ah, 
 you will see how it was, and that it was a 
 great gift to me. 
 
 There seem to be a thousand things to 
 speak of, out of this work-a-day world to 
 you living in the wide air, and on the edge 
 
 [24] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 of the sky. . . . Your last message left you 
 just on the edge of Schopenhauer and his 
 bitterly acute deductions regarding the 
 human Spirit, and I long to know how his 
 Will-Philosophy touched your understand- 
 ing. Tell me about it; for I know that 
 however one may look at Schopenhauer, 
 one is sure to get from him some piercing 
 rays of light cast upon the human ma- 
 chinery. 
 
 I read the other day a little book on the 
 Foundations of Ethics which William 
 James edited, that cleared up a good deal 
 of philosophic underbrush, and so had value 
 in determining the meanings of terms, and 
 as soon as I get my copy back I will send 
 it to you, and an article on the Mind Cure ; 
 which latter cult is taking a very tremen- 
 dous hold on people hereabouts. I wish 
 you could hear some of the really fine 
 spiritual points which are made by those 
 who have had experience there. ... I be- 
 C^5] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 Heve everything looks towards a strange, 
 new, uplift of the Spirit; a larger influx 
 of the Divine, 
 
 " That heart and mind according well 
 May make one music as before. 
 But vaster.'* 
 
 December 5. 
 
 I have waited till the birthday has really 
 come in, my beloved child, to tell you 
 how much it was to me to find that gold 
 and white token at my door, to have the 
 note warm in my pocket and warmer in 
 my heart. It is gifts like these with the 
 possession of which one is newborn, and 
 seems to enter on a new year as if it were 
 a glorious Kingdom. Indeed the day should 
 be sacred to giving rather than receiving, 
 in sign of loving gratitude, and I send to 
 you dear children a fresh measure of the 
 love which is always yours, and to-day 
 yours with a prayer of faith. God bless 
 you. 
 
 [26] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 The little silver thing and the little gold 
 thing strung on one thread greeted me 
 returning, and pleased me more than I can 
 say, beloved children. They speak in the 
 true " universal language," where there is 
 every tense, but only the possessive case, 
 and no accusative at all ! 
 
 The last Dante comes to-morrow you 
 know ; the last of that great journey which 
 we have beheld as in a vision, and in these 
 final chapters all terrestrial elements have 
 gone away utterly; there is nothing but 
 the pure flame of the spirits in heaven. 
 
 I must tell you that the windows are 
 not so far advanced as was planned, and it 
 will yet be some time before we can see 
 them but I shall send you word. Mean- 
 time I have apprehensions and fears in 
 every color of the rainbow ! 
 
 [27] 
 
LETTERS 
 TO MRS. BIGELOW LAWRENCE 
 
 June 8, 1888. 
 
 I have thought of you a great deal in 
 these blooming, changing, spring days. I 
 have been in the city; but I have been 
 aware of the country, and that is the point 
 after all. The leaves have come, but I 
 think nothing says that the summer is here 
 so plainly as the first shadow that the fo- 
 liage throws. When I see that upon the 
 grass I know how the year's calendar 
 stands. . . . 
 
 All you said of the work in glass was 
 very comforting ; and I find it a beautiful 
 medium for the expression of many things. 
 At this little Chapel of St. Andrew's there 
 is a chance to give so many people plea- 
 sure; for some who could not dream of 
 having a memorial window on the ordi- 
 nary terms can arrange with me for having 
 
 [28] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 it come as part of the decoration (in a 
 way), and so I hope it will make some of 
 the people who worship there a little hap- 
 pier. 
 
 January 20, 1889. 
 
 To-night, I snatch a fearful joy ! and in- 
 sist upon a word with you, if indeed you 
 will vouchsafe to forgive the dulness of 
 my message. ... I might make this dul- 
 ness more complete by giving you a cata- 
 logue of the things I have not done ; for 
 that has been the most thrilling part of 
 this three weeks' chase, with work accu- 
 mulated and crying out to be done: with 
 people going and coming, and eating and 
 drinking, with the tying up of old respon- 
 sibilities, and the taking on of new ones. 
 In the midst of this clatter, however, one's 
 self goes on quietly enough, and how often 
 I wish I might step aside into the serene 
 and blithe air of Aldie, and there with 
 you recall glowing realities. . . . Mean- 
 
 [^9] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 time the daily life runs on, on the surface ; 
 men and books, and classes and com- 
 mittees, poets and learned ladies, and the 
 exchange of mental commodities. Mr. 
 Lowell adorns dinner parties very agree- 
 ably ; and Mr. Brooks seems to me to have 
 deepened and broadened if that were pos- 
 sible, this year ; with now and then a note 
 of bitterness in his cry. 
 
 Those who have lately read the thou- 
 sands of pages in Robert Elsmere are now 
 reading the tens of thousands of Mr. Bryce. 
 Have you undertaken it yet, or those of 
 your household? A wonderful treatise it 
 is indeed the whole American organ- 
 ism justly and sympathetically stated in 
 short, a Master's work. 
 
 In the train, February, 1890. 
 
 As I fly along I think of you and venture 
 to send you this little sheet of crooked 
 writing which marks my flight. 
 
 [30] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 Such a landscape of rainbows as there is 
 to-day, I have almost never beheld 
 stretches of snowy fields with little winding 
 rivers black with slow water, the tawny 
 grasses and reddening shrubs, or violet dis- 
 tances of amazing loveliness. It makes me 
 wonder afresh over the mystical meanings, 
 the unravelled secrets of what we call color, 
 and I long to understand it better that I 
 may use it more nobly. 
 
 February 2, 1890. 
 
 I want very much to see you so much 
 life goes on within as well as without, 
 and one longs to compare thought and 
 feeling at every turn of the strange tide. 
 I have been at work too, endeavoring 
 to make up for lost time. . . . But one 
 works in the midst of a shower of flying 
 projectiles, levelled at one's unhappy head 
 by Society on one hand, and Culture on 
 the other, till one feels as if one would 
 
 [31 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 rather go solitary and ignorant all one's 
 days. 
 
 The Browning Memorial was, alas, dry 
 and pallid, owing to various influences, some 
 of omission, and some of commission ; 
 needing that fusion of audience and speakers 
 which is essential to the true success. Yet 
 the songs were lovely and a little poesie of 
 Gilder's gave sanctity to the moment if all 
 else failed. . . . There was, I thought, 
 quite a deep and true word said of Brown- 
 ing in Miss Repplier's English Love Songs 
 which I do not doubt you have seen, and 
 which I think a very distinguished critical 
 essay far the best, to my mind, which 
 she has written. And oh, have you seen 
 Tennyson's last volume, so full of melody 
 and a certain austere tenderness of feeling. 
 It moves one deeply to think of him and 
 Browning standing on the threshold of 
 the next life, and looking forth with such 
 a serene and majestic mien. 
 [3^3 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 After all I am prepared to think that the 
 level of spiritual things, in the 19th cen- 
 tury, is by no means a low one, for the 
 poets speak for the multitude, which loves 
 God better than it knows. 
 
 Of the illness of one dear to her. 
 
 May 20, 1890. 
 
 So the days go on with hope and fear, 
 but with hope still ahead : and acting, I 
 must believe, as a panoply of defence. 
 
 The daily living with this undercurrent 
 of illness, seems like a show and pretence. 
 Yet one keeps about and does what work 
 there is to do, and sees the spring coming 
 visibly up the land with her silent, flowery 
 feet. 
 
 May 24, 1890. 
 
 The end draws near for our beloved 
 child. She is in perfect peace, beautiful and 
 happy, and so all must be well with us as it 
 133} 
 
LETTERS 
 
 is with her. But hearts cry out. ... I have 
 not seen her. 
 
 May 24, 1890. 
 Chief in the many-colored coat of pain, 
 
 Wherewith the strenuous soul is tightly clad, 
 There is above all hues one scarlet stain. 
 
 Most saddest in the tone where all are sad. 
 Not when a comrade fights in other's stead, 
 
 Blue glittering decked to meet the encroach- 
 ing spear. 
 Nor fronts hot yellow flame without a fear : 
 Nor when in purple shadows he lies dead. 
 These heights his eager blood mounts to achieve : 
 
 These deaths the burning lover leaps to die : 
 Thus may he with one blow hard fate retrieve : 
 
 Thus shall he set Love's chalice in the sky. 
 But would he to the Heart of Grief attain. 
 Let him walk outcast from another's pain. 
 
 June 6, 1890. 
 
 Somehow it has not been the time for 
 writing since we parted: yet our hearts 
 [34] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 have not failed to speak with each other 
 across the distance. 
 
 It has been a time for recovery and sweet 
 gathering up the threads of memory. Of 
 feeling less perhaps the sword of separation, 
 and more the renewal of companionship 
 in an altered, but none the less real, form. 
 Gemma's friends have come much to me 
 and have been so sweet so full of all she 
 was in their lives and hopes. Two morn- 
 ings as I have been at work Mr. Brooks has 
 appeared, and brought that rush of min- 
 gled things which one comes to associate 
 with him. Do you know that he went 
 
 from 's funeral to the wedding? It is 
 
 fine to be able to do that in just the per- 
 fect way. ... I wish I could go into a 
 place of solitude for a time it would 
 seem easier than routine life. But it is a 
 comfort to have this one month. 
 
 [35] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 June 23, 1890. 
 
 I moved to Old Place ten days ago ; and 
 for a week I have been absolutely alone 
 and it has been a wonderful time to me: 
 so full of voices ; so far from the ordinary 
 come and go of the outer world. ... It 
 is strange that at a time like this the sky 
 and the sea seem strange, and out of tune 
 with what one is feeling. I have not wanted 
 to paint out of doors could not feel the 
 impulse but I shall not forget what it 
 has been to think and think, to dream and 
 dream. . . . 
 
 July 14, 1890. 
 
 Those days of solitude of which I wrote 
 you were of great help to me ; so I think 
 my head is above water again, while every 
 great thing seems to me to have become 
 more great, every real thing more real in 
 these strange deep months that have past. 
 The young people who have been with me 
 
 [36] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 before with Gemma about the 4th, asked 
 if they might come this year all the more: 
 and I had them here and was very glad that 
 I did; for we all felt how sweet it was to 
 keep the strands of intercourse unbroken, 
 whether on earth or in heaven. And for 
 me these days of quiet must end before so 
 very long I fear, and I must get me back 
 into the arena, but in the stillness I think 
 I have learned something. 
 
 August 2, 1890. 
 
 There are indeed ideal heights on which 
 it is possible to live, even in this life ; but 
 to find the " equal yearning towards God'* 
 in kindred souls, this is the rarest as it 
 is the choicest possession. Of this, and of 
 much that this recalls, I have long words 
 to say, for revelation comes not only in 
 study of Dante, but in experience of life 
 in one's self and in others : and one is 
 amazed at the depth of variety of even 
 
 [37] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 ordinary living at the change and flux 
 in human character at the " exultations 
 and agonies " over which Wordsworth 
 dreams. 
 
 Easter Day, returning from Bermuda, 1892. 
 
 I am returning from the enchanted 
 island, . . . and O, what an island it is ! No 
 one can say too much of the color and 
 fragrance of it, the sea, which is mixed 
 of violet and turquoise, the sky, radiant 
 with trailing clouds, everywhere beauty, 
 and with it all a sort of strange romance, 
 set in such loneliness, yet smiling and rosy 
 as the dawn. It made me feel things that 
 cannot be expressed in words. 
 
 May 26, 1892. Bolton. 
 
 This is 's day not of Death but 
 
 of Resurrection. . . . The country is sweet 
 with perfume and garlanded with orchards 
 of blossoms. I have never seen anything 
 
 [38] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 like it and the time is a time of peace. If 
 only you knew how often I put my hand 
 silently into yours, in all the busy days when 
 I do not because I cannot write. . . . There 
 are days when the casual and the incidental 
 has its turn ; when I am holding stirrup 
 cups for travellers, and attending to their 
 last jobs ; when I am getting out of Winter 
 into Summer and wondering if the " sea- 
 sons '* were worthy of Mr. Thomson's no- 
 tice ! Wherefore letters are full of the dul- 
 ness of my dulness, and I am loath to send 
 one to you. . . . Apropos of letters I must 
 put within this two or three bits from a re- 
 cent publication of the Emerson-Thoreau 
 Correspondence. There is something so 
 rare in the white fire of Transcendentalism 
 star-stuff it is, and cannot die. In fact, of 
 late there have been many crumbs of liter- 
 ary interest, and I am wondering whether 
 I shall not now and then make up a little 
 budget and send across to you ? 
 
 [39] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 March 12, 1896. 
 
 The little memorial to Mr. Brooks, 
 which my Bible Class has long dreamed 
 of, is now finished and waiting to be put 
 up at Easter. Some day I will show you 
 this, and meantime send a little rough 
 sketch. 
 
 The three windows are in the Parish 
 Room where the Class meets, and as it 
 is also used for many practical purposes, 
 the windows (three giving on the cloister 
 to the south) are kept in clear glass with 
 jewelled flowers at the intersecting of the 
 little frames . . . and then the middle 
 one with a single device. In the glass of 
 course there is a depth and richness that 
 this paper sketch little conveys. 
 
 And O, along with all these doings runs 
 the great current of the inner life, as now 
 lived. It is wonderful to know how one 
 can suffer and yet not be destroyed. I can- 
 not begin to understand the dreams and 
 
 [40] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 the intimations of this new life, but it re- 
 minds one of those great words 
 
 "If my bark sinks, 't is to another sea.** 
 
 I think it is a deeper sea which the soul 
 is now called upon to sail. 
 
 April 15, 1896. At Sea. 
 
 One word . . . across the stretch of 
 waters, where all has gone with rather 
 more than usual facility, less of the perni- 
 cious turmoil within, and a freer exercise 
 of the human faculties ! 
 
 And ah! what stretches of time in 
 which to hope and to dream, and to feel 
 afresh how near is beauty to the longing 
 sight. . . . 
 
 Have you seen a little book Le Tresor 
 des Humbles? A little simple and mysti- 
 cal series of chapters which speak gently 
 of some things which we feel more and 
 more to be true. 
 
 [41] 
 
' LETTERS 
 
 ^ January i6, 1899. 
 
 I am living at the bottom of the sea in 
 these days, watching the course of things 
 and ** dreaming of things to come/* at the 
 same time that I am supposed to be in evi- 
 dence in the work shop, and in the haunts 
 of men. A strange chequer of colours is 
 this daily life, so sad, so glad. 
 
 Whit Sunday, 1899. 
 
 Those two happy days at Aldie were 
 like being in some island of the blest and 
 have left behind them a sort of perfume, 
 just as did those wonderful hours at Bay- 
 reuth, when you made me one of the gifts 
 of my life. . . . 
 
 This is the day of the Feast of the 
 Spirit, and above the pain and jar of the 
 fretful or discordant world which we see, 
 one is aware of an unseen, persistent har- 
 mony which in time shall draw all things 
 into itself. When one has come to a time 
 
 [42] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 in which truth has made many free; 
 when the revelation is not in books but in 
 men, and the greater Bible being written 
 every day. When we feel all these things 
 to be true, we " know that our redemp- 
 tion draweth nigh/' 
 
 [43] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 TO DR. RICHARD C. CABOT 
 
 August 15, 1859. 
 
 My Richard, I have wanted to write 
 to you ever since you went away ; but much 
 work and a period of ironical illness (owing 
 to trouble with my eyes) have made day 
 and night not long enough for the joys 
 of letter-writing. To-day I have just de- 
 spatched your things. ... I seemed to know 
 before your letter came just how you had 
 felt while you were at Old Place. It was, I 
 saw afterward, asking you to do a difficult 
 thing to come into an air full of that easy 
 intimacy which young people together 
 soon acquire, and which is not only in- 
 clusive of themselves, but a little exclu- 
 sive of others ! Still the real difficulty lay 
 deeper, and was I think in you, a lack, 
 not of sympathy, but of the art of ex- 
 pressing it so simply and so spontaneously 
 
 [44] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 that a fine rapport is sure to follow. I 
 should not speak of this now, nor venture 
 to generalize from a single instance, if it 
 were not for having wanted to say some- 
 thing of this sort to you in regard to the 
 " Love and Christianity/' I felt so at one 
 with your point of view in that, dear, that 
 I wanted to remind you of what I believe 
 to be an integral part of one's matter, one's 
 philosophy : and that is the manner of its 
 application. As I say this, it seems like a 
 contradiction in terms ; and yet, as not the 
 thought, but the life, constitutes the realm 
 of human activity, and as that life consists 
 of finely tempered impulses expressed in 
 finely tempered acts, so I think we may 
 justly demand that the context of the spirit- 
 ual code should cover behavior as well as 
 belief. Now in your essay the clues to be- 
 havior seemed to me inadequate or partial. 
 You, as you, were too concentrated and 
 personal in dealing with others. Behavior 
 [45] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 based on this model has too much analysis 
 and too little laissez faire . 
 
 You do not speak of the requisite time 
 and space essential to the problem ; you 
 do not sufRciently indicate how in hu- 
 man relationships (as well as in individual 
 living) seeds are to become flowers. You 
 are, perhaps, dwelling more upon self-con- 
 quest than upon self-surrender ; yet this 
 last holds the divinest glory of heroes. 
 Something of this I understand to be the 
 secret of that losing of one's soul that 
 Christ taught, a loss of one's self in 
 others, asking for no advantage, making 
 no terms. 
 
 All this I know to have been in your 
 thought, but I find it not sufficiently in- 
 sisted on as an essential element. Does it 
 seem so to you ? or have I not wholly un- 
 derstood your meaning ? You will tell me. 
 
 [46] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 September i, 1889. 
 
 I knew you would understand the tem- 
 per of my letter, dearest boy, and I under- 
 stood yours; and this I think will always 
 be true, so we can go freely on and 
 speak simply and without preamble or in- 
 troduction, as friends. 
 
 To begin, then, with your first ques- 
 tion, as to your want of rapport with 
 any company of people whom you con- 
 ceive to be, as you say, "fine persons,'' but 
 who do not seem to you to be serving the 
 ideal. I make my first complaint here : 
 your attitude is one of criticism and analy- 
 sis, instead of receptivity and hospitality. 
 You do in fact not really believe that they 
 are fine persons, for the only thing that 
 could make them so would be that they 
 were serving the ideal, and this you doubt ; 
 so you hope perhaps that they are noble, 
 but you do not believe them to be. The 
 result is that you are not giving them quite 
 
 [47] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 a fair chance. You are demanding that 
 they should begin by proving their aim to 
 you. Prove yours to them, rather, that 
 is your opportunity, and in so doing 
 invite their souls into chambers of wel- 
 come support and mutual confidence. 
 Dear Richard, I am sure that this is the 
 crux of the situation : judgment before 
 the evidence is in. Indeed I think that 
 this brings me to the "time and space" 
 which you thought not intelligible. I 
 meant that in the intercourse of spirits 
 there must be much leeway, allow- 
 ance of time, room to move about in, 
 because the modes of spiritual manifesta- 
 tion are so many and so varied that we 
 must take much for granted at first, and 
 afterwards sift, weigh, balance, con- 
 demn it, maybe. 
 
 I put aside what said. I don't 
 
 think that was the actuating principle for 
 a moment. Of course that was poor and 
 
 [48] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 false (and it came out of a phase through 
 
 which I think is passing now, and 
 
 where she needs help), but it was not in 
 the hearts of that little group as I saw 
 them, in whom I took note of some sweet 
 things as they went along. 
 
 But I am not now thinking of those 
 boys and girls as such, only as representa- 
 tions of many other companies where 
 what you think and believe would bring 
 help and find sympathy : if you will but 
 set yourself to this fine art of giving. 
 When I said you were too concentrated, 
 I meant too concentrated on life as you 
 conceived it, without reference to how it 
 might be conceived (and still nobly) by 
 others. For I must believe that he who 
 will most help the Society of which he 
 forms a part, must be able to perceive and 
 to make evident the central harmony : to 
 cry out of the best in him to the best in 
 others, in a voice that shall quicken and 
 [49] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 enhance the whole mass of that ** yearning 
 upward '' that deifies our clay. 
 
 Yours, dear, in love, 
 
 S. W. 
 
 October 17, 1889. 
 
 Your letter was very dear to me, my 
 Richard : and you will know without 
 words of mine how truly I felt with you 
 in the pain and joy through which you 
 have gone, in that swift passing from this 
 world of your friend. In some strange 
 inexplicable way Death bears such wit- 
 ness to itself: and so I say joy, too: be- 
 cause one is aware of something new and 
 beautiful and reassuring, I think, when 
 one bears another company through that 
 gate. . . . 
 
 After marking what you said some time 
 ago about your profession, I felt content 
 and ready to believe you were moving as 
 your star led. To all of what you said about 
 
 C 50] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 it I agreed : and I saw beside what great 
 opportunity it gives for the training of all 
 one's powers, at the same time that it opens 
 the door of service and self-forgetful know- 
 ledge of others. This year of study will 
 crystallize many points for you, I do not 
 doubt ; will direct your tendency, and de- 
 cide which way out of the many roads in 
 medicine you will walk. 
 
 One thing I feel pretty sure of, and that 
 is that you can justly enter upon a very 
 ample field of study and enrichment, can 
 drink at more than one fountain, because 
 you have diverse capacities and the power 
 of concentration. These two possessions 
 make one feel that not only your safety 
 but your best success will lie in a large 
 and inclusive, as well as strenuous, plan of 
 life, a movement onward, broad as well as 
 high. 
 
 Somehow we seem to need rich virtue : 
 static as well as dynamic force, in these 
 [si] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 days of unregulated, or ill-regulated, en- 
 ergy : and I long to have you fulfil, as far 
 as may be, whatever good gifts God has 
 given you: striking a generous chord on 
 your young harp. 
 
 Now just one more word on our old 
 theme in answer to your last letter, where- 
 in you say that until one is sure that at a 
 given time persons are serving their ideal, 
 we cannot join forces with them, and so 
 on. Dear boy, you will think me only hard- 
 hearted, but it is just here that I find your 
 attitude wrong : not in the want of sym- 
 pathetic insight, which may come from 
 inherited tendencies, or youth, or mascu- 
 linity, but in something deeper still, which 
 is sympathy itself. For what is the true 
 attitude toward any person, or company of 
 persons ? Not that of a critic nor a judge, 
 nor even a spectator, but a friend. And 
 his first duty, his first privilege (so it seems 
 to me), is to make his love for them felt by 
 
 [52] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 the exercise of generosity and faith. Criti- 
 cism there may be, but the estabUshment 
 of a relationship comes before, may pre- 
 clude criticism, turning the water into 
 wine. ... 
 
 I do not here undertake to say how this 
 great thing is to be done, but that it must 
 be done is to me a leading principle : the 
 method of Jesus and of Paul, of all brothers 
 and saviours the world over. 
 
 Yours in love, 
 
 S. W. 
 
 October 27, 1889. 
 
