Chapter C: A B (2)

“As I walk through the great factories which are insured in the
company of which I am president, trying to find out what more
can be done to save them from destruction by fire, I wonder if
I myself should not strike, just for the sake of variety, if I
were a mule-spinner, obliged to bend over the machine, mending
the ends of the thread, while I walked ten or fifteen miles a
day without raising my eyes to the great light above. I wonder
how men and women bear the monotony of the workshop and of
the factory, in which the division of labor is carried to its
utmost, and in which they must work year in and year out, only
on some small part of a fabric or an implement, never becoming
capable of making the whole fabric or of constructing the whole
machine.”[20]

We thus find him quite ready to turn his varied knowledge and his executive power towards schemes for the relief of the operative, schemes of which he left many.

Mr. Atkinson, a year or two later (1890), wrote a similarly popularized statement of social science for an address on “Religion and Life” before the American Unitarian Association. In his usual matter-of-fact way, he had prepared himself by inquiring at the headquarters of different religious denominations for a printed creed of each. He first bought an Episcopal creed at the Old Corner Bookstore for two cents, an Orthodox creed at the Congregational Building for the same amount, then a Methodist two-cent creed also, a Baptist creed for five cents, and a Presbyterian one for ten, Unitarian and Universalist creeds being furnished him for nothing; and then he proceeds to give some extracts whose bigotry makes one shudder, and not wonder much that he expressed sympathy mainly with the Catholics and the Jews, rather than with the severer schools among Protestants. And it is already to be noticed how much the tendency of liberal thought, during the last twenty years, has been in the direction whither his sympathies went.

As time went on, he had to undergo the test which awaits all Northern public men visiting the Southern States, but not met by all in so simple and straightforward a way as he. Those who doubt the capacity of the mass of men in our former slave states to listen to plainness of speech should turn with interest to Atkinson’s plain talk to the leading men of Atlanta, Georgia, in October, 1880. He says, almost at the beginning: “Now, gentlemen of the South, I am going to use free speech for a purpose and to speak some plain words of truth and soberness to you.... I speak, then, to you here and now as a Republican of Republicans, as an Abolitionist of early time, a Free-Soiler of later date, and a Republican of to-day.” And the record is that he was received with applause. He goes on to say as frankly: “When slavery ended, not only were blacks made free from the bondage imposed by others, but whites as well were redeemed by the bondage they had imposed upon themselves.... When you study the past system of slave labor with the present system of free labor, irrespective of all personal considerations, you will be mad down to the soles of your boots to think that you ever tolerated it; and when you have come to this wholesome condition of mind, you will wonder how the devil you could have been so slow in seeing it. [Laughter.]”

Then he suddenly drops down to the solid fact and says: “Are you not asking Northern men to come here, and do you not seek Northern capital? If you suppose either will come here unless every man can say what he pleases, as I do now, you are mistaken.” Then he goes on with his speech, rather long as he was apt to make them, but addressing a community much more leisurely than that which he had left at home; filling their minds with statistics, directions, and methods, till at last, recurring to the question of caste and color, he closes fearlessly: “As you convert the darkness of oppression and slavery to liberty and justice, so shall you be judged by men, and by Him who created all the nations of the earth.”

After tracing the course and training of an eminent American at home, it is often interesting to follow him into the new experiences of the foreign traveler. In that very amusing book, “Notes from a Diary,” by Grant Duff (later Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant Duff), the author writes that he came unexpectedly upon a breakfast (June, 1887), the guests being “Atkinson, the New England Free Trader, Colonel Hay, and Frederic Harrison, all of whom were well brought out by our host and talked admirably.” I quote some extracts from the talk:—

“Mr. Atkinson said that quite the best after-dinner speech he had ever heard was from Mr. Samuel Longfellow, brother of the poet. An excellent speech had been made by Mr. Longworth, and the proceedings should have closed, when Mr. Longfellow was very tactlessly asked to address the meeting, which he did in the words: ‘It is, I think, well known that worth makes the man, but want of it the fellow,’ and sat down.” After this mild beginning we have records of good talk.

“Other subjects [Grant Duff says] were the hostility of the
Socialists in London to the Positivists and to the Trades
Unions; the great American fortunes and their causes, the rapid
melting away of some of them, the hindrance which they are to
political success; and servants in the United States, of whom
Atkinson spoke relatively, Colonel Hay absolutely, well, saying
that he usually kept his from six to eight years....

“Atkinson said that all the young thought and ability in
America is in favor of free trade, but that free trade has
not begun to make any way politically. Harrison remarked that
he was unwillingly, but ever more and more, being driven
to believe that the residuum was almost entirely composed
of people who would not work. Atkinson took the same view,
observing that during the war much was said about the misery
of the working-women of Boston. He offered admirable terms
if they would only go a little way into the country to work
in his factory. Forty were at last got together to have the
conditions explained—ten agreed to go next morning, of whom one
arrived at the station, and she would not go alone!”

On another occasion we read in the “Diary”:

“We talked of Father Taylor, and he [Atkinson] told us that the
great orator once began a sermon by leaning over the pulpit,
with his arms folded, and saying, ‘You people ought to be very
good, if you’re not, for you live in Paradise already.’

“The conversation, in which Sir Louis Malet took part, turned
to Mill’s economical heresies, especially that which relates to
the fostering of infant industries. Atkinson drew a striking
picture of the highly primitive economic condition of the
South before the war, and said that now factories of all kinds
are springing up throughout the country in spite of the keen
competition of the North. He cited a piece of advice given to
his brother by Theodore Parker, ‘Never try to lecture down to
your audience.’ This maxim is in strict accordance with an
opinion expressed by Hugh Miller, whom, having to address on
the other side of the Firth just the same sort of people as
those amongst whom he lived at Cromarty, I took as my guide in
this matter during the long period in which I was connected
with the Elgin Burghs.

“Atkinson went on to relate that at the time of Mr. Hayes’s
election to the presidency there was great danger of an
outbreak, and he sat in council with General Taylor and Abraham
Hewitt, doing his best to prevent it. At length he exclaimed:
‘Now I think we may fairly say that the war is over. Here are
we three acting together for a common object, and who are we?
You, Mr. Hewitt, are the leader of the Democratic party in New
York; I am an