 Dearest R. Your last letter not only 
 narrows our discussions to those two ques- 
 tions, but it shows me that I had been 
 talking on a basis which I had not at- 
 tempted to establish, but had merely taken 
 for granted. I do distinctly think that 
 one's attitude in personal relations is differ- 
 
LETTERS 
 
 ent from one's attitude toward a book or a 
 picture, or when listening to talk, as such ; 
 and for this reason : that these latter 
 things are, as far as they go, results; they 
 stand on their merits, and are here for cri- 
 ticism, approval, or blame, what you like. 
 But with people this is not so, the best 
 of them do not stand on their merits, and 
 surely the worst cannot: they are, essen- 
 tially as well as potentially, what they may 
 become, and one's attitude must not be 
 one of judgment reserved, but of hope and 
 confidence expressed : an immediate appeal 
 to that better self which is somewhere in 
 each one, and which it is the first privilege 
 of intercourse to invoke. Don't you see 
 that if you came into a company of saints 
 your attitude would really be the same as 
 when you come into a company of sinners? 
 You would want them to feel that your 
 heart felt with their heart, through the 
 heights of achievement on one side, or 
 [54] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 through the abysses of failure on the other, 
 it might be : but there would be a point of 
 meeting, of love and here lies the radical 
 difference between sympathy and sympa- 
 thetic insight, it seems to me : that the latter 
 perceives or understands, while the former 
 inspires and creates. 
 
 For of all the jewels of intercourse no- 
 thing is so great as this : that the touch of 
 soul on soul may make a new product 
 " music as before, but vaster.'' You will 
 see many difficulties in the working out of 
 this, and I shall be ready enough to admit 
 them, but the difficulties don't count when 
 we are in search of the bottom principle : 
 and to me this is a bottom principle. I 
 think, too, that it is a principle which 
 counts at every level: one must act on 
 generous presumptions ; one must impute 
 virtue ; one must invest the world with its 
 own divinity, if one is going to serve the 
 world and lift it higher. 
 [55] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 Dear friend, do I make this clearer? 
 and does it seem to you true ? 
 My love always. 
 
 Autumn, 1889. 
 
 My Beloved Richard, Your letter 
 gave me a moment of pure joy. 
 
 I knew we were at one all the way 
 along: and yet perhaps it was the very 
 certainty of that knowledge which made 
 me fail to understand what were the 
 grounds of our superficial differences. 
 
 Ah, well, it makes me feel very rich to 
 have you near, to count our mutual sym- 
 pathy, and to see you stretch your new 
 strength to the old endeavor. 
 
 God bless you, dearest boy, S. W. 
 
 November 13, 1893. 
 
 Your letter was beautiful to get, dearest 
 Richard, and brought me close to your 
 heart. 
 
 [56] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 It was eleven years ago that I put in 
 my portfolio, and have kept in there near 
 my hand ever since, two or three pages 
 of one of Edward's themes, in which I 
 felt that grasp of the nature of things and 
 knew that here came one whose eye was 
 on the sun. That deep note of maturity, 
 the recognition of the true relations in 
 life, in art, in all things, this he 
 showed so early: and in these years of 
 heroism among the fires of experience, I 
 know what spiritual insight must have 
 come to him. And now that he "beacons 
 from where the immortals are'' it stirs 
 the soul afresh and blows upon the embers 
 of the heart, and incites, not to tears, but 
 to joyful high endeavor. . . . 
 
 And meanwhile we will thank God and 
 take courage. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 S. W. 
 
 [57] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 June 27, 1897. 
 
 Dearest Richard, did you happen to see 
 in a college magazine a brief article on 
 Originality and Consciousness, by Royce ? 
 It interested me, and the enclosed is in 
 answer to a letter I sent him, asking if 
 he would come some day and, so to speak, 
 continue the conversation. I send it to 
 you because, on that evening we spent 
 together, you spoke of what came with 
 death or through it, and I know that you 
 must be thinking, as I so often am, of the 
 next life, as well as that which now is. I 
 agreed with you in denying the miracle 
 of death, as you called it: yet you will 
 agree with me I fancy in feeling that a 
 momentous change of conditions may have 
 something in it like birth, which is of the 
 nature of miracle. 
 
 But what enlarged consciousness, what 
 continuity of relationship, what imma- 
 nence of the spirit what of all these 
 
 [58] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 attributes there may be sign or token 
 this is the old amazing doubting, believing 
 question. 
 
 Faith is the will made perfect, Novalis 
 said, and that is a deep saying, and has 
 stood by me many a day. I send my love 
 to you and my dear Ella, not knowing 
 whether you are in the valley or on the 
 hill-top, but wishing you the same wish 
 everywhere. 
 
 This letter only reached Dr. Cabot after Mrs. Whitman's death. 
 S. S. Saxonia, March 24, 1902. 
 
 I have to quote St. Paul against your 
 word, my beloved Richard: for "owe no 
 man anything but to love one another" 
 is the great solvent, and if at times love 
 casts some light upon the path, or succours 
 for a moment the eager heart, it is with 
 hearts that the account is kept, and the 
 profits are the possession of a mutual joy. 
 But your letter gave me some happy tears: 
 [59] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 for ever since that day when you came to 
 Mrs. Parkman's in your little brown rain- 
 coat, all full of music and of resolution, I 
 have loved you, and felt the pressure of 
 your life in mine: feeling also the pro- 
 cesses, stern but beautiful, which went to 
 "fitly frame together" your whole self into 
 the live temple. Just when you became 
 a source of strength and consolation (as 
 she has so often told me) to your beloved 
 mother, and later to me, I do not know: 
 but in the strenuous life all must live; 
 your love and sympathy, your recognition 
 of the dream, your central fire, all this has 
 been a gift which has warmed and fed my 
 life, and which is a part, I feel sure, of 
 my life everlasting. 
 
 So in memory and in hope, my Richard, 
 I am ever yours 
 
 S. W. 
 
 [60] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 TO MISS SARAH ORNE JEWETT 
 1882-1903 
 
 In that strange, native place towards 
 which we walk, there will be told what 
 cannot be said here, there will be made 
 known the comfort and refreshment which 
 lay in tender acts and in the golden healing 
 touch of remembrance, and if I may dare 
 say it, of faith. 
 
 April 3, 1882. 
 
 Is it really a year of special change and 
 flux? or is it only that one has grown old 
 enough to see what moving waters run 
 below this crust of continuance ? I am not 
 sure, but I think it is this last. 
 
 July 10 (1884?). 
 
 I think that I have never yet spoken 
 of the Country Doctor to you, dear friend, 
 
 [61 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 though I declare to you that this is the 
 third beginning I have made. . . . There 
 have been many practical reasons for delay, 
 but perhaps an unpractical one weighed 
 heaviest in the scale; the fact that I 
 wanted to say so much, apropos to the 
 Country Doctor^ that no little scrap of 
 statement would serve me ! I think it de- 
 lightful : written with that combination 
 of pure literary style and aromatic indi- 
 vidual flavor that gives one such especial 
 pleasure, and the people live and breathe 
 for me and take their place in the New 
 England landscape. Then comes the moral 
 of the situation, and that *s what I want to 
 know more about. Is it that Nan really 
 loves her lover? or does she only feel the 
 possibility and decide to reject it ? 
 
 Yet, after all, as I ask these questions I 
 see what a foolish person I am ; for if one 
 begins to discuss this strange re-iterated 
 problem, one must go into the depths of 
 
 [62] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 it and only come forth with the pearl of 
 Truth which is hard to find. 
 
 I suppose I think, in some crude, un- 
 formulated way, that if two souls really have 
 found each other, in the Divine Economy 
 (by some highest Mathematics) they will 
 count for more together than they ever 
 could apart ; and that whatever loss is en- 
 tailed in this fusion of interests, is more 
 than made good by a new and more com- 
 plete existence. But I will not bore you 
 with all this, when I may be speaking 
 quite wide the mark of your opinion. . . . 
 
 I want to tell you that I have had four 
 days of sketching at Gloucester, and among 
 dreams and visions, which has given me 
 no mean lift, and provided much consola- 
 tion. There is not much to show for it, you 
 might say : but I got something neverthe- 
 less. 
 
 Dear friend, this is a most garrulous let- 
 ter, but sometimes there's no fun in brevity. 
 
 [63] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 March 5, 1887. 
 
 I have not said to you how very sweet, 
 how comforting and sustaining I found the 
 letter which came to me from your hand, 
 nor have I said that I let it count in my 
 hurrying days ; and did distinctly leave 
 undone some things which pressed with 
 the familiar pressure, but which, in a larger 
 vision, were not essential. I live so much 
 under the water as it were, that I am in 
 danger, I know, of mis-calculating weights 
 and measures ; and the touch of a friend's 
 hand is a beautiful reminder of first values. 
 . . . Do you know the line from Epicte- 
 tus ? " Rather than bread let understanding 
 concerning God be renewed to you day by 
 day." 
 
 Palm Sunday, 1888. 
 
 The tender majesty of this high day is 
 with me still, dear friend (though the hour 
 has slipped past which sets its limit in 
 time), and I love to write to you in the 
 
 [64] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 shadow of its associations. Mr. Brooks 
 preached quite a wonderful sermon this 
 morning ; taking man as his own Jerusa- 
 lem, receiving everything as coming from 
 God, and greeting it with Hosanna. A 
 "hard doctrine;" but hard as everything 
 worth having is hard, either in getting or 
 holding or loving. 
 
 June i6 (1889?). 
 
 Just when I was in a curious trough of 
 the sea, and when its bottom seemed so 
 much nearer than the top, came that dear 
 letter with love and faith in it not war- 
 ranted, but maybe all the more sustaining, 
 and comforted my soul. I have done more 
 work this winter and at greater odds than 
 usual, and that's all right: only there 
 comes a moment when ah well, why do 
 I use so many words ? . . . 
 
 [65] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 July, 1889. 
 
 The summer so far has been a matter 
 of jobbing, and I have only guessed at the 
 way the sky and the trees look. Presently 
 I think I am to have a little time to my- 
 self; and if this is bestowed I shall retire 
 into Nature and work as she dictates. You 
 will be glad of this ? And some day we 
 shall meet again. I hope to speak of many 
 things which have been a-laying in lavender 
 for a long while, dear fellow pilgrim. Just 
 
 now I am greatly involved with 's 
 
 wedding, and the young people who have 
 gathered here for that event. One is full 
 of joy and pain at beholding their youth 
 and their ignorance. 
 
 February, 1890. 
 
 Things are many and pretty dull, albeit 
 
 they include much work and a little play; 
 
 refusing to see folks at the studio door of 
 
 mornings and bowing and bending at them 
 
 [66] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 of evenings (but most times declining to 
 go where bowing and bending is in order). 
 
 has been making aphorisms of late, 
 
 on the typewriter, so that they are more 
 than usually fundamental in their effect ! 
 and is dealing damnation out against what 
 she calls the " deep spiritual sin of the 
 mind-cure." 
 
 May 26, 1890. 
 
 She fought so long, my little Gemma, 
 and this morning she went forth in the sun- 
 rise. It was so peaceful and beautiful with 
 her that one can only feel as she felt ; but 
 the human heart cries out in pain and must 
 cry, yet knowing that God is greater than 
 our hearts and will console and bless. 
 
 June 28, 1890. 
 
 This last fortnight, which has been a 
 time of almost absolute silence; and a 
 period of great peace and refreshment 
 
 [67] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 when one could sit still and listen to the 
 voices, I have worked in town by day and 
 gone down and sat by the shore and seen 
 the stars shine ; sometimes even the dawn 
 come up, and have found it very good. 
 
 July, 1890. 
 
 Strangely enough that impulse for out 
 of doors work has not yet taken me in its 
 thrall. By this time, usually, of a summer 
 I am dying to be out in it and at it ; but 
 the deep solemn inner living of this year 
 has kept me in a place apart ; and I am 
 still there, though the routine life goes on, 
 and I apparently with it. 
 
 August 14, 1890. 
 
 This Summer seems to give little room 
 for what one needs most. By this I do not 
 mean to blame fate : only to recognize 
 some of the conditions which attend the 
 ordinary life we live, and which at a time 
 [68] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 of special stress keep one's feet in the 
 road, while one's heart is in the sea or 
 the sky. 
 
 Perhaps those skyey windows will re- 
 port themselves some day in renewed 
 working impulses, though as yet I can't 
 count them. 
 
 January 6, 1891. 
 
 A message of the New Year with its 
 trembling hopes, its intimations, its retro- 
 spect. The year always comes as a person 
 to me ; and this one has a gentle look and 
 perhaps will lay a soft hand on us. At all 
 events one can live and love in it, and so 
 one turns to and rallies on one's abstract 
 propositions. 
 
 January 31, 1891. 
 
 I am led to wonder if time given to ac- 
 quaintances and enemies is really worth as 
 much towards one's everlasting salvation 
 
 [69] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 as if friends were allowed to come into 
 the scheme of organization a little more 
 freely. 
 
 May 26, 1891. 
 
 I wish I had a pansy to put here in mem- 
 ory of this day, my little Gemma's ; 
 forever an open window into Heaven. 
 
 July 8, 1 891. 
 
 I have wanted awfully to write to you, 
 dear My Fellow Traveller ; yet somehow 
 at bad moments could n't, and at good ones 
 fell to dreaming instead. . . . 
 
 It 's been somehow a difficult kind of a 
 time, with one shining spot for which to 
 be everlastingly grateful, thirty-six hours 
 at Niagara ! E. L. asked me long ago to 
 stay with her there, and I did not want to 
 miss all this period of solemn and tender 
 experience with her, so I went just for 
 this, instead of the fortnight. 
 
 When once I saw that supreme sight 
 
 [70] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 before I knew it was an altar ; and all I 
 had felt came home to me, a thousand 
 fold : and I shall dream forever of the pic- 
 ture which must be painted there. Some- 
 day we will speak of it, and of the rainbow 
 which came and " stood round about the 
 throne." 
 
 With this letter was the following sonnet. 
 SURSUM CORDA 
 
 Behold an altar radiantly fair 
 Lit with white flames drawn from the heart of 
 things ! 
 
 Here pour oblations of majestic springs 
 Fed by the sky in some wide upland air; 
 
 Here rises incense warm with scent of dawn. 
 Gold with the sunset, purple with the night, 
 
 Here shines a snowy pavement dazzling bright 
 For saints and little children and the worn 
 
 Footsteps of martyrs who have gained their 
 palm. 
 O God ! of Thee alone this splendor tells. . 
 
 [71] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 In power, in continuity, in calm ; 
 In air ineffable where color dwells. 
 
 Or in still voices where are borne along 
 Strains of an incommunicable song. 
 
 Niagara, July 2, 1891. 
 
 October, 1891. 
 
 I have come here from Trinity where 
 the Consecration Service made a great and 
 moving and upHfting period ; a wonderful 
 beauty lay in it all; centering in Mr. 
 Brooks and communicating itself to all 
 beholders. 
 
 It is a great office this of Bishop; but 
 its greatness only really becomes apparent 
 when it is filled by a great man, and so 
 there comes in now a strange new recog- 
 nition of all that may come out of this new 
 splendor. . . . 
 
 I have not seen A. F. nor indeed any 
 one, since my three days in Williamstown, 
 the most charming town set in the midst 
 
 C 72 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 of the most genial and beneficent land- 
 scape I have ever seen in America. 
 
 October, 1891. 
 
 My thoughts and love have been yours, 
 ever since I saw the brief word which told 
 that your dear Mother had been taken 
 into heaven, and the love stays with you 
 now saying no word because no word is 
 deep, or sweet, or rich enough . . . but 
 I wish my steps might tend Eastward 
 rather, and so find you in the old places, 
 with the pain of loss everywhere and yet 
 with a diviner gain beside. 
 
 November, 1891. 
 
 To-day I am making a sad little pil- 
 grimage to Lowell, whence has suddenly 
 departed one who was oh so good to me 
 when I was a little child. The leaves fall 
 fast from the tree of earthly life, and one 
 has to live on a sort of military basis: 
 
 [73] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 going to the grave with muffled drums, 
 and returning with the flag flying yet once 
 again. 
 
 February, 1892. 
 
 The whole living and breathing world 
 beside has been filing in platoons before 
 my weary eyes, but here is a Thursday 
 afternoon with a great snow storm going 
 on outside, and I flatter myself, Alas 
 for human ignorance! at this moment I 
 
 hear the voice of in the hall below, 
 
 and all is over. . . . 
 
 Midnight. 
 
 And all was over, for the fashionable 
 caller who goes, rather than comes, came 
 not, but the affectionate few who go not 
 but stay did appear. . . . 
 
 New York, March 24, 1892. 
 
 I am writing from New York on my 
 way to Bermuda for two weeks. ... I 
 take with me the munitions of war, oil 
 [74] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 paints, pastel, and even water colours, for 
 who shall say of what complexion the 
 emotions of Bermuda will be? 
 
 Bermuda, April 12, 1892. 
 
 It is a little world all by itself and a 
 world of colour, as its main attribute. Such 
 a Sea, such a Sky! a dream of beauty dif- 
 ferent from anything else and I can see 
 amazing pictures to be painted at every 
 turn. . . . 
 
 The local incident; the white houses 
 built from the coral of which the island 
 itself is made, ... the negroes and their 
 picturesque methods, the acres of lilies all 
 in fragrant bloom, these things one can 
 only glance at in writing, but some day I 
 will tell you a pretty chapter of geography 
 and history made out of this strange island 
 in the sea, so lovely and so serene. 
 
 [75] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 November, 1892. 
 
 Oh, having a Show is n't half so leisurely 
 a proceeding as I had supposed, and I have 
 never been so busy in my life, I guess, as for 
 the last three days. But the world, critics 
 and otherwise, takes the Show more seri- 
 ously than ever it did before; and that gives 
 me a grave pleasure. Indeed I have felt a 
 great many things, owing to folks and their 
 remarks. 
 
 March 6, 1893. 
 
 I think sometimes that I have no right 
 to have dear friends who love me, for this 
 strenuous life allows so little space for the 
 acts or even the words of love. Work and 
 incessant demands, together with the main- 
 tenance of habitual responsibilities and 
 cares, preclude simple free action and make 
 me seem a niggard. 
 
 Easter Monday, 1893. 
 
 Easter went as Easter must, well ; for is 
 it not a day of the future ? . . . Your letters 
 
 [76] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 . . . have been comfort and joy to me, and 
 I count and know them every one, and need 
 them ; if indeed one dares say one needs 
 anything. 
 
 Chicago, October, 1893. 
 
 Chicago, and this is early of a Thursday 
 morning having arrived over night late, 
 but in good order : and having awaked 
 this morning to find the brightest sunshine 
 and warmth while the Hotel boasts fewer 
 lions and more rocking chairs than we 
 were led to suppose. The party is pretty 
 large and I shall try to lose most of it 
 whenever opportunity offers, and to find 
 it again at hours of meat and drink. 
 
 But after all I shall care really for the 
 main issue, which is to see that great gen- 
 eral sight and to wonder and dream. 
 
 October 30, 1893. Studio. 
 
 I got very little at Cape Ann in my 
 second day with everything gray and gen- 
 
 [77] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 erally discrepant, but I am minded to throw 
 it on a larger canvas and see what can be 
 done with memory and hope, those potent 
 factors of the spirit. 
 
 November 14, 1893. 
 
 Then came Edward Cabot's funeral. 
 Your thoughts and mine are not far from 
 each other's ; for this mighty Herald comes 
 on either hand and fills one with hope and 
 with grief both at once. ... I wish the 
 day might bless you as it did those who 
 stood around Mr. Parkman's grave last 
 Saturday (the first day of St. Martin's Sum- 
 mer) with gold and violet and deepest red 
 over all the Earth, and in the Sky heaven. 
 
 Undated. 
 
 I missed you by one minute to-day ! and 
 could not show you the white roses still 
 shining as they shone when they came to 
 me Saturday; and the laurel stood up 
 
 [78] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 proudly and spoke of strife and heroes, and 
 all that long story that the laurel tells. 
 
 April 3 (1895?). 
 
 The great event of the Library has come 
 and passed, and still one goes to view the 
 scheme, and see how immense the Sargent 
 decoration is. I shall not talk of it at all 
 until I talk of it with you on the spot, and 
 then we will say great swelling words of 
 pride, and some of criticism too, for some 
 chances are missed, inevitable in such a 
 new departure. 
 
 July 23, 1895. 
 
 . . . Not my plans, but the arrangements 
 and expectations of others make up all my 
 days, so far this summer, which I say not 
 by way of complaint, but just of statement. 
 I take refuge in dreams ; a little more thick 
 and fast than usual just now, because my 
 eyes have been well for three weeks and 
 because that means a more thumping beat 
 
 [79] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 of the old pulse. But I can only look and 
 long yet awhile, so far as getting the dream 
 on foot is concerned. . . . 
 
 Have you read Symonds' Life and Let- 
 ters? He sends out such a brave courageous 
 cry and heartens those who hear him. 
 And somehow it made me feel afresh some 
 of the weak spots in the Christian Science 
 scheme that refuses to allow pain to be a 
 minister by refusing its existence. I guess 
 we must re-adjust the new dogmas nearer 
 to the heart's necessities. Grief indeed 
 "makes the young spring wild/' but grief 
 endured and dimly understood, seems to 
 smite into one some of the deepest recog- 
 nitions of the human Spirit. . . . You see 
 I am wishing and needing to see you very 
 much. 
 
 September 5, 1895. (Day after Labor Day.) 
 
 Well, there is one thing to be said of this 
 summer, it has been " all of a piece ; " and 
 to those who demand continuity as a prime 
 
 [ 80] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 factor in affairs, I doubt if any scheme of 
 events could suit better. It would make 
 you merry if I might rehearse the history 
 of yesterday, par exemple ; beginning with 
 a series of breakfasts for a series of blood- 
 relations ; and at 9.30 flying to the Roman 
 Catholic Church to witness the wedding 
 of Ford the gardener's daughter. It was 
 by the way a very extraordinary spectacle 
 to one who stepped in off a simple Beverly 
 Farms highway, and found a little glitter- 
 ing mass of candles and incense and holy 
 water and genuflecting men and boys. 
 Seven prelatical persons and a large choir 
 did it take to marry Louisa Ford ! and the 
 lace and little acolytes made a middle-age 
 picture so strange as never was; and I 
 seemed in the space of that hour to think 
 through more facts about the human heart 
 and life and death and all things, than in 
 years of less acute meditation. O how 
 wonderful it all is, and how the pulse of 
 
 [81 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 humanity is beating like a trip-hammer in 
 every crevice and under every tree. Well, 
 that is the way my day began, but I must 
 take you through its convolutions. Suffice 
 it to say that in the early morning I had 
 asked myself why this new festa had not 
 been called felicitously Play Day ; but in 
 the stilly night I perceived that the Fa- 
 thers were wiser than I ; for a day more 
 full of Labor (there were so called "Sports" 
 going on for hours) I had never known. 
 . . . Also there was a sound of coming 
 Bourgets in the air; and a sort of Gallic 
 stir within me, as well as a New England 
 fear of all the consequences involved by 
 their approach. . . . Just now I am re- 
 turning from a morning of jobs of an al- 
 truistic sort, with one little shy at the 
 glass-work thrown in. 
 
 September 17, 1895. 
 
 I make little fugitive sketches of things 
 seen from car windows as I fly back and 
 
 [82] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 forth from glass and marble shops or 
 of a belated moon which waits for the 
 game of billiards to be over and then 
 comes creeping from the rim of earth, 
 smoky with earth*s vapors, but burning 
 with O such inward fire ! 
 
 These things console me ; and I so re- 
 port to you. This is one of the summers 
 when there is nothing to tell unless you 
 tell everything. I think I have felt more 
 molten within, if you'll forgive so clumsy 
 a term, than in any summer I ever spent, 
 yet it would puzzle me to mention any 
 one incident. In fact there have been 
 none, only persistent tumultuous feeling, 
 highly controlled as must ever be and non- 
 resultant, save perhaps for some inner mo- 
 bilization. 
 
 October 8, 1895. 
 
 O was n't I disappointed and am I not dis- 
 appointed still ! and thanking you for your 
 kind letter, but still feeling that Literature 
 
 [83 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 had no Claims which Friendship ought to 
 respect ! But seriously, beloved friend, I 
 knew just how it was and I like to hear 
 of the work singing in your head to be 
 done, and I hope every falling leaf makes 
 contribution to the Theme, and each white 
 star approves the same. ... I haven't 
 written because I have been at it in such 
 a relentless fashion. People have penetrated 
 every corner of my being, there have been 
 book-covers . . . and Dr. Holmes' me- 
 morial tablet, and pastel heads of growing 
 infants, and moans of memory, and meet- 
 ings, and all the other innumerable happen- 
 ings of the Fall, which I now perceive is all 
 Summer and all Winter squeezed together ! 
 Thus even my letter becomes a cata- 
 logue, and I am somewhat ashamed even 
 to write to you at all, but nevertheless I 
 love you well enough not to mind these in- 
 fringements of the proprieties of friendship 
 and so shall despatch this silly sheet. 
 
 [84] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 November 12, 1895. 
 In the train for Newport. 
 
 I have indeed had a wonderful little 
 vacation, seeing the landscape which is al- 
 ways to me the largest, the most full of 
 intimation; and at Newport the "passion 
 of Autumn'* is more felt than anywhere I 
 think in the world ! The sea turns from 
 violets into pansies ; the great clouds en- 
 trench themselves in more substantial ram- 
 parts. And I am full of gratitude for hav- 
 ing a few days of wonder before the actual 
 and immediate come rattling about my 
 ears. 
 
 November 22, 1895. 
 
 I fell to work and began thinking of the 
 winter, a thought I have not hitherto al- 
 lowed myself because that way madness 
 lay ! But now I grow bolder and venture 
 to plan somewhat for things to be. And to 
 think of the Window in a thousand differ- 
 ent ways, a way of thinking through which 
 
 [85] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 I must pass before I decide upon one way. 
 And I have now had definite talk with the 
 powers at Trinity and there is no doubt 
 that the Class will be allowed to put its 
 memorial to Mr. Brooks there, in the 
 triple window which we have in our own 
 room. So that is for the immediate future, 
 and I guess not much portrait painting 
 this year, except that it is never safe to pro- 
 phesy ! But enough of Shop. 
 
 I have been this evening to dine at 
 Shady Hill with that hot, pulsing and 
 amazing creature R. Kipling; and he was 
 exceedingly interesting, real and full of talk. 
 He seemed in fact like a focus of creative 
 energy, with that dark imaginative eye 
 behind the glass. I had never seen the 
 Banjo Song which he recited in a sort of 
 still, molten way, and which I think the 
 most humane and large word, albeit 
 couched in the short syllables of a sort of 
 refrain, he has ever written. It all made 
 [86] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 me feel very strangely as I came into town 
 again under a gray sky .... I think Mrs. 
 Ward has given a fresh turn on the wheel, 
 so far as strength and texture in the fabric 
 of her work goes. Sir George Tressady 
 opens with a stout clutch on her material 
 and firm and easy movement. It seems a 
 very live world to me to-night, as you see, 
 my friend ; and I am dying for talk and 
 those things which come with speech and 
 companionship when one knows there is 
 everything to be said. A hot silence has 
 some gleams of delight in it, but one is 
 left rather like a crater thereafter. 
 
 But my one word is made of many syl- 
 lables and I must reduce it to two and say 
 good-night. 
 
 Shall I not say also God bless you ? 
 
 Birthday, 1895. 
 
 Your note and the lovely book came 
 almost together and made me feel a great 
 
 [87] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 warmth about the heart. One never re- 
 covers from the intensity of association 
 with anniversaries and festivals, but one 
 would gladly evade them ; they open such 
 doors into the chambers which everyday 
 life and everyday work enable one to avoid. 
 And the touch of a friend's hand is full 
 of consolation. 
 
 March 4, 1896. 
 
 I think I have not written much of late, 
 you seemed to be out of reach of letters, 
 and beside I have been in a great valley of 
 silence in which I seemed to have learned 
 much that I knew not of before. I 
 have been alone long days together ; I 
 have worked and dreamed, and have felt 
 the days blessed and the lesson of contin- 
 uance begun. 
 
 April 3, 1896. At Sea. 
 
 The " deep " was n't very bad, but some- 
 how I succumbed with more than my 
 [88] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 usual facility (spite of the presence 
 of dear S. C. W/s Elixir); that admirable 
 weapon the Human Will going to pieces 
 as if it were made of flax ; and reducing 
 one to terms of which we will not speak 
 for very scorn. But now I have regained 
 a human composure. . . . Not having 
 thought I naturally have not read, till now 
 I find myself wandering in the sweet 
 mystic pages of Le Tresor des Humbles^ 
 where I find some words that have much 
 truth and beauty. I think you will have 
 read it too, and will have believed that 
 the soul is entering upon such possessions 
 as are therein described. Ah, how the 
 "dream saves the world,'' how real is 
 that which lies just out of sight it may be, 
 but not out of feeling. 
 
 June 26, 1896. 
 
 Last night having 16,000 letters and 
 jobs to do, I turned aside and just, first, 
 
 [89] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 read the last chapters from that most real 
 country where someone is living with the 
 Pointed Firs. Just altogether beautiful I 
 call it, dear, and wish to tell you so, be- 
 cause there is gratitude, and then the 
 heart's gratitude, that strange deep joy of 
 the soul at touch or sight of a new sym- 
 pathy with the soul's life ; I love to have 
 you write and write in these levels ; where 
 star and pebble make part of the divine 
 chord. ... I am working as hard as I 
 can, with no intention of ever stopping, if 
 I can help it, this side heaven. 
 
 October i8, 1896. 
 
 I have really been working day and night 
 for weeks, the little portraits of the little 
 children, and then Dr. Mitchell appearing 
 with a view to portraiture and yet with a 
 relish for Society ; these things have kept 
 me on a stretch not wholly admirable. 
 However one got something out of it, and 
 
 [90] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 some moments of intercourse with the 
 children some hints of the untried se- 
 crets of those Httle hearts have seemed to 
 me deep chapters in experience. But with- 
 out time I will not speak of the eternities. 
 
 Old Place, October 25, 1896. 
 
 It was a great comfort to get that dear 
 letter and it gave me beside a swift impulse 
 to go sailing down the coast to Berwick. 
 . . . I did not do it; but that is only an 
 incident, the impulse was the large, round, 
 whole scheme. Now it 's Sunday, and on 
 Wednesday I shall strike my tent and be 
 off for the winter campaign, with a terri- 
 ble sense of weakness at the heart, but a 
 great many straps and buckles about the 
 belt, wherewith I hope to make some stout 
 show. 
 
 March 10, 1897. 
 
 I must have one word with those who 
 tarry in Virginia and see the Spring walk- 
 
 [91 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 ing with visible sweet feet over the edges 
 of the Hills. . . . Here there is a sort of 
 molten condition which is perhaps the way 
 it is going to be always, and the more I 
 endeavor to pull out of the hot, hopeless 
 sea of events, the more the whirlpools suck 
 me down ; and I am about to make a cut 
 clean across the face of human relation- 
 ships. But not till after the have come 
 
 for this Sunday and perhaps for the 
 
 next and intermittent folks appearing, re- 
 appearing, disappearing for the Master- 
 pieces and all the rest of it. I keep saying 
 to myself, how good it was that I once 
 read a book, or learned a verse of poetry, 
 because now it's such a Big book I can't 
 more than hold it this Book of Life, 
 and the Poem's got to be written not read. 
 
 April, 1897. 
 
 O my friend, this is hard indeed to bear, 
 and my heart aches with all your hearts 
 [92] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 in this deep loss and pain ! How to com- 
 fort each other but this God knows and 
 will make plain, and we who love you so 
 much must wait for the coming of this 
 consolation. I bless Him that you were 
 there, sustaining and helping all, and going 
 down with your dear sister so far as the 
 edge of that wonderful river that sea of 
 life. Ah, across its wave how many have 
 come into port and are in that perfect 
 felicity towards which we yearn. 
 
 April 5, 1897. 
 
 This is just a little letter ... for this 
 day of peace, when grief had in it no sort 
 of bitterness, and when all the sweetness 
 and goodness of noble living in its genera- 
 tions seemed to glorify the day and mingle 
 with the spring which hung along the 
 watercourses and in the wide air. It helped 
 and consoled me to be there. . . . These 
 messengers of death do indeed come thick 
 [93] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 and fast to us now, but one finds a voice 
 full of life which sings above the flowers. 
 ... I ask a blessing for you every day. 
 
 April 1 6, 1897. 
 
 You will find that open door this Easter 
 which no one can shut. 
 
 April 30, 1897. 
 
 The sap mounts in the human tree with 
 the spring ; and I wish I could go into the 
 wilderness and do one long, rich job freely 
 beneath the stars and the sunshine. You 
 will know the surge of impulse which sets 
 in with the little blades of the grass, which 
 matches the maple buds and the willow's 
 yellowing bark. Ah, to step, some day, fur- 
 ther westward ! 
 
 June 14, 1897. Old Place. 
 
 If you knew how grave I am at sight 
 of this sea ! What wonder it wakes in me, 
 what surmise, what anguish, what hope ! 
 
 [94] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 July 14, 1897. Old Place. 
 I think this year I am more deeply aware 
 than ever before of what is going on at the 
 Centre, that is of the real thing in reality. 
 From which statement I do not want you 
 to think this a psychological disquisition, 
 but just an allusion to a state of feeling. 
 
 I wish I could tell you what this par- 
 ticular day (and many others) is like. It 's 
 like being set to deal with elements as varied 
 as the gift in Pandora's box. I might sum- 
 marize by enumeration for illustration. 
 Mrs. Lawrence, 
 Victor's necessities, 
 Jack's disappearances, 
 A sick servant, 
 
 People who are coming and don't come. 
 People who are not coming and come. 
 Together with personal impressions and 
 predilections; together with inveter- 
 ate tendencies, and the law of dimin- 
 ishing returns. 
 
 [95] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 But I cannot write to send you cata- 
 logues and forbear. 
 
 August 1 1, 1897. 
 
 Bar Harbour is Washington out-of-doors, 
 so far as its being really a little cosmopolis, 
 with traces of all climes and conditions in 
 a fine melee, and social impulse fusing the 
 material. Well, for two or three days, it is 
 not bad, and I am glad to get for a mo- 
 ment off rails which have more persistent 
 grip in them than usual even. 
 
 August 28, 1897. 
 
 I went down yesterday and spent the 
 night at Saunderstown . . . the Rhode Is- 
 land landscape ; always one step nearer 
 Heaven than any other landscape for me. 
 The conditions were small at this little 
 town, which is no town at all, but only a 
 few houses dropped by accident in the 
 fields, and an old pier straggling idly out 
 to meet some tiny boats which puff in 
 
 [96] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 from Jamestown to Newport every now 
 and then, only this, but divine ! . . . Much 
 talk with Jack about politics and the cri- 
 tique of Nelson. A splendid order and we 
 had some agreements as to the construction 
 of a piece of work which would leave 
 Nelson in his due blaze of glory, and then 
 have room to say one word concerning 
 something greater than Glory. But I am 
 sure Mahan has forgotten that one cannot 
 consider a romantic hero like Nelson apart 
 from his star, has failed to recognize that 
 this fiery genius, sincere, passionate, simple 
 and amazingly child-like, loved as he 
 fought, and the proportions make his love 
 forever heroic. . . . Your letter was a great 
 comfort, coming on a dull day. I am all 
 right; and never, you know, can lead an 
 easy life. For which we must always give 
 thanks. 
 
 [97] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 September 24, 1897. 
 
 O is n't it splendid to feel the sap run- 
 ning up and see the new bud forming it- 
 self to its supreme end ! These things send 
 one to the altar anew. ... I put in this 
 some letters just come which made me 
 weep those strange tears of grateful love, 
 which never find a voice, but which keep 
 the heart nourished and refreshed as with 
 the dew of Heaven. 
 
 October 17, 1898. 
 
 To-day the sea has been a deep lapis 
 lazuli : the sky clear, and the wind one rush 
 across the earth, and it has not seemed to 
 me one minute's distance to the Moun- 
 tains where these friends have held the air 
 in fee. So I have had companionship and 
 have gathered some fresh impulses and in 
 some brief intervals have hammered out 
 a bit of work. 
 
 [ 98] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 March i8, 1898. 
 
 The last of the four quatrefoils is done 
 to-day : and I have a momentary sensation 
 like Christian's when the pack fell off. . . . 
 There *s that in the Spring which makes 
 a strange tumult and lends wings to the 
 Dream. 
 
 Julys, 1898. 
 
 The window was up, and I saw some 
 things to do to it (not crucial things, but 
 those which would make a better balance 
 when all was done) and then I felt dis- 
 solved and empty and undone. Indeed in 
 some ways I feel so still, and if I could have 
 done exactly as I felt I should have gone 
 straight out somewhere . . . to-morrow 
 I fly to Niagara for one long solitary look 
 at that Altar. Well, it was shown for 
 Class Day and again at RadclifFe's Com- 
 mittee, and at half-past ten on Wednesday 
 when the President entered and walked 
 
 [99] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 gloriously between the rows of students 
 lined up on either side, when he did this 
 the curtain was swiftly withdrawn and the 
 gift was in the hands of the College. . . . 
 If some of those youths care a little, I shall 
 have had my day. ... I feel in spite of 
 the dust and ashes to which I have con- 
 fessed a sort of landscape passion which 
 always surges up about this time, and 
 makes havoc with my composure. Per- 
 haps there '11 be little opportunities, and 
 there is always room for looking into the 
 night and watching for the morning. 
 
 In answer to a letter from Rheims. 
 
 July 17, 1898. 
 
 Yes, it was there color bloomed for me 
 on the Gothic stem ; for there you have 
 found that it is in the clerestory that they 
 put (as in no other) the rainbow ; leaving 
 the lower windows pale ; and no one hav- 
 ing ever told me this I entered to find that 
 [ 100 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 violet twilight lying all above arid to be 
 overwhelmed by it. ... I did go to 
 Niagara and I had there forty-eight hours 
 of silence and of solitude. Not that I was 
 alone, for all the hours were filled with 
 beautiful and high companionship but 
 there was silence. I found a little plain 
 hotel . . . with a chamber one window 
 of which looked upon the American Fall 
 and the other upon that High Altar of 
 which I have dreamed ever since that day 
 I spent beside it. So I studied and sketched 
 and wondered every minute. . . . And 
 some secrets I seemed to learn ; some of 
 the story of that divine white passion of 
 the flood. Some of its meanings when the 
 rainbow floods all that soft tumult into 
 rosy fire ; or when it feels the quickened 
 throb of the south wind blowing across 
 Lake Erie. I think I must make many 
 pilgrimages there and then perhaps I can 
 come a little nearer to the dream. . . . All 
 [ loi ] 
 
,9,, f"'' f 
 
 . -.LETTERS 
 
 c*^ "^p*f < ** 1 ,, . ,, i 
 
 this, without one word of the tremendous 
 days in which as citizens we live, now, 
 thank Heaven, with peace in sight, after 
 the surrender of Santiago. You must know 
 too that one has felt a great splendor in 
 the heroic ways of our men, gentle and 
 simple, and though one quakes over the 
 imperialist rubbish which is in the political 
 melee, there is a great patriotism in the 
 heart of us. 
 
 November 3, 1899. 
 
 I had the first real day in the studio to- 
 day since June i oth, and now hope to be 
 able to do Some Work. But one never 
 knows, and then what you do do, never 
 seems to be just it, but only just before it. 
 All of which is part of the Philosophy. 
 
 March 23, 1900. Studio. 
 
 . . . You have been gone looo years, 
 and though to you it is as one day, do not 
 forget the American standpoint, as you 
 [ 102 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 drink the wine of Attica or sip the honey 
 of Hymettus. Remember the difference 
 between the active, transitive, and the 
 neuter verb; remember that in Europe 
 you do what you expect to do, in America 
 that which is expected of you; and give 
 thanks that you are not as other men are! 
 I can't even remember when you went 
 away; it is so long, counting by the sense 
 of loss, and by the humbled remembrance 
 of human demand which has been in a 
 state of turbulent activity. Radcliffe has 
 been exacting because of changes in the 
 Board and questions of development, the 
 Museum School has questions to meet, 
 there is to be an Artists' Festival and pre- 
 parations therefor, and every stranger on 
 earth has decided to visit Boston. Every- 
 one, even my unworthy self, has had grippe 
 more or less so that the city record may be 
 reported as 1 50,000 cases for the year ! 
 But I must tell you, dear friend, that after 
 
 [ 103] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 a little visit from Georgy Schuyler, (she 
 came back in a week to see me,) in which 
 she had a taste of all that Boston can boast 
 of Art, Literature, and Religion; then there 
 appeared Dr. Weir Mitchell to have his 
 Portrait painted and be entertained by the 
 Tavern Club. It is a terrible thing to have 
 your delightful sitter staying under your 
 roof! To be pouring coffee and urging re- 
 pose for the very person whose canvas is 
 waiting in Boylston Street is one of the 
 tests of character, and I will not say how 
 much mine has lost or gained under this 
 fire. But at all events the portrait has made 
 a reasonable good beginning, in spite of 
 * dining and wining,' and the fact that the 
 Edinboro* gown is an artistic solecism being 
 of a red-and-blue as if one were wrapped 
 in the American Flag. The Tavern dinner 
 was really brilliant with Norton, Holmes, 
 Wister, and Munsterberg and all the rest. 
 Owen made a gay beginning to a very se- 
 [ 104 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 rious and eloquent speech, by telling what 
 his associations were with the Club as a 
 founder, when they were young and ignor- 
 ant. "I return after many years," he said, 
 "to find it changed into a Den of Lions, 
 and what am I but a little Daniel in the 
 midst of them ! " I record here my belief 
 that Owen is going on, and that his moral 
 force is potentially very large. 
 
 But this is only written to send love, 
 and to complain that there is no message 
 in the stars, and one is only keeping content 
 when one consults the Calendar and not the 
 Heart, and sees that the days are too few 
 for report though not for expectation. 
 
 Greeting to the August Ladies who are 
 in your company, from S. W. 
 
 7 A. M. July 27, 1900, 
 Stocks, Tring, England. 
 
 The doves and all the other sweet sounds 
 ,of this English summer are making a sort 
 
 [ 105] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 of symphony in the air, and I am a-prepar- 
 ing to return early, for late breakfast, in 
 short, after tea in this idyllic garden and 
 an evening of large hospitality and happi- 
 ness. ... I had a real talk with Mrs. Ward 
 under the trees ; and all this has been a 
 lasting pleasure. ... So from out this shel- 
 ter (a word which takes on such inexplica- 
 ble perfume as life grows longer) and on 
 this lyric morning, I have this one word 
 with you. I think it is because you love 
 me that I am here; and that is sweet. 
 Heaven bless you ! 
 
 August, 1900. 
 
 I found my escape in going straight to 
 the Cathedral of Chartres yesterday morn- 
 ing. . . . For as I sojourned there from 
 the morning early, till long after sunset, I 
 was able to know something of the Sym- 
 phony of colour which is daily played 
 there, and anything more matchless can- 
 not be, in this world. 
 
 [ 106] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 October 22, 1901 (after two deaths). 
 
 And yesterday Mrs. Dorr was set free 
 after so long a captivity, and now one may 
 believe walks freely in that sky at which 
 she has sat looking for these months past. 
 
 The days accordingly go on with slow 
 dramatic footsteps, and one goes on with 
 them or glad or sad, but in any case strenu- 
 ously set to the selfsame task. And Nature 
 has taken such a hand at the Game this 
 Fall. I have never known such splendors 
 and symbols^ such announcements of " lib- 
 eral friendship" and of high augury. My 
 work has of necessity been in the shop, but 
 I have listened and, I hope, learned some- 
 what of these adorable open secrets of the 
 wide air. 
 
 May 15, 1902. England. 
 
 One word with you . . . to-night, by 
 
 the river Dart, ... I am looking out on 
 
 one of the most romantic bits of English 
 
 scenery I ever beheld, an idyllic loveli- 
 
 [ 107 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 ness, and the sea*s pulse stirring every now 
 and then the quiet breast of the stream. 
 One can look at England from so many 
 points of view, and just to-day it seems to 
 me a garden in which dwell the most in- 
 nocent and naive beings ever known in this 
 world of sin. I feel quite old and withered 
 in this cheerful young company, but take 
 heart of grace because of their gentle acts. 
 ... In this last week I have seen some 
 delightful people; . . . the long-dreamed- 
 of sight in her own house of Mrs. Ritchie 
 has made a mark on my heart forever. 
 And so I might go on telling you of this 
 strange leisurely life in this more than 
 strange world. So many gates open quietly 
 where I want to go in and browse a little 
 on the herbage. 
 
 Walpole, October 25, 1902. 
 
 I am seeing really amazing beauty, a great 
 fall mosaic rich as Aaron's breastplate and 
 multiplied with tones and overtones of color. 
 
 [ 108 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 Febraary 6, 1903. 
 
 I have had a day of successive events, 
 none of them of my own election ; and 
 I am just w^ondering if it must be always 
 thus. I contemplate a little innocent per- 
 sonal strike ! So watch the " Evening Tran- 
 script/* 
 
 August 2, 1903. 
 
 Dear old fellow, I live in a semi-de- 
 tached condition, and do or do not as my 
 demon bids, having an almost fierce pre- 
 determination to do as nearly as I can 
 " what seems best/' The result, if I dare 
 speak of results at all, is that I keep a little 
 work going, fling an occasional small sop 
 to the social Cerberus, read a little (which 
 I have not done for many years), write 
 only when I can't help it because that 
 nerve seems the most " chawed up" of all, 
 and pray to be forgiven ! No wonder that 
 under these conditions my hope of heaven 
 seems small. . . . 
 
 [ 109 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 TO MISS ALICE WESTON SMITH 
 AND MISS PAULINA CONY SMITH 
 
 In the train for Amiens. 
 July lo, 1894. 
 
 Such a fortnight as I have had, and first 
 such a week as the week in London ! You 
 see it was all new to me, and strange as it 
 may seem, no city ever took such extraor- 
 dinary hold on me as this. I think it was 
 the human creature in its mass and in 
 its individuality which seems to be more 
 incorporated there. One feels as if human 
 life there found its largest centre, there 
 asserted its greatest activity. One feels, ah, 
 a thousand things ! and to walk among the 
 old walls and battlements, and enter into 
 happy doors, and meet new friends and 
 old, was to me like wine. Nothing but 
 professional integrity could have forced me 
 to wrench myself away and fly to Paris 
 [ "o] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 for the Champs de Mars. There I found 
 a few really fine things, things not to be 
 missed, and since then have seen much 
 of Mr. Whistler, and had great joy in see- 
 ing him and his pictures, and in sitting in 
 his garden flanked by the old hotels of the 
 Faubourg St. Germain, where the trees are 
 ambrosial and the blackbirds sing round- 
 elays. But this week has been much occu- 
 pied in taking my eyes in my hand, like that 
 pious saint of old, and doing what the doc- 
 tor said was " best,'' by means of which I am 
 supposed to become a regenerated person 
 and stare at the universe with fresh powers. 
 Yesterday, being freed from the said 
 doctor, I went straight to Amiens, and 
 there saw my first Cathedral and was so 
 surprised and rejoiced at the sight that I 
 am going back again to-day to renew my 
 vows and perchance make some studies 
 there, which is the most foolish thing 
 mats que voulez vous ? 
 
 [II,] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 Bayreuth, August 19, 1894. 
 
 If I could have shared the Parsifal of 
 to-day with you, dearest child, I should 
 have given you one of the great gifts. I 
 feel sure that nowhere else to-day could 
 the heart of man be so lifted up by modern 
 art, indeed there was enacted a drama of 
 rich significance and solemn beauty. Into 
 such a moment there sweeps the glad re- 
 membrance of all other great and momen- 
 tous possessions; and the great theatre was 
 full to me to-day of friends and of associa- 
 tions, of memories and of hopes. I came 
 here in the midst of all the stress of short 
 time and so much to do, and just took a 
 
 week of perfect quiet with my friend 
 
 and have heard the music as one does 
 under such conditions ; so that it has rested 
 and refreshed the spirit more than can be 
 told ; and one has had that satisfaction 
 which comes from hearing and then hear- 
 ing again, so that one learns as well as 
 [iia] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 loves. I came here through Cathedral 
 aisles as it were, getting Rheims and Laon 
 and Toul all on the road hither, each one 
 a distinct and glorious instance. Rheims 
 of course more amazing than the others, 
 and with qualities of color and tone wholly 
 indescribable. No one ever had told me 
 that the stained glass was all in the clere- 
 story, whereby the vaults are like twilight 
 and the apse has a soft violet gloom which 
 is of most amazing loveliness. At Laon, a 
 high battlemented town reared like a bas- 
 tion above the plain, the Cathedral makes 
 a monumental pile; and there, among the 
 thousand Gothic carvings, are set in one of 
 the towers the shapes of the patient oxen 
 who drew the stone from the valley below. 
 They look like one "Dane," and all other 
 dear animals, and are enchanting persons. 
 And so I do not as you see tell you any- 
 thing in these hurried notes, but do indi- 
 cate at what a terrible pace the tongue 
 
 [ 113] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 will discourse, come Michaelmas ! Your 
 letter was awful pleasing to get and tales 
 
 of made me laugh with joy, for I 
 
 know the sensation of having her " lay off 
 her things and stay to tea." By this time 
 too the thermometer must have come down, 
 and so I won't take the Boston weather for 
 my theme. I have always tried to have that 
 art of correspondence which lies in telling 
 one's friend just what was in that friend's 
 letter, for this method raises epistolary in- 
 tercourse to the dignity of an exact science ; 
 one letter will serve for all time ! 
 
 Paris, September 21, 1894. 
 
 Well, on the 6th or 7th of October I 
 sail. I guess it's about time, for good and 
 rich and informing as the vacation is, I see 
 that I was made to keep my hand on the 
 plough, and though I trust I have been 
 looking forward as well as back in Europe, 
 it's the real minding of the furrow that is 
 
 [ 114] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 the serious concern, and I must turn to and 
 get into the field again. 
 
 October 3, 1894. Train from Paris. 
 
 Already America has entered into the 
 present tense with me, and the continent 
 of Europe is getting back on the Map again 
 instead of being in the Almanac for the 
 Summer of 1894. And it is strange to see 
 how the limits of a holiday adjust them- 
 selves; and how at a certain minute after 
 the idle roaming of weeks, suddenly the 
 plough and the old furrow loom up, and 
 one is aware of the irresistible impulse to 
 have it all again. But I have had a great 
 look out : have found the beauty of a time 
 for dreaming and wondering, have, in 
 short, I must believe, added to the stock 
 of the imperishable, and I feel rich and 
 warm within, in contemplating these gifts 
 of Life and Time. In some strange way 
 also, I have felt this summer the reality of 
 [ "5] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 all that is real more deeply; the presence 
 of those who are absent. I have been more 
 aware of Mr. Brooks than ever before, and 
 of other lovely ones, and this I think very 
 strange and unexpected, and it has made 
 great shining moments for me, that must 
 stay with me, for they cannot be taken 
 away. 
 
 October 28, 1895. 
 
 To-day is a dissected map of the very 
 finest possible divisions and each country 
 is occupied by a self-constituted constable 
 who does not mean I shall escape him. In 
 the face of all this I smile (in a somewhat 
 galvanic manner) and Bruce yawns, but the 
 game goes on ! I did get very near to you 
 all this morning when I rode over the 
 Lynn Marshes, and gold and blue and a 
 sky-ey rose color combined to make a web 
 of the most entrancing mystery. Winter 
 and Summer do not fail, only nature will 
 
 [ 116] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 not arrange herself by the Clock of our 
 circumstance, will not be bullied nor ca- 
 joled, but " comes unannounced *' as Emer- 
 son says of Beauty. ... I perceive that we 
 shall converse for hours on biographical 
 themes when we meet. And I shall bring 
 you if you have not had it W. J.'s Is Life 
 Worth Livingy wherein he constructs cour- 
 age anew for those who must stand upon 
 the little foothold of the naked human 
 Will, and ** yearn upward" according to 
 the conditions of that Will's higher neces- 
 sities. An eager and noble cry from such 
 a brave and tender heart. 
 
 April 13, 1896. At Sea. 
 
 1 feel perfectly free with and he 
 has a personal interest in things which 
 make him near and remote in that admi- 
 rable manner which belongs to true com- 
 radeship. But a foot on terra firma will 
 determine many things which now drift as 
 
 C 117] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 the waves drift. Not having been able to 
 think I naturally have not been able to 
 read, till now, when I have wandered in 
 these sweet mystic pages of Maeterlinck, 
 where as in Le Revet/ de V Ame and others 
 in the same vein of feeling, I feel there is 
 truth and beauty in what he says. The eye 
 of the Soul seems to-day more able to dis- 
 cern the "violet ray'' of the spiritual spec- 
 trum, too, and those "dreams which are 
 not idle " open larger vistas than have been 
 guessed before. One ventures to say to 
 one's self, nothing is so near as the Majes- 
 tic Far, whither I speed, and so one is at 
 moments rapt into great presences. 
 
 No date. 
 
 It 's a beastly period, this preceding such 
 a convulsion of nature as my going to 
 Europe. In the first place everything here 
 has to be arranged and everything there 
 created. I feel as if the Continent were 
 
 C ii8] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 one long picture gallery with not a shop 
 in all the length and breadth of it ; and if 
 one were discovered, as if I should rather 
 die than stop to buy anything in it; 
 whence I am purchasing stockings by the 
 dozen and shoe-strings by the gross : and 
 was just packing up all my postage stamps 
 when I remembered that there national 
 possibilities gave out. I have a list of things 
 that must be done, as long as the Woman 
 Suffrage petition in New York State ; and 
 I imagine doomed to the same lack of 
 fulfilment; but I go on just the same, with 
 a sort of galvanic energy. 
 
 ["9] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 TO MRS. JAMES T. FIELDS 
 
 1894. 
 It was of you that I thought first and 
 most when Mrs. Thaxter's valiant soul 
 went on its lone way to find heavenly 
 cohorts of waiting friends afar. . . . Now 
 that I am once more in Paris, I hope to see 
 Madame Blanc-Bentzon, but the lovely 
 country holds its lovers, and those who can 
 linger are unwilling to return to the little 
 chop-sea of Parisian life as it is just now. 
 I am cheered by having Clemence hard by 
 . . . and many other friendly faces bloom 
 on neighboring bushes. But I am haunted 
 by the "sensations d'ltalie," and a dream 
 from which perhaps one never awakes. 
 
 [ 120 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 TO MRS. RICHARD M. HUNT 
 
 Undated. 
 
 I am on my way to Newport, that I 
 may for one little moment, so sacred a 
 moment, be near you, and lay one leaf of 
 tender homage at the feet of him whom 
 it has been such a delight to love and 
 honor. ... I know that great voices are 
 comforting you; that Death itself is like 
 a mighty voice of God, speaking a new 
 majestic word; telling of peace and joy 
 yet to be : deep answering to deep, and so 
 I must be content with silence. 
 
 77 Mt. Vernon Street, May 17, 1896. 
 
 In a deeper place, a place where weak- 
 ness cannot enter, I do indeed believe with 
 my whole heart that those beloved and 
 majestic ones whose "spirits have passed 
 beyond this earth's control" are near our 
 
 [ '^i ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 spirits, enter into our yearning hearts, 
 comfort, sustain and teach us. . . . As 
 "the Spirit witnesseth with our Spirit," 
 in like manner do those just ones made 
 perfect take on the freer conditions of 
 spiritual life and minister, we cannot know 
 how largely, to the necessities of those they 
 love. If, I say to myself, I can only be 
 strong enough to live in the light in which 
 one believes; to press upward unfalter- 
 ingly. 
 
 December 26. 
 
 I can only thank you, and ask for bless- 
 ings for you and yours in these Christmas 
 days. Association seems to make the feasts 
 sometimes too hard to bear; but one goes 
 deeper and then peace flows in again. But 
 I wish I could come and put my hand in 
 yours, knowing of the long reiterated pain 
 you have had to bear. And it is because 
 of this that more than ever now I ask for 
 you the blessing of Peace. 
 [ 122 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 On the train for Baltimore, 
 June I, 1897. 
 
 Dear, and dear Friend, As you 
 perceive I am executing a familiar act and 
 am on my way to my little Mary's wedding, 
 having at this moment just emerged from 
 the night and Philadelphia or was it the 
 night of Philadelphia ? and now moving 
 swiftly in the early sunlight. Since your 
 dear letter came I have been packed with 
 those persistent duties which attend this 
 time of year plus the incidental coming 
 and going of people and events, and the 
 final climax yesterday of the Dedication 
 of the Shaw monument, which in our lit- 
 tle town was the occasion for a vast inter- 
 est and the display of more pure feeling 
 than often happens. On Sunday Henry 
 Higginson gave a familiar talk to the stu- 
 dents at Memorial Hall concerning Shaw, 
 his character, his opportunity ; a brave 
 discourse, full of simplicity and rugged 
 [ 123 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 eloquence. And as I sat looking at the 
 stage there in the College theatre, I saw 
 and shall forever see beloved forms, and 
 
 do you remember pouring from the 
 
 pitcher into the silver cup ? These pre- 
 sences remain, and sanctify all that shall 
 come after. 
 
 At the dedication yesterday, walked the 
 survivors of the 54th Massachusetts Col- 
 ored, with their tattered battle flag, and 
 later, in the Music Hall, after the oration 
 by William James, came one by Booker 
 Washington a wonderful speech which 
 lifted up the hearts of all who heard him. 
 And the veil was lifted from the monu- 
 ment, and now the memory of Shaw and 
 of the cause of freedom are set in imper- 
 ishable form. 
 
 October i, 1897. Old Place. 
 
 I have little to tell you of any moment, 
 the little world of people and things moves 
 on, and I move with it, yet seem somehow 
 [ 124 3 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 strangely remote; dreaming dreams, work- 
 ing and wondering over the yet undiscov- 
 ered secrets of life. But this long, this 
 endless summer has been a wonderful one 
 to me, in proving the depth and riches of 
 the great realities of life ; sources of hope 
 and faith, of consolation, and joy make 
 themselves felt, and that which St. Paul 
 calls " the power of our endless life " seems 
 newly understood; as one goes through 
 experience after experience, and loses one's 
 self only to find it again, truly the same 
 but changed. 
 
 July 14, 1903. Old Place. 
 
 I have the summer well packed with 
 dreams ; but you know how little that may 
 come to mean. However it is recorded 
 that they have saved the world ! 
 
 [125] 
 
LETTERS 
 TO MRS. HENRY PARKMAN 
 
 May 26, 1900. 
 
 It is the faith of a friend that makes such 
 a bulwark of consolation. One knows one's 
 failures and one's poverty and would rather 
 that one's friends knew them too ; but if 
 they will only through the long conflict 
 believe in you still, that forever sustains 
 and heartens ; is a point de rep aire for which 
 one is so grateful, enables one to keep faith 
 in one's self. ... I feel fortified at know- 
 ing that you also believe in the Dream, 
 which as Richter said "shall remain" 
 when we truly awaken, only the sleep of 
 weakness and ignorance and self-remem- 
 brance shall have passed away. 
 
 June 20, 1900. 
 
 All the stars are shining in this quiet 
 town and peace lies like a mantle over the 
 [ X26 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 hill. The rivers which gird in South Ber- 
 wick have seven falls within a mile, and a 
 sound like that of some mysterious sea 
 comes on the air ; and after you know, 
 you always, a little, hear it, and there are 
 many things here which give a sort of 
 mystic quality to this old simple New 
 England village. 
 
 July 3, 1900. 
 
 I am now in the grip of knowing that 
 whatever is to be done must be done be- 
 fore July nth, and so I am engaged with 
 the making a sort of block-puzzle of men 
 and things which must be fitted together 
 before I take ship. ... I perceive, in 
 short, that it is a terrible piece of work to 
 have what is called a vacation. But I per- 
 ceive also that somewhere in the so-called 
 vacation there is a little concrete piece of 
 clear, sheer, reality, some point of beauty 
 which will speak to me, and never cease 
 [ 127 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 speaking. You will understand ; and after 
 all, these are the gifts which leaven the 
 whole air and temper of one's existence. 
 
 July 5, 1900. 
 
 Going away for five weeks is tantamount 
 to preparing for death ; and every corner 
 must be visited, ticketed, docketed in this 
 complex scheme by means of which I 
 conduct that remote thing we call our life. 
 
 8. 8. Columbia, July 16, 1900. 
 
 My years I think are counting in vari- 
 ous ways in reducing certain " dangerous 
 tendencies" and I don't think it is owing 
 only to a good sea that I have shown un- 
 usual self-control ! for after the first day 
 I plucked myself up and have been, not 
 a free man, but with fetters possible to 
 conceal. The Ship's Company is, in the 
 main, made up of those who *' neither give 
 nor take," Cook's Companies, bands of 
 
 [ 128] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 Teutons, etc., etc., with a few canonical 
 travellers, and pleasant people in search 
 of health ; with whom (at those long 
 hours when dinner and music and chat- 
 tering are done), I exchange amiable com- 
 modities. For the rest, I rally on some 
 interior realizations. 
 
 London, July 21, 1900. 
 
 All is going as planned ; London empty, 
 almost, of one's friends; but fuller than 
 ever of people, and profoundly full of in- 
 timations, of wonder, of dreams. The heat 
 excessive, till late last night ; perhaps I can 
 indicate this in no way more impressively 
 than by telling you that the mighty 
 among Coachmen and Footmen in Hyde 
 Park wore straw hats ! This sight really 
 unnerved me : it seemed the first concession 
 of a really great Nation. . . . To-day I 
 saw the Academy pictures, and am full of 
 gloom; so much painting, so little Art. 
 [ 129 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 Great painting in Sargent's group, but so 
 far as Art lies in composition, in feeling, in 
 the outward and visible form of inward and 
 spiritual grace, one is left empty before 
 this great canvas. 
 
 France, July 28, 1900. 
 
 A word with you just as I come upon 
 my native soil and feel the strange vital 
 breath of her air upon my cheek. . . . 
 Spite of the emptiness of London, and 
 only proposing to do there the obvious 
 things, I have had some acute moments; 
 such as going down to Mrs. Humphry 
 Ward's for a season of the most ideal in- 
 tercourse in the old garden, along the 
 Lime-tree walk, and last a talk with her 
 alone under immemorial beeches. . . . 
 
 Now, my plan is simple, I can assure 
 
 you! Two days for the Exposition, then 
 
 "steer due North" for Chartres. ... I 
 
 desire to have a Huysmannian day there, 
 
 [ 130 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 beginning with dawn and ending with sun- 
 set. ... I shall go and there anoint my 
 soul and see the sunlight enter at every 
 angle through those divine windows. 
 
 August 5, 1900. 
 
 Paris! happily for you I shall not tell 
 you in pencil, more than the great fact 
 that I have found what I came for, . . . 
 the sight in the Exposition of the Retro- 
 spectif with, its beautiful collection; objects 
 of the great 12th, and lovely 15th, centu- 
 ries; and then a few modern pictures. 
 
 And to have one such day as I spent in 
 Chartres, from the morning till seven 
 o'clock, when the setting sun threw a 
 rainbow all around the left clerestory ! 
 
 September 11, 1900. 
 
 The way the marshes looked with the 
 colour of all the summer in them, and an 
 autumn sun striking its potent slant across 
 C 13' ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 them, was too much for me, and I am only 
 waiting now for the night to be over that 
 I may try to recover some shred of the 
 "fine, careless rapture" that was in the 
 sight. I am, alas ! I might remark, in a 
 perfect maelstrom of affairs; large, small, 
 oblate spheroids in shape, like lead for 
 weight. The only thing that could be 
 worse, I suppose, would be not having 
 them to do, by which grim philosophy 
 one keeps a head above the circumambi- 
 ent wave! One thing this week is very 
 dear; my Trinity Class comes down, as 
 many as are free, to the Baptist Class 
 Annual Fair, and attendant splendors shine 
 upon the deed. At the breakfast table I 
 am actively composing sofa-pillows and 
 other nostrums for a cold world, while my 
 mind has gone on a sort of vacation; and 
 will not return, I think, till the first Mon- 
 day in Heaven. The comfort is, that no one 
 notices but one's self! 
 
 C 132 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 September 24, 1900. On the train. 
 
 It does sometimes seem as if the mental 
 ray were in danger of deflection and I 
 might be found recommending that time- 
 tables be studied in the Public Schools ; 
 or other lucubrations of a diseased and 
 over-wrought fancy. ... I shall soon make 
 further report of all the things I am not 
 doing, in order to compass these duties 
 entailed by having a practical bee in my 
 bonnet. 
 
 October 20, 1900. 
 
 The day when I have looked forth, has 
 been all deep azure and gold and garnet, 
 and the night is like a purple cup, oh, won- 
 derful ! So you see there *s a window in 
 this day's house of life, which is the great 
 point. 
 
 November 3, 1900. 
 
 The little adorable jessamine went in and 
 out with me to-day, and now the second 
 [ ^33 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 piece sits here very close, and looks forth 
 with that mild sweet eye, and is like some 
 message from a world not far perhaps, but 
 invisible except for signs and tokens and 
 the commerce of hope and faith. 
 
 Christmas Eve, 1900. New York. 
 
 This is the hour in which all your hearts 
 are lifted up in grief and memory and hope. 
 I am there with you ; and this day takes 
 its place with those sacramental hours in 
 which love and sorrow have their way, and 
 the tenderness of which remain with us, 
 though we go back into the strenuous cur- 
 rent again to-morrow. . . . Perhaps you 
 will feel as I do, that the peace of Christ- 
 mas in the air, in the sky, in this rushing 
 company everywhere, is more wonderful 
 than it ever was before. I hope the sense 
 of it will come down to-night "as the dew 
 on a fleece of wool,'' and comfort all sad 
 hearts with this same blessing of peace. 
 
 [134] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 August 1 6, 1 90 1. 
 
 The mail this morning, my Frances, 
 brought me a letter which was very dear, 
 and such a good piece of literature, if I may 
 be allowed thus to speak critically of a work 
 of the affections. Yet the heart is the 
 only artist in the last analysis, so I may 
 have laid a flower on the right shrine after 
 all. . . . What a return for your letter from 
 the zone of calm and harmonious inter- 
 change, as the happy gods passed gracious 
 goblets from hand to hand. I have a letter 
 from Mrs. Lawrence as dear and as wise 
 as the wisdom of little children. She is a 
 woman of the world with a child's heart. 
 
 August 27, 1 90 1. 
 
 The message concerning Mrs. Dorr 
 gives me a sad little pang, for I see how 
 little can be done, and yet that vital spirit 
 is so cabined by the persistent flesh. Ah 
 well, I try to remember that she may be 
 [ '35] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 free from suffering in any such sense as 
 this, and only waiting for the new freedom 
 under a new sky. 
 
 September 4, 1 90 1 . 
 
 I am pursuing my way to Old Place 
 
 under the escort of and an interesting 
 
 young President of a College in Washing- 
 ton (the State), who has much to tell, and 
 in talking gives one a great sense of that 
 amazing West, fecund, vast, waiting to be 
 born again, but in its present condition ro- 
 bust, amazing. 
 
 On the Memorial Services for President McKinley. 
 
 September 20, 1901. Old Place. 
 
 Yesterday was a day which I can't help 
 believing showed growth in many direc- 
 tions in our country ; and made more than 
 ever evident what Death is as a witness to 
 Life. For Death, like the soul of man, 
 "looks before and after" and judges. 
 There was a dear little mass of people at 
 
 [ 136] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 the Baptist Church, and chance to say a 
 supremely great word. No one said it, but 
 I think it got spoken just the same in the 
 silent chambers of each heart. 
 
 October, 1901. 
 
 In this summer I have faced a good 
 many things and felt a new responsibility, 
 toward which I must steadily set myself. 
 This recognition has, I think, made every- 
 thing which was dear, dearer; but it has 
 made me feel how I must "straighten my- 
 self to the self-same mark,'' not hasting, 
 not resting; working, loving. 
 
 But these are words, and we will wait. 
 
 Christmas Day, 1901. Philadelphia. 
 
 In general this is a time when I am 
 leading the life of a serious butterfly going 
 from friend to friend, yet not wholly un- 
 aware of the moral world in which we all 
 live. 
 
 [ 137 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 March 19, 1902. On Shipboard. 
 
 This entity Me has wholly yielded to 
 this environment the ship. I sleep like a 
 dormouse, I exchange civilities, I placidly 
 fill my place at the dinner-table, I cast a 
 languid eye through the port-hole. I sleep 
 again ! What could you and that Domi- 
 neering Doctor ask more? 
 
 One thing really was too much. I 
 thought The Valley of Decision had been 
 put with two or three things into a fat 
 bundle which I instructed Herman to 
 take with the last things. When I opened 
 it to-day fancy my feelings at finding a neat 
 set of Boswell's Johnson which I had 
 bought for a future Christmas present! 
 
 Good Friday, 1902. London. 
 
 I found also your dear telegram and 
 letter ! That was a good beginning and 
 I bless you for such a joyful moment, only, 
 darling, you must not find my going so 
 
 C 138 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 real, I don*t really go very far from those 
 I love, let this letter bear w^itness ! 
 and that is the way the real keeps so ahead 
 of the actual, as you w^ill feel more and 
 more the longer you continue on this 
 very interesting and informing road called 
 life. ... 
 
 Then I went to the Abbey, for a beau- 
 tiful little service ; and then giving myself 
 up to that wonderful atmosphere, where all 
 souls and many saints seem more real than 
 those who walk among their monuments, 
 I wandered, I cannot tell how long, with 
 Memory. After all the stones of splendor 
 and the glory of mortal life, one comes 
 back to the quietest corner of all, with the 
 early poets ; where two little garlands keep 
 Spenser's sweetest singing green, and one 
 looks upon the marble bust of Michael 
 Drayton, with tiny fillet of laurel, which 
 one sonnet would have made immortal. It 
 is a matchless place ; and in it one finds a 
 [ 139 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 beautiful "peace in believing." This, a 
 very restful day, after the slight agitations 
 of the steamer's affairs before and after 
 landing; and I am feeling what perhaps a 
 critical friend would call the stupidities of 
 repose ! But it all means something to the 
 physical man, and I have walked to-day 
 twice as far as I have walked for a year 
 and am quite set up notwithstanding. 
 
 En route for Paris. 
 Easter Monday, March 31, 1902. 
 
 I laid a little bunch of your lilacs at the 
 feet of Gordon, where he lies so peacefully 
 at St. Paul's, and it was there I had my 
 Easter service, just when (in point of the 
 day if not of the hour) my beloved Class 
 was at Trinity. I looked out at the Thames 
 with an increasing joy, and if you could 
 know the things the tide adjusts just be- 
 fore the windows of the Hotel Cecil. . . . 
 Question: shall I ever be thought well 
 again by those who decide these august 
 . [ 140 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 questions ? I must hurry and defy their sen- 
 tence ! 
 
 April, 1902. Paris. 
 
 Everything is packed for Madrid . . . 
 and I am off at noon to-morrow . . . hav- 
 ing been introduced to a phrase book by 
 
 which promises to supply one with 
 
 enough words to get what one wants. I 
 never had enough words yet in English to 
 get what I wanted. 
 
 April 12, 1902. Madrid. 
 
 It is the old story here; I am, I have 
 been ever since Clemence saw me off in the 
 train de luxe^ overwhelmed with surprises. 
 Most of all was I overcome by the great 
 drama of Spain itself as I came hither, 
 such grandiose splendor, such tragedy. 
 And the Gallery is far beyond my dreams ; 
 one picture in it the great Velasquez 
 has the whole art of painting in it, and I 
 mean to do little else except to sit in front 
 [ HI ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 of it each day, as long as that curious con- 
 densed cold will allow. Then the Titians 
 are beyond any gallery's possession to me, 
 the portrait of Charles Fifth a sumnium 
 bonum, 
 
 April 1 8, 1902. 
 On the Train to Paris. 
 
 Burgos is a charming little old piece 
 of picture, and as Sargent told me the 
 Cathedral is rich and encrusted with colour. 
 Gold has been so much employed in the 
 great chapel memorials, built up in high 
 resonant decoration, and forming a lovely 
 harmony with the enriched white of the 
 stone columns and traceries, everywhere 
 so elaborate. 
 
 April 29, 1902. Paris. 
 
 It has meant a good deal to me to see 
 
 the American artists . . . and I have the 
 
 old longing to be in some way ready for 
 
 the exhibition here, before I quit this vale. 
 
 [ 142 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 There is something in it which makes the 
 year's record, and that is a point in one's 
 mind. 
 
 May 12, 1902. London. 
 
 We had an interesting call from Mr. 
 Lecky (who, as Mr. Choate says, " looks 
 so exactly like his caricatures ''), and ended 
 with tea later in Mrs. Ritchie's parlor, and 
 all Thackeray's drawings and paintings in 
 our hands to wonder over and to love. That 
 was one of the most interesting things I 
 ever did. 
 
 May 16, 1902. London. 
 
 I think I never knew anything so naive, 
 so altogether infantile, as this England ! 
 The surface of people may be proud, or 
 distinguished, or learned, or fashionable; 
 but after they have accepted you and asked 
 you to share their hearthstone, they seem 
 to become as little children, and lead you 
 to their fireside and proceed to play with 
 their small toys to amuse you, just as in 
 
 [ 143] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 the nursery life we have done it too. Wait 
 till I some day tell you of a luncheon 
 at the Tennants'. Sir Henry Stanley, of 
 course, was there, and such men as Bryce 
 and Sir Alfred Lyall ; much high discourse 
 was held, but all in a way still so simple, 
 so in the world's youth, that it makes a 
 middle-aged American feel like a time- 
 worn sophist looking at the Garden of 
 Eden. Then again it is so strange to be so 
 near all the things one is looking out for. 
 . . . Everything is going on and you can 
 have a sight of it or a turn at it if you like. 
 And another thing is that it makes affairs 
 and social life have a sort of inter-relation 
 which is quite amazing and very econom- 
 ical. Of course this is only a swift and su- 
 perficial description. ... I have wandered 
 a good deal among the old pictures since 
 I wrote, and have seen the Sargents again 
 and salted them down in my critical pre- 
 serves, as it were. 
 
 [ H4 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 May 25, 1902. London. 
 
 Almost every Englisher whom I meet 
 says the Americans are so unconscious ! 
 Is n't that amazing ? And it is they, it 
 seems, who have been so ridden by their 
 consciousness so long. A caged lion, after 
 all. . . . We are about to go to see the 
 school for decoration, should I say the 
 first finger I have lifted in any serious direc- 
 tion ? I am appalled at my powers for " lay- 
 ing off" the garment of endeavor. 
 
 May 30, 1902. London. 
 
 Roger Merriman had arranged a de- 
 lectable day at Oxford, with a luncheon of 
 Dons and youths in charming alternation ; 
 and oh, such enormous beauty round and 
 about. I had such a wave of academic pas- 
 sion flood over me that I almost perished ! 
 That little Sophocles which was in the 
 dead Shelley's hand is there, and our old 
 Edward Silsbee's portrait hangs not far 
 [ HS ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 from the Shelley guitar ; his gift. And 
 now Henry James is in town and looks in. 
 He dined with us one night and was full 
 of subtle criticism and amusing subterfuge. 
 Altogether he presents the most acute bits 
 of criticism in the most unexpected way to 
 himself as well as to everybody else. 
 
 August 4, 1902. Old Place. 
 
 Well, well, it's a very strange little 
 round ball we live on; and I find new 
 clues to my philosophy every minute or 
 two. Pr'aps there are more clues than 
 philosophy, now I think of it! Tell Pene- 
 lope that Old Ladies always answer the 
 Third letter. They love them all and answer 
 the Third. This is good for ready writers 
 to understand. 
 
 August 29, 1902. On the train. 
 
 The visit was full of rest and peace, so 
 I have a feeling of great refreshment and 
 
 [ 146 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 renewal, and desire to be looked upon as 
 a Gentle Giantess who may be discerned 
 with Mr. Low's telescope bounding over 
 the mountains and taking long strides in 
 the meadows almost any time ! You know 
 really, in this long week, I have had a 
 turn at Nature and Human Nature of 
 extraordinary quality, and feel with that 
 fatuous lady of old that "the best is good 
 enough for me,** and that these pleasures 
 and perfumes will stay long with me. 
 
 August 31, 1902. Old Place. 
 
 I fear I yielded too early to the charm 
 of the dolce far niente where young-eyed 
 cherubim and college presidents filled the 
 choirs, and dear and able friends walked 
 in companies hither and yon. . . . You 
 may be pleased to know that since my 
 return four persons have asked; no, five; 
 if I will give them a day quite alone ^ and I 
 am that evil that I had thought of asking 
 
 [ 147] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 them all at the same time ! So you see I 
 am falling from grace. 
 
 September 26, 1902. Studio. 
 
 I write here in that Desolation which 
 precedes cleanliness, and control my spirit 
 as best I can. ... It 's the "Fall of the 
 Year" and things tumble about one's ears 
 with every mail. I omit everything I can, 
 believe me, and I shall apply all my 
 knowledge to perfecting a scheme for the 
 avoidance of pretty much everything. . . . 
 I only write the most shabby letters now- 
 adays to a friend, reserving all my bows 
 and perfumed gloves for my moderate 
 enemies. 
 
 October 25, 1902. 
 
 I have been taken to drive in a close 
 carriage like a delicate doll ; but nothing 
 could keep nature out and the sights in 
 the generous country are supremely fine. 
 
 [ 148 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 On Train approaching Portland. 
 March 30, 1903. 
 
 The country is awfully beautiful, even 
 now, which is a period of least quality 
 as a rule, abandoned by Winter and un- 
 anointed by Spring. I have looked at it 
 lazily and thought of my foreign letters ; 
 but such solitary leisure is almost too pre- 
 cious to relinquish at any demand of the 
 conscientious scribe ; (I have just seen the 
 first vestige left of snow, little white 
 patches on the shady sides of great pines 
 as if a tablecloth were laid for picnic 
 purposes). 
 
 July 29, 1903. Old Place. 
 
 I am reading the great six volumes of 
 Byron's letters; one long revelation of na- 
 ture, brilliant, varied, faceted like a dia- 
 mond, tragic almost to mania, the height 
 without the depth of passion. It all cuts 
 into one like so many knives of tempered 
 steel. 
 
 [ H9 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 October i6, 1903. 
 Old Place, after hearing Beethoven's Mass. 
 
 Such moments as those of last night are 
 indeed moments of true reality; when 
 " the things which are not seen '' make 
 themselves known to us and we stand face 
 to face with what we believe. You re- 
 member Arnold's Buried Life^ where "a 
 bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast/' 
 and the ineffable trust of our being makes 
 itself known ? 
 
 All this was borne in upon the soul last 
 night, as by the tongue of angels ; but less 
 mighty moments will repeat the song if 
 the ear is open. . . . 
 
 [ijo] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 TO MAJOR HENRY L. HIGGINSON 
 
 November 19, 1897. 
 
 When I returned from the Soldiers* 
 Field last Saturday (I could not resist when 
 a Freshman invited me to go with him !), I 
 wanted to write to you and say something 
 of all it made me feel to see that great 
 lovely plain, bordered by the sunset and 
 other irreclaimable gifts of the sky and 
 landscape, and set forever there in memory 
 of valor and of love. And giving it straight 
 from your hand into Harvard's hand makes 
 the giver go with the gift, as no later be- 
 quest can do. I think sometimes in chilly 
 days of what a fire you have there kindled. 
 
 [151] 
 
LETTERS 
 TO J. TEMPLEMAN COOLIDGE 
 
 February 24, 1900. After a Death. 
 
 Once more indeed Death is the great 
 witness to its own mystery, and speaks of 
 Life as nothing else can; deep answering 
 to deep. So one dares to believe that a 
 larger consecration may come to those 
 who have gone with you and the children 
 through these days of grief; and on into 
 the "larger hope.'' 
 
 July 7, 1900. On sailing for Europe. 
 
 I send to you and all those dear children 
 my love and farewell. I hope the summer 
 will make many happy days for you all; 
 with love and memory and nature, all 
 making their good gifts; and I need not 
 say how much I have my friends with me 
 wherever I may be. 
 
 [ 152 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 August 1 6, 1900. S. S. FURST BiSMARK. 
 
 I had a chance to get a swift visit to 
 Paris where, by choosing the best and 
 wholly ignoring lesser joys, I contrived 
 to do quite a wonderful deal, including 
 some of the joys of friendship, such as 
 
 lunching with and dining with a 
 
 few friends who happened to be in the 
 same views of exploration and enjoyment. 
 I found the Retrospectif one of the 
 choicest gifts, like a pilgrimage from 
 shrine to shrine, and full of such distin- 
 guished and exquisite intimations; and 
 that, together with a few best French 
 paintings, constituted the real Exposition 
 for me. The modern glass was nil, I could 
 have wept at the absence of even the sim- 
 plest good things. And so I all the more 
 willingly left the great show for the quiet 
 and permanent joys of the Cathedrals, 
 never so great to me as now. 
 
 Paris too suffered a little to my eye and 
 
 [ 153 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 to my mind, I think, from having just left 
 London with its tragedy, its splendor, its 
 enormous self-possession. After the match- 
 less dignity of the Lion and the Unicorn, 
 the Lilies of France seemed like deserted 
 or neglected shrines. 
 
 But when I spent one long day in 
 Chartres I confess that even London 
 melted like wax before such pure and su- 
 preme beauty. 
 
 July, 1902. S. S. Saxonia. 
 
 The sojourn in London has been to me 
 full of a unique pleasure, for though I have 
 only done very quiet things, and was, be- 
 sides, obeying orders, and really loafing, 
 the strange pageant of London has not 
 passed by in vain. 
 
 For nearly seven weeks I have sat and 
 looked out into Berkeley Square, itself 
 a little web of history, and have felt as 
 if a dark passionate river of human life, 
 
 [ 1543 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 with the bright flowers of the season on 
 its breast, went by. 
 
 London too is so full of all the things ; 
 for social life and politics and literature, 
 all seem fused into one round ball of inter- 
 est and of comparison. For I am quite sure 
 that nowhere does one get as in London 
 such constant fusion of all these diflferent 
 elements. 
 
 March 25, 1904. 
 
 You sent me those lovely white flowers 
 which are still shining and still giving me 
 pleasure. Thank you for these and for 
 many things which you have meant to me 
 this Winter, though meeting has been rare, 
 and I so incompetent ! But the real things 
 do not depend on "How much'' or 
 "What;'* but on the deepened under- 
 standings and sympathies by which the 
 relations of friendship are made manifest 
 and my love and gratitude are always 
 yours. 
 
 [ 155] 
 
LETTERS 
 TO MISS ELIZABETH FRANKLIN 
 
 MEMBER OF THE BIBLE CLASS 
 
 June 14, 1890. Beverly Farms. 
 
 Dear Friend, I went to see your dear 
 father yesterday just as I was moving out 
 of town, and was so thankful to see him, 
 but fear he is indeed very ilL I depend 
 upon your writing to me to let me know 
 how it is with him to-day ; for I hope he 
 may rally with so much care and nursing. 
 You will know without my words how 
 much I am thinking of you ; and wishing 
 that however this present illness may turn, 
 you may feel God very near and His com- 
 fort all about you. 
 
 Easter, 1893. 
 
 Dear Friend, I am afraid you were 
 pretty tired to-day, and I want to send you 
 my love to-night. It is good to have Easter 
 come and remind us of that which is to be. 
 J ust now we are in need of an ample horizon. 
 
 [ 156] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 October, 1893. Chicago. 
 
 It's only because of the great stress of 
 work I have had in hand that I have not 
 written, and your letter which has followed 
 me here gives me a pang of regret ! But 
 you see how it is; and in order to get away 
 my correspondence has lapsed quite out of 
 sight. But then you know that I remem- 
 ber you, do you not ? and you must tell your 
 father so ! You see I am really here, and 
 I can only mention the fact now ; and not 
 attempt to describe to you, as I will do 
 some day, this world of Love and Beauty. 
 It is like a long, lovely dream and under- 
 neath the interest of seeing so much that 
 tells the story of human endeavor and hu- 
 man experience. If only I could have 
 brought the whole dear class with me ! 
 I can't describe to you how I want you 
 to see it. But of all we will speak later. 
 This is just a message of good wishes and 
 hopes. 
 
 [ 157] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 Munich, August 24, 1894. 
 
 If you knew what a comfort it was 
 to me in the midst of my delightful trip 
 in this Old World, to hear of you and 
 your father having a real vacation in 
 the New! I only wish I could know 
 that all the family of the Bible Class was 
 doing the same thing, and I hope to know 
 later, that spite of the heat, it has been, 
 indeed, a good summer for my dear 
 friends. 
 
 I can't tell you what sights I have seen 
 in this brief compass ... let me simply 
 mention that I have during the last 
 month seen eight glorious cathedrals in 
 France; and heard music at Bayreuth, 
 which was like a solemn service of re- 
 ligion, and which left an impression on 
 my mind I can never forget. One goes 
 there like a pilgrim to a shrine, and one 
 finds a lovely, hilly country, an old pic- 
 turesque town; a company of people 
 
 [ 158] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 gathered for this one purpose, and 687 
 persons engaged in producing the works 
 of Wagner with a fulness of beauty quite 
 inconceivable. Ah well, it is all an experi- 
 ence of deep interest; I am learning so 
 much. 
 
 Paris, April 30, 1896. 
 
 Soon, if all is well I shall be within 
 easy reach again; and after a great and 
 rich experience, for I have found these 
 majestic cathedrals speak with new voices, 
 and are greater than I knew. I have gone 
 steadily on my way and am amazed to 
 find how much can be done in a little 
 time, if one only sets one's self squarely 
 to the task. And to-night, do you know 
 what happened to me to-night? The Class 
 sent me a great bunch of French roses ! 
 Ah, what a surprise and happiness it was, 
 and how I thank you one and all from my 
 heart. Tell your father I send him a special 
 
 [ 159] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 greeting, and here is a rose-leaf in love and 
 in memory. 
 
 August 1 8, 1896. 
 
 I read your letter in the train to , 
 
 as we went together to the dinner at Ash- 
 field, so you see it formed part of that very 
 sweet and pious occasion, in which I felt 
 the beauty of feeling which is bred in high- 
 minded people, living in those upper cham- 
 bers of nature, which one finds now and 
 then possible. 
 
 July 1 1 . 
 
 I cannot tell you how it made me feel 
 to get your letter, and hear of that deep 
 grief which had fallen upon your sister, 
 and through her on you all. ... I have 
 lived so long now, that I know what con- 
 solations come to mothers who have been 
 blessed with children ; for they cannot 
 really lose them, and this truth makes 
 C 160 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 itself felt. ... I write in the train; as 
 you see, the only place often where I have 
 a moment to myself, this summer life is so 
 complicated. But we won't mind this; 
 courage and forward ! 
 
 July 28, 1898. 
 
 When I got the windows fairly in place 
 and college days over, I had two days of 
 my own. . . . And I had a great wish to 
 go and be alone and still with that great 
 high altar of Niagara. So this I did, and 
 for forty-eight hours was in the great pre- 
 sence of that Heart of Beauty, which was 
 a great gift and refreshment to me. Then 
 I returned and began on this summer, 
 which has unusual cares and responsibil- 
 ities in it. But I shall try to live some- 
 where below, where I am at peace. 
 
 [ 161] 
 
LETTERS 
 TO MISS EVELYN RICH 
 
 November 25, 1892. 
 
 Dear Friend, It was a great com- 
 fort to have your letter for that first Sun- 
 day of the Class. I missed you more than 
 I can say, and so shall continue to do, the 
 only comfort being in the thought that 
 you are where you will " knit up that rav- 
 elled sleeve" of pain and fatigue, and so 
 come back to us presently. The Class be- 
 gan with a good spirit and an influx of new 
 members which was refreshing and meant 
 well, I hope, for the new rector. . . . 
 
 As you will suppose, I have been some- 
 what in the thrall of my "Exhibition." 
 It's worth being, for the first three min- 
 utes of it, in which one sees one's own 
 work as if it were some one's else, and 
 gets revelations accordingly ! Afterwards 
 one feels like a pelican in the wilderness ; 
 but never mind that. 
 
 [ 162 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 After Phillips Brooks's death. 
 
 January 28, 1893. 
 
 Dear Friend, You will have known 
 without my words all I have wished to say 
 to you in these sacred days. We have all 
 been together in this common pain and 
 loss ; and perhaps also we may believe have 
 shared some of the peace which lies at the 
 heart of the great friend now vanished out 
 of our sight, for it does seem in some won- 
 derful way as if this death had set a seal 
 upon his life ; and one felt on Thursday, 
 when love and devotion found such ex- 
 pression, as if in no other way could the 
 hearts of men have been so lifted up. But 
 words seem very weak at such a time as 
 this. I did not mean to write, only to 
 stretch a hand in loving fellowship, and 
 ask God to bless you and comfort you. 
 
 [ 163] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 1896. 
 
 This is sad news indeed, and my heart 
 aches to-night for you, knowing the strange 
 feeling of desolation, the mesh of tender 
 pain. Thank Heaven it is pain without 
 bitterness which has in it the seeds of com- 
 fort, as one follows the dear mother 
 through that open door and though one 
 must come back to this life, one never 
 comes quite back again I think. 
 
 I long to see you and know how you 
 are, and I send you warm love till I can 
 find you, and shall have you constantly in 
 my remembrance; praying that God will 
 help and teach and comfort you. 
 
 1896. 
 
 I am longing to know that Nature has 
 laid a hand of consolation on you; and that 
 the heaven under which we live, deeper 
 than the blue ether, has been full of intima- 
 tions. I do not know that we shall ever be 
 
 [ 164] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 able to put into words those assurances 
 which come from those no longer seen 
 with these mortal eyes; but it seems to me 
 that the "immanence of the spirit*' bears 
 witness to itself and to our spirit whenever 
 we rise to the best height we know. When 
 we reach the upper levels of our own souFs 
 life, we find that we are aware of a pre- 
 sence; when feeling is deep enough, is it 
 only our heart which beats ? These mo- 
 ments seem to me to constitute more and 
 more our real living, and make everyday 
 doings the road which leads there. 
 
 April 13, 1896. At Sea. 
 
 When I mail this at Plymouth it will 
 be a sign and token that I am near my 
 port ; and then you will begin to think of 
 the French cathedrals and hope for me 
 that I shall find great store there. 
 
 And you, dear friend, how goes it with 
 you ? Bravely I know, and happily I hope, 
 
 C 165 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 as the gifts of the life beyond more and 
 more pour themselves into your heart, as 
 the mother finds fresh channels of be- 
 stowal, and as you lift your eyes unto those 
 helpful hills with understanding. 
 
 1894. On the Road from Venice to Paris. 
 
 My Friend, You and I have not 
 spoken in words, but I think we have ex- 
 changed greetings very often, silently this 
 summer since that day when I saw you 
 last on the street corner. And oh, I hope 
 it has gone well with you from day to 
 day, till now working life is about to be- 
 gin again, with more strength and hope 
 than ever ? Is it like this ? You will tell 
 me when I come, if not before, for I am 
 nearing the home stretch now, (October 
 16, I sail,) and am thankful to have it so. 
 But my journey has been wonderful in the 
 gifts it has made, and the wonderful les- 
 sons it has taught me. I have done few 
 
 C 166 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 things, but mighty ones, and now as I re- 
 turn from Venice, you can fancy the 
 trailing clouds of memory which come 
 with me. I have not painted at all except 
 a few trifling things. I have just stood 
 still to let the magic influences come in 
 upon me ; and have rejoiced in the pageant 
 of beauty and association which Europe 
 has spread before my eyes. I had not 
 dreamed of going to Bayreuth, but a dear 
 friend who had taken an apartment there 
 would brook no refusal, and I had a whole 
 week of the music ! You will love to know 
 this and I shall tell it all to you some fine 
 day. I had hoped for a word from you, 
 but I am glad if you took an immunity 
 from the "little things*' and have had 
 only books and sand-banks, and the sea 
 beyond. But when I arrive do let me find 
 a little message. 
 
 [ 167] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 January, 1898. 
 
 I am indeed grieved for you. These 
 losses have no bitterness, but ah ! the lone- 
 liness and pain of missing. One can only 
 "straiten one's self to the self-same mark'' 
 and go on loving and hoping. 
 
 March 23, 1902. 8. S. Saxonia. 
 
 At Easter we shall all be thinking of 
 each other, and so this ocean in between 
 will not amount to very much after 
 all. . . . 
 
 Easter Day, London, 1902. 
 
 Dear Friend, Do you not think it 
 is fit that I should send you a little word at 
 the end of this great day, when we have 
 been absent in body but present in spirit? 
 I do indeed love to have a word with you, 
 and to tell you that I am sitting by the 
 River Thames, with a little stone balcony 
 from which I can see wonderful things, 
 which ** teach me more of man, than all 
 
 [ 168] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 the Sages can,*' and which an empty city 
 (four holidays at Easter) has made some- 
 thing wonderful for me. ... I kept our 
 annual feast at St. Paul's and laid a white 
 lilac at the foot of Gordon's beautiful fig- 
 ure which lies in that great place. 
 
 London, Whitsuntide, May 19, 1902. 
 
 Miss T. . . . and I like this little partner- 
 ship so much, as friendly as it is free; and 
 with the great city lying all about us, we 
 can feel it to be society or solitude just as 
 we prefer. I loaf magnificently, and yet see 
 things and individuals and pictures in a 
 way I find restful and refreshing to a rare 
 degree. And (as I seem to be multiplying 
 paradoxes!) I might add, that London is 
 so mysteriously great and small both at 
 once. It never takes long to go anywhere; 
 yet you know how vast the place is. But 
 I shall square these mysterious circles 
 some time. All your news was so refresh- 
 
 [ 169] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 ing, and the Charles River seems more 
 near and dear because of the Seine and the 
 Thames, and I dare say you have seen lit- 
 tle boats floating by filled with this mes- 
 sage! I have word from several of the 
 Class-family, and I long for more. ... I 
 returned . . . and kept the feast of the 
 Spirit here, going to the little 9th century 
 St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. 
 
 On a suggestion that for the sake of her health Mrs. Whitman 
 should stop teaching the Bible Class. 
 
 September 29, 1902. 
 
 Ah, dear friend, this new tribute of all 
 your loving care did not cross my mind ! 
 and I really can't tell you how I felt when 
 I read your note and felt the Class behind 
 it. Bless you all, and you will know how 
 your goodness makes me feel without 
 words ; I know. Nor can I have such care 
 round about me without taking it into seri- 
 ous consideration, and I have just thought 
 [ 170 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 it all through now; and this is what I 
 will do if my dear pastors and masters con- 
 sent ! I will do very little about the Fair 
 which I am ready to believe is just going 
 right on ! and I will not begin the Class 
 till the first Sunday in December, instead 
 of November, and have a three months* 
 course. 
 
 There, dear friend, is n't that meek ? 
 But I do truly think that I could not, ex- 
 cept for far deeper cause, give it up wholly, 
 do you see? And I thank and love you all. 
 
 Undated. 
 
 I had a letter from E. F. to-day with the 
 very best of her in it, and it made me feel 
 anew how fine folks are who are just going 
 right along ! I could write an essay on this 
 theme to-night, only it would have to be 
 sent to the Angels to be wholly under- 
 stood. 
 
 [ 171 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 TO MISS CHARLOTTE G. GREELEY 
 
 Dear Friend, That box of ginger is 
 just what I wanted, and is promptly going 
 to sea with me ! So you see how well you 
 knew my needs and supplied them ! I am 
 off in the morning, and I send you a last 
 word of love and of good wishes. I think 
 you will find in making so large an effort 
 in returning to the place so full of mem- 
 ory, that there is born a new hope, that 
 there will come a deepened peace. Heaven 
 bless you as you go and come. 
 
 At Sea, April 13, 1896. 
 
 Dear Friend, Your message was 
 dear to get, and the box of ginger just 
 about the one thing that for the first three 
 days came within the possibilities of this 
 depleted sailor. 
 
 For this voyage is much like other voy- 
 [ 172 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 ages, and when it is rough, I am a miserable 
 creature; and find my safety consists in 
 surrender. So you can see how comforting 
 that good and warming little gift was; 
 and it will please me on land also and 
 serve for many a slight refection while I 
 explore cathedrals, and have no time for 
 wayside inns. 
 
 I think of you and of your goodness in 
 sending me a last message and of the strong 
 way in which you now are going forward. 
 The winter has been a great winter, and 
 greatest of all, I must believe, in that it has 
 lifted such a company of us into new realms 
 of thought and feeling. We may not yet 
 have learned the lessons, but we have had 
 the Book put into our hands. 
 
 So in tears we go on sowing, hoping that 
 we may reap with joy. . . . The Class 
 flowers on the ship are still lovely. 
 
 [ 173] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 December 9, 1889. 
 
 Dear Friend, Do you not think it 
 will refresh you to take these tickets and 
 go with a friend to the concert to-night? 
 They are in a quiet corner of the gallery 
 over the clock, and the concert will be a 
 lovely one. 
 
 So I hope you may feel like it ; though 
 no one knows for another in these days of 
 remembrance. This is a great day of mem- 
 ory for me ; and I am feeling the peace of 
 having been able, for a few minutes at least, 
 to get out of this strange world and into 
 one which is like heaven and home. Some 
 time we shall be able to find all the days 
 thus converted; and then it will be Heaven. 
 
 Thanking for catnip sent to Bay, the cat. 
 
 January 11, 1 90 1 . 
 
 Dear Friend, You couldn't have 
 pleased little Bay and me more than by 
 those gifts ! He had been longing for fresh 
 
 [ 174 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 fields, and there they were, in their best 
 form (to his mind) and my beautiful rose 
 was put in a sacred place and stays with me 
 still. I wish I might have seen you: I 
 should have gone to 25 if I had not been 
 so handicapped by the things which must 
 be done and Doctor's orders, combined. 
 So I had to let some happy moments go. 
 You will write to me, won't you? And 
 you will find in the old places ever more 
 peace. 
 
 Undated, probably 1901. 
 
 Dear Friend, I have this sweet note 
 from you, and all summer this long 
 solemn summer I have kept the rose you 
 sent me. . . . 
 
 You will know, dear, from your own 
 experience what these great readjustments 
 mean, and how supremely one desires to 
 shape the new endeavours to a greater 
 end, 
 
 C 175] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 Whit Sunday, London, 1902. 
 
 Dear Friend, If you knew how de- 
 lighted I was with those little real portraits 
 of that angel cat, and with your having 
 taken them, then you would know how I 
 must write and tell you so ! and really I 
 think they are the best and dearest ever 
 taken of any dear little object such as that 
 yellow and white person is. So a thousand 
 thanks to you and always my love. ... I am 
 established in this loafing life at last, where 
 it is just as I thought it would be, easier 
 to loaf here in London than anywhere 
 else; for when everybody else is doing 
 something, it seems really necessary to do 
 as little as possible and simply look on at 
 the busy pageant of men and things. Then 
 there come all those interesting things 
 and persons which occur in a wonderful 
 world like London, and one is interested 
 and stimulated in just the right way. You 
 will have been told, I am sure, also, that 
 
 [ 176 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 my look at the gallery in Madrid was 
 enough to make any journey worth while. 
 So great, so beautiful, and so full of les- 
 sons, as the pictures of Velasquez were, 
 there, ... I hope you are soon to be free 
 and off for Nature, so to speak, and all the 
 summer*s gifts of love and memory. Take 
 a message from me into it all. 
 
 [ 177 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 TO MRS. CHARLES LAWTON 
 
 A MEMBER OF MRS. WHITMAN*S BIBLE CLASS 
 
 April 21, 1 90 1. 
 
 Dear Friend, Wasn't it the very 
 dearest Tea Party we ever had ? And I 
 think part of the success lay in having your 
 father, as w^ell as your mother, present! 
 Now they will always have to come, and 
 to bring Mr. Lawton to a sense of his re- 
 sponsibilities ! . . . Thank you, yet once 
 more, my dear child, for your constant 
 help and cheer. It means a great deal to 
 Yours affectionately, 
 
 Sarah W. Whitman. 
 
 When Mrs. Lawton was prevented by illness in her family 
 from being with the Class. 
 
 Easter night, 1903. 
 
 I can't let the day come to an end, 
 without a word with you, when you and 
 yours have been so much with me in all 
 our thoughts. 
 
 [ 178] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 Your letter was a comfort ; and I hope 
 you know how much we all share your 
 loving cares and vigil : and are one with 
 you in hopes. I send a message of the 
 warmest regard to your father and mother ; 
 and I know you are feeling the blessed 
 hopes and promises of this great day, 
 which comes with love and healing every 
 year. 
 
 May 20, 1903. 
 
 My heart is with you to-night, knowing 
 what has come to the household and to 
 you, in seeing your beloved mother go 
 into Heaven. There are no words, when 
 these great moments come, but heart meets 
 heart and we all feel and love together and 
 you have that beautiful retrospect of love 
 and devotion which must make memory 
 sweet, and hope more perfect, for memory 
 and hope go hand in hand with those who 
 believe and love. 
 
 Will you lay this rose I send beside her 
 
 [ 179] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 who is now in the peace which passes un- 
 derstanding. 
 
 On receipt of a letter telling of Mrs. Lawton's approaching 
 Confirmation. 
 
 March 24, 1904. 
 
 You know without my words all it 
 means to me to get this letter from you: 
 for I know it marks a deep rich step in the 
 Way of Life, and my heart rejoices in 
 knowing also that you are taking it because 
 you feel called to enter yet more fully 
 into communion with those who believe 
 and love. I have felt sure it would be so, 
 the privileges and the griefs which came 
 with your dear mother's illness seemed to 
 me to be so blessed to you and your way 
 of meeting them so sweet and true, that I 
 knew your eyes would see deeply into God's 
 desires and plans for you. And now this 
 "closer walk*' will bring its own teaching 
 with it. It moves my heart and it humbles 
 [ 180] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 it to read the sweet message you send me, 
 but I can only tell you, what I am sure 
 you have known before, that I have been 
 comforted and helped by my intercourse 
 with you and yours, all these happy win- 
 ters ; and the gratitude is mine, dear child. 
 
 In reference to the first Communion after the Confirmation. 
 
 March 30, 1904. 
 
 I shall go, if all is well, to the Thursday 
 evening service to sit under the gallery on 
 the side of the Baptistry (which is where 
 the Class generally sits) and won't you come 
 and be with me there.? I hope so. 
 
 [ 181 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 LETTERS TO CHILDREN 
 
 TO HENRY PARKMAN, JR. 
 
 1902. 
 
 My Dear Little Godson, When 
 I went to St. Paul's in London, Easter Sun- 
 day, I saw the beautiful monument to 
 General Gordon, whom you will know 
 something about, and the inscription in 
 memory of this "Soldier and Servant'' was 
 so fine that I send you a copy of it on the 
 
 next page. 
 
 Your ever loving 
 
 M. 
 
 In Memory of 
 
 Charles George Gordon, 
 
 Who everywhere, and at all times, gave his 
 
 Strength to the Weak, his substance to the 
 
 Poor, his Sympathy to the Suffering: 
 
 And his heart to God. 
 
 April 27, 1904. 
 
 Dearest Godson, I had meant to 
 come this afternoon and see you all at the 
 
 [ 182 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 birthday play-time. But I can't do this 
 and so I just send you my birthday love 
 and this birthday Shakespeare. And when 
 we two have talked it over we will write 
 one of the great verses in each volume and 
 your name and date, and do all that we 
 don't do to-day. 
 
 My love to you and all the family and 
 I shall count on you more and more every 
 year. 
 
 Your loving Godmother. 
 
 VERSES TO PENELOPE PARKMAN 
 
 Who sent her a little book, made, decorated and written by herself. 
 
 There came the other day some leaves 
 
 Not from a summer tree, 
 But full of Stories, and with care 
 
 All printed out for me ! 
 
 The Book was bound and sewed with care 
 
 And it had covers too 
 Whereon with Art some little hand 
 
 Had set a pattern new. 
 
 [ 183] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 Oh, who did own this little hand 
 
 So gently used for me ? 
 And does the little Artist know 
 
 That every time I see 
 
 My pretty Book, I always say 
 " Who e*er the author be. 
 
 It may have been that dearest Child 
 They call Penelope!" 
 
 [ 184] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 TO PROFESSOR WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 August 7, 1890. 
 
 My Dear Mr. James, You will smile 
 when I say that the first moment I have 
 had to write (as a matter of pleasure), 
 comes in the train on my return from 
 New York. 
 
 I went thither yesterday because the 
 sudden departure of Mr. Schuyler made 
 me want to make one last pilgrimage to 
 his shrine. . . . 
 
 I am glad I went for every reason, and 
 especially because it gave me a quiet morn- 
 ing with them in his quiet presence. . . . 
 I don't know whether you knew him: a 
 really brilliant man, witty, profound and 
 original intellectually, wearing a charm- 
 ing mask, under which was a fiery heart; 
 hotnme du monde, to a degree almost con- 
 tinental, yet with a transcendental faith 
 
 [ 185] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 and a touch of asceticism in his Ufe. Ah, 
 I cared so much for him, and I like to 
 feel that he died as he did ; the last news 
 of him that he had "sailed with the 
 squadron" and the great sea under his feet. 
 I am sure that I get further and further 
 from the Eastern point of view wherein 
 the Each is merged in the All for as 
 far as I can trace the results of the best 
 living of this life, it goes to develop and 
 strengthen the fibre and flavor of the in- 
 dividual, the more consummate and 
 supreme the experience, the more distinct 
 and single the creature. Is not this true? 
 and Habit ; regarding which your pages 
 say the best word at every line, Habit 
 furnishes the scaffolding, a mode, an hypo- 
 thesis, from which the person can work 
 and play freely : and finally fly serenely into 
 new conditions and a less straitened air. 
 
 [ i86] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 Nancy, August 7, 1894. 
 
 I have had hopes of hearing from you, 
 my dear friend, in this land of France; but 
 failing this, I must, before going over the 
 frontier, make report to you of my doings. 
 Will you forgive this flagrant pencil with 
 which I write? The ink of the country 
 appears to be a kind of blackberry jam, 
 and I crave your leave for a medium more 
 to my mind. It has been a wonderful jour- 
 ney, and I am rested and refreshed past all 
 belief. At first a week in London, where 
 you know I had only been for a few hours 
 on a dark Whistler's day twenty years ago ; 
 a week of intoxication, for the great 
 passionate city took an immense hold on 
 what I am pleased to call my imagina- 
 tion. The flood of human life which pours 
 through it is full of significance ; and seen 
 as I saw it, in the flush of "the season,'' 
 gave fresh contrasts to every scene. For 
 the moment it lay like a gay flower on 
 
 [187] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 a sombre background, purple and red with 
 association. I saw people and things galore ; 
 doors flew open, and I found old friends 
 and new, and had therewith great sights 
 of great pictures and monuments, and all 
 the rest. Mr. Bayard is having a political 
 holiday, as it were, and enjoys it immensely, 
 and Mr. Bryce finds himself as President 
 of the Board of Trade, in a post the most 
 interesting he has ever held. One matter 
 of interest was the Sargent decorative work 
 for the Boston Public Library, about one 
 fourth of the whole, and so not to be judged 
 save as part of the design. Yet one sees 
 what manner it is of. It is all the things 
 without being the one thing ; clever, deco- 
 rative, enormously so, and rich in 
 color, yet not beautiful in color ; an assem- 
 blage of objects rather than a composition; 
 a museum of idols rather than a picture of 
 the world's religions. So it seemed to me. 
 I tore myself away from London for the 
 [ i88 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 sake of Paris and the Champs de Mars, 
 where Whistler's pictures gave me a great 
 joy ; and Whistler himself I saw much of. 
 He is like a witty caricature of himself, as 
 it were, but an artist par excellence, and 
 ready for endless talk. Most other artists 
 had, alas, left Paris ; but I saw a few friends, 
 and even braved dining in French with a 
 vocabulary that would have filled you with 
 humor and amusement. 
 
 But one has the calmness of desperation, 
 and I almost wish that you might have 
 heard me rally on the prepositions, use the 
 infinitives by wholesale, and substituteyi/r^ 
 for etre with unblushing inadvertence. Ah 
 well, the blood of my ancestors makes 
 France seem native to me though my speech 
 is ridiculous, and all the way I feel an enor- 
 mous understanding of that swift life which 
 lives itself out more freely, more fully, I 
 am persuaded, than anywhere else in the 
 world. For the last fortnight I had lived 
 
 [ 189] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 among the great cathedrals, of which I do 
 not propose here to speak. You will under- 
 stand what they have meant to me, all 
 the way from the austere beauty of Amiens 
 to the supreme richness of Rheims, a 
 dream of delight and of inspiration. No 
 one had told me of the things I found ; 
 but that is always so with great things, 
 that "strangeness of excellent beauty," 
 and I have gone with the breathlessness of 
 discovery from one to another. 
 
 Here, having been obliged to wait for 
 a letter I had missed, I have had a day in 
 the fields for sketching, and have abode 
 in a hotel full of gay provincial life, and 
 have felt its vivacious abandon. As I 
 painted yesterday in a lovely stretching 
 pasture, my guardians and protectors were 
 my maid sitting majestical, and the cocher, 
 a man of limited intelligence but great 
 urbanity, and a lover of Art ; a little boy 
 holding a large cow in leash, which grazed 
 
 C 190 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 beside me : and occasional groups of wan- 
 dering peasants. To the sympathetic eye 
 this might have seemed like a Virgilian 
 pastoral, but the profane would have blas- 
 phemed, I fear; for me, it was wholly 
 adorable. 
 
 I have not seen your brother: these 
 friends of his have told me that he was 
 lying hid from the haunts of men, and I 
 could not invade his solitude. Perhaps at 
 Venice we may meet; or in Paris when 
 I am there in late September, for I need 
 not assure you that I want to see him im- 
 mensely. 
 
 And I want to hear of you and yours 
 do tell me that you are better and that all 
 goes well on the mountain and on the 
 plain: for here in Europe one feels by 
 turns so near and so very far. To Mrs. 
 James I send warm love and greeting, and 
 I am ever faithfully 
 
 Yours, S. W. 
 
 [ 191 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 October i8, 1899. Old Place. 
 
 My dear Friend, Only a few days 
 ago I heard that you had been delayed at 
 Nauheim : and for cause of illness, which 
 gave me a fine alarm ; and to-day comes 
 your letter and makes things seem better, 
 but bad enough in the retrospect. So that 
 I call upon all the Gods East and West to 
 wholly heal and preserve you. Yet even 
 so I shall repair to Harry and Billy for 
 fresh news: and only be satisfied when I 
 know that you are really sitting " equable, 
 sedate" composing comfortably the Gif- 
 ford lectures free body, mind, and estate. 
 Meantime I send to you and Alice James 
 great measures of friendly sympathy over 
 all the delay and difficulty. Be sure also 
 that I have not sat here in epistolary si- 
 lence ! I wrote ; and also, as your agent in 
 the matter of the little placard, forwarded 
 a proof of the same. Is it not Brown and 
 Shipley? And do I not write a "sweet 
 [ 192 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 Italian hand/* illegible if you will, but 
 stimulating to research. 
 
 Yet after all a lost letter is the only 
 " best instance '* it dies with its secret ; 
 a suspected treasure for ever. Believe me 
 such was mine ! 
 
 Now this persiflage I assure you is 
 wholly the result of hearing from you and 
 speaking with you ! for I have had a sum- 
 mer of almost perfect silence : and when 
 I had emerged into speech it has been of 
 the order which flows from the disused 
 organs of the mind. And to-day, this i8th 
 of October, I give thanks that I am about 
 to return to the " serenity of the streets," 
 to use Dr. Johnson's urban (and urbane) 
 phrase. Perhaps I can summarize the last 
 four months by saying that I have asked 
 no guest under my roof, have done no 
 work, and have had no time ! But we will 
 let these gloomy facts pass: it has seemed 
 best that I should so order events as to suit 
 [ ^93 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 conditions not my own: and now, en avant 
 as best one may. In the long stretches of 
 succeeding days I have meditated some- 
 what and have observed the course of 
 events, and considering the amount of life- 
 stufF which has been consumed in the cur- 
 rent affairs of France, England, and Amer- 
 ica, you can see that though silent I have 
 not been dull. 
 
 It enchants me to know that you find 
 the old France renewing her faith in spite 
 of these cankers and these hideous lepro- 
 sies. The moral chain is as strong as its 
 strongest link: and hangs from a foundation 
 immortal and indivisible. Indeed, could 
 anything but the Republic have stood the 
 fierce assault of the last four years ? I think 
 not. 
 
 I wonder if you have chanced to see 
 Madame Darmesteter in Paris? And oh, 
 by the way, what a sane, brilliant, and large 
 critique of Modern French literature has 
 
 [ 194 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 your brother just written; with perfect 
 courage and good feeling. It is so refresh- 
 ing to have a final word for an individual; 
 and I opened the little cupboard which I 
 had for M. Brunetiere and put your bro- 
 ther's epigraph in with him. But I must 
 not begin to talk of all the things I wish 
 to talk of, nor after murmuring remarks 
 about the Universe, turn with a fatal ten- 
 dency to one's own small but acute round 
 of living, where there is of course every- 
 thing to say! Some time if there's ever an- 
 other Summer, I may write for your amuse- 
 ment or your analysis, the story of a day, 
 or some such chronicle sort of Autour 
 de mon Cceur ; travels, or travel, within the 
 small citadel of the breast, and what it 
 can compass between dawn and midnight. 
 This, as a matter of psychical interest 
 merely: for in one's later years one has 
 the advantage of living and contemplating 
 one's self in action at the same time. Ah, I 
 C 195 ] , 
 
LETTERS 
 
 hope you are in London and at work. I 
 can think of nothing more splendid than 
 to be lost and found there, and I seem to 
 feel the wheel of life revolving at a great 
 pace! 
 
 November 27, 1899. 
 
 I am really moved to the heart, my dear 
 friend, on hearing that your first weeks 
 in the supremacy of that literary retreat at 
 De Vere Gardens had been handicapped 
 with pain and illness. I had thought you 
 in trim for a fine pull, and lo ! this hard- 
 ship. I pray heaven the sky has cleared 
 again and you are in control of yourself 
 again, but I shall not be content till I find 
 a certainty of this from some authorized 
 witness. Oh, it is difficult to have one's 
 friends across the water. I should have taken 
 a train long ago to see how you all looked, 
 if it were not for this "mob of waters." 
 As it is, on getting this I desire to have 
 you write four words, viz. " I am perfectly 
 
 [ 196] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 well/' and have them countersigned by a 
 certain Lady who cannot lie. These lines 
 (which make a mute apology in every 
 word for their incompetency of lead pen- 
 cil) I write as usual on the train, perhaps 
 the only place where I dodge the issues 
 of Ought, and invoke the freedom of De- 
 sire and having no news worth transcrib- 
 ing, purpose to invent some: or eschewing 
 news altogether as a medium of perverse 
 invention, return to things of the younger 
 world, stars, sentiments, and aspirations. 
 
 But this pose would be hard to sustain : 
 the Genius of 1900 would trip me up, and 
 harness me to facts again. Just at present 
 however there are none. 
 
 I have only been in town long enough 
 to bury decently the ashes of the summer 
 and to attend to lighting the winter fires. 
 
 ril tell you one thing that is strange 
 enough: just as one says to one's self I can 
 do no more, one feels the rush of some 
 [ 197 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 new impulse, and this Fall I am aware of 
 some force of heaven, some spirit out of 
 the night, which beckons to me and moves 
 me mightily to all forms of endeavor. So 
 instead of dying and sighing, I have been 
 living inwardly outwardly too perhaps 
 in some strenuous ways at a rate which 
 has made time long. Two or three people 
 also have shot across my sky of late real 
 ones, and to a woman (whose life has been 
 lived at tragic centres and who wrote that 
 anguished book 7 he Gadfly) ^ Mrs. Voy- 
 nich, I gave a letter to you two, for she 
 deserved to know you, and had a great 
 wish beside. She makes the straightest 
 charges, and sees two or three things with 
 a supreme and exquisite clarity; and the 
 rest of things she hardly notices at all. You 
 will perceive a remote white fire in her. 
 
 My mind is so set on Gifl^ord Lectures 
 that I have been reading them wherever 
 found : some unco dull, and those of Mt\ 
 [ 198 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 Wallace with splendid rich pages in them. 
 Perhaps I spoke of him before to you ; but 
 now I have really browsed happily in his 
 pastures: and cared awfully for some 
 heights which he opened to me. I can't 
 help thinking that in some future air it 
 may be given to me to sit upon a slope of 
 the new Thibet, and know the joys of con- 
 templation. But not now. 
 
 Dear friend : this is a shabby letter : but 
 you will pardon its decousue quality inside 
 and out : because it is really meant to con- 
 vey my love to De Vere Gardens with the 
 wish that I could enter there and hear dis- 
 courses of "great things, great thoughts, 
 thoughts lasting to the end.'' 
 
 S. W. 
 
 May 9, 1900. 
 
 Ah, dear friend, it was really immense to 
 get a letter from you written in the Pauline 
 manner, with thine own hand! and telling 
 [ 199 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 at last so large a story. If now presently 
 the Doctor at Nauheim will just prove 
 your heart to be what we all know it is, 
 then we will all be content : and ask no- 
 thing from you but to be well and happy. 
 This is the third time I have set pen 
 to paper and been intercepted, drugged, 
 robbed and carried off by masked force ! 
 Apparently only sordid and commercial 
 letters are possible in these days: for the 
 letters of friendship which are all the time 
 forming themselves in the heart have not 
 a ghost of a chance. Yet like the fabulous 
 gentleman in history "I still live" and 
 here on the 9th of May return to try again, 
 and insist on recording my impressions, at 
 best a reiterated commonplace, as your ap- 
 proved M. G. Farde so handsomely proves. 
 Do you by the way think him to have made 
 his point with his generation ? I am sur- 
 prised reading just now his sociological 
 papers, to find how deeply some of the in- 
 [ ^00 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 sights of his earlier work seem to have 
 taken root and begun to put forth new 
 leaves and perhaps flowers. And again I 
 have found myself recognizing the initia- 
 tive impulse in the course of a violent 
 
 contention with , whose theories 
 
 are now taking more definite shape in vari- 
 ous ways, who assumes that the child of 
 primitive man does not exert an imitative 
 faculty when he depicts this or that in a 
 rude conventional way. That the savage 
 lays a little border on the edge of his bowl 
 *^pour s'amuser'' as it were; not in imita- 
 tion of objects seen and consciously or un- 
 consciously imitated. Now to my mind 
 the rude abstractions of a child's work are 
 abstractions because he does not see enough 
 to make his work concrete: and they re- 
 semble true conventional work because in 
 both certain verities are omitted, but the 
 reasons for these omissions are absolutely 
 different. However this is a dull disquisi- 
 [ 20I ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 tion into which I have been foolishly led. 
 But some day I must tell you a great deal 
 that is very interesting apropos de cela, 
 
 I have been wondering too if you have 
 looked at Santayana's book : for I am long- 
 ing to see a really splendid critique of this 
 amazing piece of literature. The honey 
 of Hymettus was not more exquisitely 
 distilled than in these pages, nor was the 
 perfume of an earlier day ever more deli- 
 cately felt : but that long " cri d'esperance 
 qui a traverse la terre^^ he seems not to 
 have heard : or if he has heard it, it has 
 seemed but barbaric to his ear. Is it not 
 true that if to that calm East we cannot 
 add this eager West, then modern life is a 
 solecism and modern ideals a bad dream ? 
 
 These questions remind me to tell you 
 what a heavenly fortune came to me in 
 being asked to paint the portrait of Mr. 
 Ward. I had only seen him never had 
 speech with him, when Mrs. Dorr had a 
 
 [ 202 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 sudden revelation from Heaven that she 
 wanted me to paint him ! 
 
 I lost no time in accepting, and we have 
 had a refreshing period, the work done on 
 Sunday mornings : he going on with a 
 most adorable monologue, I agonizing 
 joyfully over his changing outlines: and 
 then a few moments of rest and ex- 
 change of personal convictions ! You can 
 see it all : and you can pray for me, for I 
 have got something in likeness to which 
 I must now add technical excellence the 
 old " rub " for one who never learned his 
 
 trade alas ! This and head and some 
 
 children's, with my Commencement win- 
 dow and several smaller matters in glass, 
 have made my days long. Still the win- 
 ter's ** cruse of oil and little cake '' have 
 not wasted quite : and these flying skies 
 and burning bushes of May invite my soul 
 at a pitch I can hardly describe. 
 
 Just at this moment I am going to New 
 [ 203 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 York for 48 hours for the Archaeological 
 Institute Meeting, which sounds a little 
 dry : but I stay with the Chapmans which 
 enlarges the horizon, and see many friends 
 in the interludes. Jack's book gives signs 
 of the really careful revision he gave it, 
 and he is working on some new things, as 
 well as doing each month the whole of 
 the "Nursery." People are still depressed 
 because he is n't different from what he 
 is but it is hard to bring the " vox da- 
 mantis'' to suit a drawing-room pitch, or 
 if one could it would not be a ^^vox da- 
 mantis T So this problem is insoluble. 
 
 June, 1 90 1. 
 
 Dear Friend, I can't tell you how 
 I was set up by your letter from Edin- 
 burgh your splendor, your theme in the 
 first lecture, with its honey, its sting, and 
 its large inclusions: all spoken in the 
 "braw tone" ! And now I know from Rye 
 [ 204 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 that you did the whole ten and are a new 
 man. 
 
 Somehow I can even bear seeing you 
 and yours go back for one more pull at 
 Nauheim so that the seals of perfection 
 may be set upon your state, and leave you 
 free to play the Emeritus role in its most 
 majestical form. 
 
 I think you have had that bad turn 
 which comes and calls us up about the 
 middle of life; and thank heaven you 
 have weathered it, while friends right and 
 left of us could not withstand the attack. 
 
 I don't know whether you knew in 
 
 the inner man, he was so violent 
 
 and brilliant and recalcitrant, on the sur- 
 face, but really an idealist in bonds, 
 and if he were your friend, such a steady 
 friend. I am glad for himself that he 
 stepped so gallantly off: for he was with- 
 out a point de repaire since died, and 
 
 the world was a sorry one to his mind. 
 [ 205 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 Your paper concerning Mr. Myers I 
 had read in the Journal and now love to 
 have at hand to read: it made me long 
 to have much talk with you about him 
 and about the thousand things. 
 
 There 's a curious book on " Personality " 
 I came across the other day which has 
 some side-lights in it, and your old pupil. 
 Miss Puffer, is now gallantly approaching 
 some serious questions: wherein you will 
 have a voice and which interest me largely 
 as they bear upon the development of a 
 new and supposedly true ^Esthetic. 
 
 But all this must wait: for I have 
 written already too long in the wandering 
 mood only intending to send love and 
 blessing to the House of James; and to 
 avow, yet once more, myself as ever faith- 
 fully yours, S. W. 
 
 Oh, I must add one word to tell you that 
 I have fallen so low as to have a sort of 
 [ 206 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 pride in having been really ill: and main- 
 taining the practice of a sort of deleterious 
 Virtue. The result seems to be as one 
 might suppose excellent corporeal state, 
 but a vast spiritual decay. Or as I said 
 to Frances Parkman the other day, I feel 
 just about well but not quite solid. She 
 subsequently asked me what I meant by 
 not feeling solid, an unanswerable demand, 
 for it was to define a negative. 
 
 But to-night the positive state has set in: 
 for the moment I feel solid, and discern 
 it to be the capacity for having wild and 
 foolish impulses! 
 
 Paris, April 7, 1902. 
 
 Dear Friend, I mailed a letter to 
 Liverpool as I landed, to prove that the 
 sea could not drown a friend's regard (but 
 I fear otherwise a brackish contribution) 
 and then went up to London for Good 
 Friday and Easter: everyone whom I 
 knew being in the country for the holidays. 
 [ 207 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 But I had a wonderful three days: for I 
 found a balcony overlooking the Thames, 
 from which I stared day and night: and 
 for the rest took counsel with the old 
 Poets, and lovely young Poets, in the Ab- 
 bey, who told me once more that they 
 did not die and indeed not Spenser's 
 gentle wreaths, nor Michael Drayton's 
 tiny fillet, are needed when one canto, or 
 one sonnet, keeps watch with Eternity. 
 
 Then, when I had forgotten the ship, I 
 came hither, and this time by way of New- 
 haven and Dieppe, which was all I fancied 
 it would be ; for I had that lovely run to 
 sea by the way of Lewes and Newhaven, 
 of a day all sunshine and soft airs, and came 
 upon France with a new surprise. The 
 transition is wonderful, is n't it ? For the 
 lovely sentimental landscape of England 
 always has a touch, as it were, of the Lydia 
 Languish note in it, and it is reserved for 
 France to give to nature those acute touches 
 [ 208 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 which enhance its typical verity. One feels 
 that abiding sense of form which puts ele- 
 gance into the sheep-pastures and a classic 
 intimation into every farm-yard. The tree- 
 trunks were black in the early humid air 
 of spring, and the small green leaves and 
 buds shone against them with the acute- 
 ness of their new life. I never was so over- 
 whelmed with the look of France before. 
 
 On board the Saxonia, for home. 
 June, 1902. 
 
 Dear Friend, I have had two great 
 days here in mid-ocean, for it is only here, 
 in the midst of the great fragrant sea, that 
 your book and I have met. The copy you 
 sent me did not come, nor yet one I or- 
 dered in the common mart but day before 
 yesterday. I made bold (hearing the Edin- 
 boro accent in a tall, slim man's speech) 
 to scrape acquaintance, and in two min- 
 utes he asked me if I knew you, had I 
 [ 209 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 read your book, would I read his while 
 he finished a piece of work ! That was high 
 fortune, and I have had it at a splendid 
 pitch of solitude as one seldom has a book, 
 and read word by word this unique story 
 of the spirit of man. There is no need to 
 say how greatly I have been moved by it, 
 for such a store of human faith and feel- 
 ing heaped high in a granary would in it- 
 self be enough ; but brought into a sort 
 of synthesis, with wonderful side-lights 
 and cross-lights of insight and sympathy, 
 carried through the varied forms of re- 
 ligion and philosophy, allowed a place 
 in all conditions of men, and finally ad- 
 mitted to bear testimony to a possible state 
 beyond this present state, this consti- 
 tutes a work of infinite importance, and 
 in regard to which I must speak with you 
 at length, and not in this brief murmuring 
 way. Only one word as to its beauty of 
 statement, its tone, its fire, and its recog- 
 [ 2IO ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 nition of that increasing passion of pur- 
 pose for which the soul stands at last in 
 spite of all its sighs and weak complain- 
 ings. 
 
 I am overwhelmed by the form as well 
 as the substance of the work, with a sort 
 of humor which keeps the level of the ex- 
 cellent earth, and yet imaginatively dis- 
 closes the sky. Briefly, a great book. . . . 
 
 But London left some possessions in my 
 keeping, and gave me a clue to many things 
 and people unknown before, a slightly 
 varied horizon line, as it were, and the 
 possibility of contact with things belonging 
 to my work and to my dreams. So I am 
 returning not only better, but greatly re- 
 freshed. Still wondering ; ** for it is in won- 
 der that the owl is great!" S. W. 
 
 September 12, 1903. 
 
 That letter with the high note of tri- 
 umph in it was an awful pleasure to receive, 
 [an ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 dear friend, and if I had written to you as 
 often as I have had the impulse, I should 
 have freed my mind at intervals not always 
 down on the calendar ! But as I have said 
 to you, the writing nerve had been a good 
 deal over-worked and is one of the last to 
 respond accordingly: and I have long, un- 
 recorded, silent sessions of thought and 
 remembrance which leave no visible sign, 
 but which, in a more subtilized world, will 
 be accepted as a glorified equivalent of 
 "these lines." Nor will the antique pencil 
 intervene, though for present purposes I 
 hold it to be a great and good weapon, 
 with less friction between its point and 
 one's mind than any writing-tool after all : 
 and needing sharpening less often than 
 one's wit. At all events, it is finely adapted 
 to telling of rather a mis-spent Summer, 
 as I could n't quite summon up the vigor I 
 aspired to possess, in order that great works 
 might flow forth from the brush. 
 [ 212 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 However, it is not easy to feel dull after 
 all, and I humored my incapacities by 
 dreaming a rare luxury and reading: 
 (a thing I have not done much of since 
 childhood's hours) finishing just now those 
 six volumes of letters which may be called 
 Byron's heart. In that thrice molten caul- 
 dron may be said to have been consumed 
 the 1 8th century's terrible (terrible because 
 false) legacies, one by one: till like Shel- 
 ley's, the heart alone survived; and was, in 
 spite of life's abuses and robberies, the heart 
 of a little child. To have, as it were, a vio- 
 lin obligato played in the eight hundred 
 letters, on the single string of one's own 
 consciousness, is a unique experience in lit- 
 erature, and rare in life. So one dreams, 
 profoundly involved with it. But mark the 
 dangers of such an experience! One day 
 last week I spent with a coterie of the 
 really cultured, and had to pay high for a 
 simple expression of what to me constituted 
 [ 213 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 a great poet. Only E. Lawrence, with that 
 swift infantile demand for the first-rate, 
 seemed able to consider inspiration at a 
 fixed valuation ! They must regard it 
 through an ethical glass, "darkly." . . . 
 
 All this writing, and not one word yet 
 of that splendid deliverance of yours on 
 the Lynching Madness! a great piece of 
 high statement. I should like to sit down 
 and talk with you for a year about it all. 
 As one looks at the Southern problem with 
 its hydra-headed dangers and difficulties, to 
 me the most difficult and dangerous ele- 
 ment (because at once the most subtle and 
 widespread) is the way in which a cen- 
 tury of life with the institution of slavery 
 produced (unconsciously) a sort of mental 
 lesion in the whites as a result of main- 
 taining an admitted wrong. All my life I 
 have noticed that at a certain moment with 
 a cultivated and thoughtful Southerner, his 
 mental ray would, as one may say, deflect; 
 [ 214 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 it was when the " Institution'* was spoken 
 of. I suppose this is happening to us all 
 as the result of our bad ways but this 
 phenomenon is common to a whole pop- 
 ulation, and has to be reckoned with for 
 generations yet to come. 
 
 After Mr. Boott*s Memorial Service. 
 
 Sunday night. May 8, 1904. 
 
 It was perfect this afternoon, dear friend: 
 full of that beauty which only human 
 hearts can distill; and your words skilled, 
 reserved, and passionate were like the 
 sunset of that day 9 1 years long. 
 
 Death seems more and more incidental 
 I find, with each new taking off: and as 
 you see, it now almost escapes mention, 
 we are so occupied with emerging life. 
 
 [215] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 PASSAGES FROM A NOTE-BOOK 
 
 1885 
 
 January i . 
 
 Every year is in some occult way pro- 
 phetic of itself. It enters with a certain 
 assertion of its character. 
 
 January 2. 
 
 I find in old age that what most people 
 want is comfort, or lower still, to be com- 
 fortable. 
 
 January 3 . 
 
 I read four Cantos of the Inferno with 
 Mr. Norton this morning, and I see now 
 why I waited till middle age before having 
 it in the original. Reading Dante at forty- 
 two is like life witnessing to life. 
 
 January 4. 
 
 If it were not for Faith, Hope would 
 drag her anchor. 
 
 [ 216 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 January 9. 
 
 Roughly speaking, people may be di- 
 vided into three classes, so far as the fabric 
 of their nature is concerned : coarse people, 
 coarse people who like fine people, and 
 fine people. The middle class naturally pro- 
 duces much confusion, for a taste is easily 
 mistaken for a quality of character. 
 
 January 10. 
 
 The question that lies behind, " Is it ever 
 right to tell a lie?'* is. What is truth? It 
 surely can never be right to do wrong ; and 
 so if there ever be a lie which it is right 
 to tell, it must be because the truth is served 
 by it. And when a noble person tells what 
 is called a lie I believe it is because he 
 sees further and knows more. 
 
 January 13. 
 
 One sees constantly how much more 
 sensitive to physical rather than spiritual 
 [ 217 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 suffering, ordinary natures are, for them- 
 selves and others. Such will give more sym- 
 pathy for a cut finger than for a broken 
 heart. 
 
 January 14. 
 
 Women, having been educated within 
 the home, have almost no idea of what 
 may be called official responsibility; can 
 do what appears to be a dishonorable act, 
 can assume authority without warrant, in 
 short, seem wanting in the moral sense so 
 far as their corporate action is concerned, 
 when individually each one may be an in- 
 tensely moral person. In this respect we 
 see what the " code of honor,'' so called, 
 has done for men ; it has upheld the honor 
 of mutual relations, has given a standard for 
 the dealings of one with another. 
 
 January 23. 
 
 One wonders over the many people who 
 never seem to see the responsibility of 
 
 [ 218 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 omitted acts ; to whom a thing done is the 
 only actuality. I believe there will, in the 
 final adjustment, be more blame laid to 
 the minus than to the plus account. 
 
 January 25. 
 
 What we want to get at first in regard 
 to ourselves, and with reference to the con- 
 duct of our lives, is what we are ; what, in 
 the last analysis, is the fulcrum. I cannot 
 see so far anything so reasonable as Cole- 
 ridge's hypothesis of man as Will; and if 
 to that one adds Hinton's conception of 
 Will as not fi*ee but arbitrary, so long as 
 it is at variance with the Divine Will, and 
 only free when it is one with the Divine, 
 then I think we begin to understand where 
 we are, and have a foot-hold for conduct. 
 
 January 28. 
 
 In a mutual love it seems as if what one 
 gave would be like Truth, and what one 
 received like Beauty. 
 
 [ 219 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 February 6. 
 
 Alas! if self-respect in America is, so far, 
 a substitute for veneration. 
 
 February 28. 
 
 It is curious how the demands one makes 
 upon Nature change with age. When one 
 is young, one asks at her hands for sym- 
 pathy with one's moods, for correspond- 
 ence. Later one expects nothing: but is 
 grateful for all beauty without reference 
 to one's self. 
 
 March 4. 
 
 With two days of warm weather the 
 Spring feeling has come, and that is Spring. 
 Presently the Spring-passion will set in, 
 and we shall know that strange intense 
 sense of oneness with the visible universe ; 
 of kinship to cloud and tree, and all grow- 
 ing things. Sometimes I have known this 
 vision of Spring to come by means of per- 
 haps one sound, or one ray of sunshine 
 [ 220 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 falling in a special way across the floor, a 
 sound or a ray that was difl^erent from the 
 Winter's manner, and held the whole Sum- 
 mer solstice in its prophetic assurances. I 
 remember once having this happen in early 
 February in a store in Winter Street : where 
 I happened to look out of the window and 
 my eyes met the eyes of June which left 
 them wet as with June's showers. 
 
 Od Sense of Honor. 
 
 March lo. 
 
 In our civilization so far this is the great 
 lack; and sometimes gives one a sense of 
 the most painful discouragement. But one 
 must remember that honor is the flower, 
 and demands a long period of lusty leafage 
 before it can appear. The practical man 
 regards honor as FalstafF did: "Can honor 
 set a leg, or heal the grief of a wound ? " 
 " Nor 
 
 [ 221 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 March 1 9. 
 
 Going into Society, which has so many 
 different phases and meanings and helps 
 and hindrances, has at all events a very great 
 effect on one's imagination, one feels set on 
 fire by this "aggregated humanity " as H. 
 James called it, and proceeds to re-construct 
 the world, as one perceives the presence of 
 new classes and types. What was called in- 
 dividualism has come to an end, I fancy, 
 by a natural limit, the result of pursuing 
 an exclusive method. To be a man at all, 
 every man must be all the other men. Else 
 he will fail to fulfil his true nature. Pushed 
 to its extreme the individual proves to be 
 but a slender personage, lacking the large 
 typical quality. This is as true in Art as in 
 Life. All good Art work has as its very 
 foundation, the establishment of attributes 
 which are both individual and typical. 
 The individual qualities alone can give no 
 completeness ; the object is left un-r elated, 
 [ 222 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 and is that curiosity in thought, a specimen, 
 not a type. 
 
 April 3. 
 
 In a man of principle, to yield a point 
 is not to surrender, it is to wait. 
 
 April 4. 
 
 In a shallow nature there is a tendency 
 to be solemn over trivialities and trivial in 
 the presence of solemnity. 
 
 April 7. 
 
 I have been reading Henri Amiel's 
 Journal Intime and thinking so much about 
 it, and perhaps more about him. He with 
 a few others, such as Obermann and De 
 Guerin, may be said to give expression 
 to the suffering of those who cannot ex- 
 press that stress of the soul which feels and 
 longs and desires, but cannot come forth 
 into any tangible shape in any of the forms 
 of Art. Among the limitations which gird 
 in humanity, this must be reckoned as one 
 [ 223 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 of them, always a most pathetic form of 
 suffering : and when so tender and brilliant 
 a spirit as Amiel is born into the heritage 
 of the minor key, and speaks in that lan- 
 guage which "is a cry,** it seems to show 
 the deeps of tragic existence. To fight 
 under a positive despair is tragic enough; 
 but this negative combat it is failure from 
 the first. Amiel and his companions stand 
 as types of the sadness which lies in abor- 
 tive power ; of which there is a touch in 
 each one of us, and in the world of nature 
 as well as of human nature, it has its piti- 
 less correspondence. 
 
 April 1 6. 
 
 In Brookline the Spring had many mes- 
 sages ; but nothing was so beautiful as the 
 spirit of prophecy with which the air was 
 full. We add to our knowledge in practical 
 ways little by little : but whole years of 
 careful acquisition are beggared by one 
 such day of intimations. 
 [ 224 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 April 1 8. 
 
 Read the cantos which seemed to me 
 the most terrible of all the terrible ones ; 
 where in the gulfs of degraded humanity 
 there is that chatter of wickedness ; where 
 suffering has lost all dignity and woe has 
 no weight. This ceases to be human and 
 is death. 
 
 April 20. 
 
 I never miss a day in the " diary" with- 
 out being sorry, because it represents at 
 least one moment for the arts of peace and 
 quiet, in the midst of these tearing days 
 when one flies from one so-called necessity 
 to another. One's thoughts and feelings 
 have to be kept like naughty children in 
 corners meanwhile, because they interfere 
 with the routine of the body social, or pol- 
 itic, or whatever. It's a pretty difficult life 
 to live, this of the serious 19th Century, 
 which is just the reason one finds it so 
 [ 225 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 much worth living I suppose, as no job 
 worth doing was ever easy. 
 
 May 5. 
 
 When one remembers what imagination 
 really is, one sees why it has played so 
 large a part among all successful people, 
 the practical men of science as well as the 
 poets. To see things as they are, or things 
 in relation to each other ; it takes imagi- 
 nation to do this. Or again, given the 
 broken chain, to find to construct the 
 missing link. Mathematics cannot do this; 
 nor logic; only the breath of genius can 
 sweep the required notes out of the mute 
 strings. '* Out of three sounds," says Brown- 
 ing: 
 
 "Out of three sounds, he frame, not a fourth sound, but a 
 
 star.' 
 
 So much of the culture of to-day, of 
 
 all time perhaps, goes to quicken the 
 
 aesthetic sensibility without enlarging 
 
 one's humanity. It is a dreadful thing 
 
 [ 226 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 when one's sensations are more acute than 
 one's emotions, where the skin is pricked 
 sooner than the heart is touched. 
 
 Of * Esoteric Buddhism." 
 
 May 17. 
 
 It seems like a gigantic web hung in 
 the sky of existence, into which are embroi- 
 dered a thousand things sympathetic to 
 the Hfe of humanity ; but which neverthe- 
 les,s fails to compass the soul's conception 
 (as we Westerners hold it) of man, of God; 
 and of God and man in relation to each 
 other. ... I fail to find what seems to me 
 a logical outcome of service and devotion. 
 
 May 25. 
 
 Nothing helps one so much as to be 
 helped in one's strong points. 
 
 May 26. 
 
 In this age we are all doing our best to 
 discover how we may help humanity in 
 [ 227 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 its more immediate temporal needs. "Wash 
 him and dress him," said Mr. Dick, "Feed 
 him," said Mr. Dick! But by and bye we 
 shall get, by searching for them, fresh indi- 
 cations of what to do for the souls of men. 
 The province of human love and sympathy 
 has never been wholly estimated yet; and 
 there are fresh springs in its wide pastures. 
 
 August 13. 
 
 I felt this morning as if I had never 
 seen the sea nor the sky before. It was 
 quite new, wholly new. 
 
 Sometimes I think that this power of 
 finding the familiar thing so fresh is a stout 
 proof of the vital principle in ourselves. 
 They change not; but this living, ever- 
 changing soul of man relates itself anew, 
 with every day's access of power or possi- 
 bility. 
 
 [ ^^-8 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 August 15. 
 
 I have been reading Dora Greenweirs 
 Life of Lacordaire, and re-reading those 
 beautiful passionate revealings of himself 
 in it. I like to know that Lacordaire lived 
 in this 19th Century of ours, and that vv^ith 
 our restless quests, our intense individual- 
 ism, and all that flings us out from the 
 centre, we have still close beside us this 
 example of all that was noblest in the old 
 immolation, and this witness to the undy- 
 ing principle of solidarity and sacrifice. 
 What Mr. Morley says of the strange 
 disregard of sin which Emerson showed, 
 marks, it seems to me, the difference 
 between those who look at life tranquilly, 
 having a large hope; and those who look 
 at it with strong crying and tears, with no 
 less hope, it may be, but with an infinite 
 compassion. We need them both, but as 
 most of life is spent in the blood and dust 
 of the arena, there cannot well be too much 
 [ 229 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 of the spending and being spent, which is 
 the watch-word of Paul, and of Lacor- 
 daire. 
 
 November 19. 
 
 I have smiled yet once more over the 
 wise ones who find it so easy to settle ques- 
 tions, "once for air* as they say: as if one 
 might work out the problems, write out 
 the answers and go on to glory ! But to my 
 thinking, most questions are ** leading 
 ones," in that they lead to others which 
 confront one in their stead. How indeed 
 should it be otherwise, when circumstance 
 is a rolling wheel and life a progressive 
 power? Peace must be found on other 
 terms than having settled questions. 
 
 November 25. 
 
 If one could know what are the real 
 exceptions to the rule, what God would 
 count as exceptions, one would know all 
 perhaps. 
 
 [ 230 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 November 29. 
 
 It has come to me that Gratitude is a 
 quality which comes only with age and the 
 growth of it keeps even step with our ad- 
 vancing foot. I can remember when the 
 very word, as a child, or even later, jarred 
 on me, and now it seems as if most of one's 
 time were spent in being profoundly grate- 
 ful for each least gift. 
 
 December 5. 
 
 If goodness could only be known as what 
 it really is, an act of purification, a sac- 
 rifice in the true sense of that heavenly 
 word ! Indeed the misconception of the 
 idea of sacrifice shows that there has been 
 the strange substitution of a poor negation 
 in the place of a rich affirmation ; it is 
 thought t be a giving up instead of a 
 taking on. 
 
 December 15. 
 
 I am not sure, but I think that the high- 
 est aspects of truth for each soul must be 
 [ 231 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 found by it ; they cannot be told, no more 
 than the sun can be perfectly described to 
 a blind man. The truth of the mountain, 
 one can go to it, but it cannot be fetched 
 down, cannot be brought to the compre- 
 hension of those who are in the valley. 
 
 Those who meet on any Mount of 
 Transfiguration (which I take to mean a 
 certain plane of spiritual and intellectual 
 elevation), can speak with one another of 
 these sublime aspects of Truth, but only 
 with one another. 
 
 December 23. 
 
 According to physical law, a chain is 
 only as strong as its weakest link; but a 
 man's soul is as strong as its strongest one, 
 for by that he holds to Strength itself. 
 
 December 25. 
 
 Perhaps the sympathy that is the best 
 and finest is that which sympathizes with 
 not one point or portion, but just gives one 
 
 C 232 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 a sense of being understood, and leaves 
 one's self to make the application. When 
 I have just made a difficult step, and an 
 unconscious friend lays a hand in mine, 
 she does not know it, but she has hung a 
 garland on the door of my resolution. 
 
 December 28. 
 
 The difference between ordinary people 
 and geniuses is that the first tell us what 
 we know that we know, and the latter 
 what we do not know that we know ! 
 
 December 31. 
 
 This a good day for the best pleasure of 
 Memory, to remember the future! 
 
 [ ^33 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 UNDATED NOTES 
 
 Keep the feast of remembrance : to 
 stay in the shrine of memory hoping to 
 come out of it sanctified for work for 
 those I love ; for that great throb of en- 
 deavor which we call life. 
 
 After all, there is but one thing which 
 one soul may do for another, and to be 
 assured that one has helped ever so little 
 in the life of the spirit, this is happiness. 
 
 Until a life has lapsed into a certain per- 
 spective it seems impossible to free it from 
 the mortal mists which obscure, or the 
 mortal stains which tarnish its brightness. 
 
 But with the larger perspective of death 
 one sees the whole of the beloved, and 
 finds clues and intimations which bring 
 [ 234 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 one into a deeper knowledge, a truer inti- 
 macy and one dares hope a larger love. 
 
 Life consists in one's convictions evinced 
 in a million acts, and often over the hot 
 coals of service, of rebellion, of self-pity 
 and of self-contempt. 
 
 Whether one is glad or sad one must live 
 out into the current, pay life's glad "arrears 
 of pain, darkness, and cold;" work, act, 
 wonder and strive mightily, to say nothing 
 of witnessing and in some sense sharing 
 the myriad other lives which are going on 
 at every hand. So I seem to have lived 
 years in every moment of this summer and 
 to have listened to a silence which was 
 deeper and more vocal than any speech. 
 
 You will find a new impulse and a new 
 opportunity ; for the heavenly Communion 
 with those perfected ones must I believe 
 [ 235 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 make the path clearer, the work more 
 worth the doing, the hope more transcend- 
 ent. 
 
 We go on and live, while at the core it 
 seems as if one's heart stood still. One 
 thanks God that the world cannot see be- 
 low the surface ; but one thanks Him, ah ! 
 how much more deeply, that a friend can. 
 
 Say to yourself that God is not punishing 
 you, but that because of broken laws some- 
 where, you are set to work out the pen- 
 alty; but just there, in that bitterness of 
 experience, there, O immortal child, lies 
 the divine opportunity ! The patience, the 
 faith, or even the dumb, sad endurance you 
 can bring to bear, shall bring your soul to 
 Him. 
 
 If there are sad holes in my armour, I 
 pray that they may let in only the sword 
 of the Spirit, with wounds that save. 
 
 C n^ ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 All the pretences and make-shifts of our 
 grudging life vanish before the advancing 
 tread of Faith and Love. 
 
 In these years I have learned many beau- 
 tiful things, have heard voices straight out 
 of the heavens, have known what it is to 
 feel the very heart of grief and in that 
 heart to be comforted and to be able to 
 go on. 
 
 The going forth of an incomparable 
 friend makes one aware of another world 
 than this, and makes one endeavor the 
 more to catch notes of that strain to which 
 life in all worlds is set. 
 
 It is as if that sweet mystery, the pain 
 of all incomparable loss, came sweeping 
 upon the heart and making manifest the 
 things of the spirit, dimly felt before, but 
 now made sure in the knowledge of one 
 who has passed beyond the veil. 
 [ 237 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 I am sure there will come to you cer- 
 tain new and precious realizations, through 
 his life as it is now lived, beyond our 
 knowledge, but not beyond our faith and 
 our glorious intimations. You will have 
 new light and new joy I must believe, and 
 so will keep ever higher and nearer to 
 him. 
 
 Only those who have understood pain 
 and discerned joy can speak with one an- 
 other, and comfort and sustain. 
 
 It takes so long for the victory to count 
 to one's self but it counts, and though you 
 long for the flowers, the work you are 
 doing in the desert is what will end by 
 making your soul strong and your heart 
 ready. By steadfastness and by self-sur- 
 render, not yet perhaps, but some happy 
 day . . . you will put your hand in God's 
 and know a power of endurance and 
 
 [ 238 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 achievement which is yours because it is 
 His. 
 
 Meantime, ah ! it is hard and I long to 
 come and help, but one must be brave also 
 for those whom they love, and I should 
 hate myself if I did not urge you to this 
 life of service and abnegation which seems 
 to me the only true way. 
 
 You are justified in judging people by 
 their own standards; but you have no right 
 to judge the standards themselves, that is 
 God's prerogative and lies between Him 
 and souls. 
 
 All Saints ; each year one hangs a fur- 
 ther wreath on the doors of Hope. 
 
 I am still under the spell of that long 
 
 deep ocean swell of sustained emotion 
 
 speaking in a hundred cantos, and yet as 
 
 one mighty voice. But I shall reread it 
 
 [ 239 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 presently; for after one has once read 
 Dante, one must go on reading him for- 
 ever. 
 
 Any change of circumstance, or any 
 splendor of necessity, can only be under- 
 stood and accepted by virtue of that slow 
 preparation, which comes with steadfast- 
 ness in the prosaic press of everyday life. 
 
 There come days wholly belonging to 
 the inner life, being in a place deep and 
 strange and fair. A revelation of the fears 
 and aptitudes of the spirit. 
 
 To keep the right relation of things is 
 the way of salvation. 
 
 It is partly because I have lived so long, 
 
 partly because of the increasing purposes 
 
 of life, that I must live so much by signs 
 
 and symbols as a matter of necessity. And 
 
 [ 240 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 yet sometimes I feel as if it had become 
 almost a matter of choice. Not for the 
 free life lived normally from start to finish 
 of course, but where one*s life must be 
 hewn and shaped, and one does not claim 
 the long rich opportunity of daily relations, 
 it is possible that a word, a look, a touch 
 of the hand, lives like a star above time's 
 horizon, and star-like there endures. 
 
 One paints, not according to the way 
 one decides, but according to the thing it- 
 self, which settles its own terms: making 
 one begin or end after a manner which 
 works itself out like the spirit which blow- 
 eth where it listeth. The only thing one 
 can do is to get more and more life-stuff 
 into one, so that it may blow through our 
 work and purify and inform and anoint it. 
 
 On either side of the street, will or 
 knowledge is at work, not with the ex- 
 [ 241 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 pected demand; that were easy to cope 
 with, but with the unlooked-for and the 
 not - possibly - to - have - been - allowed for. 
 There is a curious spiritual recoil from 
 these just attacks : yet I am persuaded that 
 for me the way lies here ; and presently I 
 shall be better adjusted, at all events be- 
 yond making these little plaints. 
 
 Nelson was the last of romantic heroes : 
 the times change and we with them, but 
 the evolution was a slow one, and it is 
 only now that we find ourselves demand- 
 ing some new splendors, such as shone in 
 Gordon and in Lincoln, who fought not 
 for the glory of nations, but for the good 
 of man; who finally so smote the chord of 
 self that it passed in trembling out of sight. 
 Nelson, in love as in war acting upon the 
 flaming impulse of a man of genius, sub- 
 jective, warm, passionate, tender, simple, 
 amazingly child-like, all this he surely 
 [ 242 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 was : and below all detractions and accusa- 
 tions. Lady Hamilton, with a heart which 
 recognized and adored him; it's a simple 
 story, but the proportions make it forever 
 heroic. 
 
 Also of Nelson. 
 
 So mighty a tale, so deep a human tra- 
 gedy can only be told by a tongue of fire, and 
 this like love, many waters cannot quench 
 . . . my gratitude for striking once more 
 and in such high measure, the note which 
 sets human sympathy vibrating, which re- 
 veals the grandeur of human souls, and 
 which out of the world's great piercing 
 nettle of danger plucks a fresh flower of 
 safety. 
 
 Ah! that great wave of re-assurance 
 which comes to one's aid here and there. 
 Perhaps one would die of despair if it were 
 not for that. 
 
 [ ^43 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 Those wonderful places which seem to 
 open before us when the great and shining 
 ones go forth, that silence deeper than 
 sound, where deep answers to deep. 
 
 God grant that we may keep our torches 
 lighted at the sacred fire of that altar which 
 our hearts have reared. 
 
 One feels an unspeakable yearning as 
 one grows to feel so old, to do much for all 
 young creatures, those who are so full of 
 life and so scant of knowledge, whose 
 slender keels already grate on Life's stony 
 places. 
 
 Life more strenuous than ever. Change 
 walks with visible feet in many places ; 
 some dreams decay, and friends go away 
 into heaven. One stands as well as may be 
 at one's post, but this closing up of the 
 ranks and going on is serious business. 
 [ 244 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 How all classes may find an equal power 
 of giving instead of getting; that is close 
 to the sweet secret of Jesus and of all who 
 live to serve their race. 
 
 It has come to me with an overwhelm- 
 ing sense in this last year, that our plan of 
 life, the doing what our hand is set to do, 
 demands such separation from all we hold 
 most dear. With it, thank God, comes a 
 great compensation, that those we love 
 spite of this abstinence become ever more 
 dear and more essential. 
 
 In the pursuit of truth no pain retards, 
 no weariness detains the ardent chase ; for- 
 ever as with the heroes of old, will those 
 who truly love truth ''count not their lives 
 dear to them.'' 
 
 There comes a time when one has no- 
 thing to do but go straight on living on 
 the upper side of a sob, below which lies 
 [ HS ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 the fountain of tears. Ah ! the long step 
 from memory to hope ; a lifetime perhaps 
 and so one must just go along. 
 
 The effect of literary ill-breeding is pro- 
 duced by this sort of modern contempt for 
 the old forms of piety. 
 
 In writing his verses or painting his pic- 
 tures, the poet or artist will often be found 
 manifesting his true character as he is inca- 
 pable of manifesting it in his daily conduct. 
 Just as, per contra ^ many a righteous man, 
 doing what he conceives to be his whole 
 duty, causes offence and hinders the moral 
 life of others. ... Or differently stated, 
 virtue may be bred in one man by the brave 
 subduing of his temper, his tastes, his pas- 
 sions ; in another by the expression of that 
 "passionate purpose" with which he en- 
 deavors to make manifest the beauty and 
 glory of the world. 
 
 [ 246 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 We learn how false it is to speak of ab- 
 sence, how true it is to feel the renewed 
 presence of those who are one with God. 
 As the years go by (years how long I do 
 not attempt to deny), as the years go on, 
 one feels the reality of the spiritual world 
 so intensely, the nearness and sympathy of 
 those souls freed from this lesser life, and 
 we yearn upward as they invite. 
 
 Years, like people, have their person- 
 ality, and stay in the memory clothed with 
 definite attributes, august or mean, benefi- 
 cent or drear. Sometimes I have had a 
 strange prophetic sense of what a year is 
 to be, and sometimes it slowly betrays 
 itself 
 
 "The throbbing hope, the tacit faith," 
 of Immortality. 
 
 The wonderful biography of Mr. Brooks. 
 This amazing rich, varied, and profoundly 
 [ 247 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 interesting story of the life and develop- 
 ment of Phillips Brooks is what one never 
 expected to see, but the persistent gather- 
 ing of all that would cast a ray of light on 
 him, the long story of himself in the 
 note-books, early kept, and by means of 
 the letters and general material. All this 
 seems to me to make the life one of the 
 three or four great biographies of our 
 world. From end to end you feel that 
 great creature walking and working and 
 dreaming with abundant eager life poured 
 out on every side, a sort of large God-like 
 movement in him like that of those who 
 lived when the world was young. 
 
 The heart which beat so gallantly with 
 the past and so humanly with the future of 
 our race, a heart which shared its joys and 
 hopes with friends and country and with 
 the whole round world. O how wonderful 
 a thing is the genius of personality! 
 [ ^8 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 as it were, a man's self projected; every 
 thought, every impulse, fluent and active: 
 personified in each least thing; surviving 
 in each breast which has known the pro- 
 found joy of its presence. Like the saints, 
 "they conquer tho' they die," and dying, 
 survive death, for this beauty of soul, like 
 love, as God lives, is permanent. 
 
 There are memories and hopes here, 
 and I shall not easily relinquish life among 
 them. Indeed, when one is as old as I am, 
 one takes in the sail of adventure and finds 
 one's future in port with one's friends. 
 
 Foolish persons like me continue to 
 dream dreams ; and so long as that is 
 possible, there is no want of real life, its 
 sighs, its tears, its large and sanguine joys. 
 Once or twice lately, too, a voice has 
 cried to me from the pages of a book 
 which has spoken in tones that leave me 
 [ 249 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 less forlorn. Symonds from his sunny Al- 
 pine windows called so bravely that any 
 one hearing him must be struck into firmer 
 courage. 
 
 It 's a curiously sound sanity, the sanity 
 of a sick man. The steady look of Ste- 
 venson across an horizon hardly broader 
 than his bed has a majestic health in it. 
 
 The summer has been like all Beverly 
 Farms summers, ... I will not recount 
 it, but pour it rapidly through the sieve 
 of forgetfulness in which some joys will 
 be too large to disappear and will remain 
 for consolation. But my complaint of this 
 sort of life is fundamental. It is not work, 
 it is not play; what, then, is it? 
 
 As I write, there is that feeling in the 
 air which comes with the serene death of 
 Tennyson, who bore with him the asso- 
 ciations of one's youth. When I was fif- 
 [ 250 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 teen years old the true and tender beauty 
 of " In Memoriam '* was a deep experience 
 to me. It was like a boat sailing in the 
 deep sea of reverent doubt and steering 
 right onward. And in the hot pangs and 
 woundings of youthful emotion, this level 
 look along life, its jeopardies, its goals, 
 calmed and sustained the spirit. 
 
 I send you the gratitude which one 
 keeps for those who detect all that "one 
 fain would be and is not,'* a gratitude 
 spoken not in words, but in certain strange 
 unshed tears. 
 
 I watched the clouds or painted them, 
 and had waves of the old divine revelations 
 of youth float over me. Then I came back, 
 but something of all I had felt came back 
 with me. 
 
 Common life among one's friends is like 
 a great symphony, with the movements 
 
 [251 ] 
 
LETTERS 
 
 glad or sad, but always momentous ; full 
 of the rushing mighty wind of experience, 
 resonant with grief and courage. After one 
 has lived fifty years, the difference is as the 
 difference between a single instrument and 
 an orchestra. 
 
 We are living in a time which is so full 
 of the breath of the Spirit that we cannot 
 afford to miss His words spoken into the 
 ear of this eager, blundering, yet seeking 
 generation. 
 
 In this strange dusty day so few pray in 
 the inner temple and have eyes to see that 
 Beauty, not Pleasure, is the shrine at which 
 Art ministers. 
 
 February, 1903. 
 
 I cannot help feeling that the highest 
 gift of love, " when the Lord hath bruised 
 him and put him to grief,'' is the know- 
 ledge, never known before, that love dies 
 
 [ ^52 ] 
 
OF MRS. WHITMAN 
 
 not, but still abides and irradiates the wait- 
 ing heart, which still in the nature of things 
 lives this earth's life without the daily pre- 
 sence of the Beloved, but fed by a yet deeper 
 star, the deathless link with Heaven. More 
 and more I look upon those who have drunk 
 deep of the cup of sorrow as most blessed 
 in being set free from the power of cir- 
 cumstances, more like the angels who live 
 in either world and pass and repass through 
 the " trembling veil.'' And perhaps, oh 
 perhaps ! they only really know how to 
 live in this strange world, how most wisely 
 to fulfil opportunity, most beautifully to 
 live and serve. 
 
TO S. G. T. 
 
 Spirit of dear delight, and heart of fire, 
 In stainless garments of the sky arrayed, 
 
 I see thee walking where thou didst aspire. 
 Beautiful, eager, free, and unafraid. 
 
 Was the earth alien that thou couldst not brook 
 Longer delay within its cabined air ? 
 
 Was thy soul ready for the larger look 
 
 Through other worlds more ample and more 
 fair? 
 
 O empty questions ! Let us rather dare 
 Behold thy life as one resistless whole. 
 
 Dwelling with Love and Beauty unaware. 
 Majestic comrades for a matchless soul. 
 
 Thyself forgot, the stars remembered thee. 
 And shone with quenchless ray before thy 
 feet: 
 Thou serving others, angels bent to thee 
 On wings of joy to do thee service sweet. 
 [ 254 ] 
 
So Heaven was in thee as thou art in Heaven, 
 
 Uplifting thee to know the Perfect Will ; 
 And in the peace which God through thee has 
 given, 
 Our hearts with thine are free, and strong, 
 and still. 
 
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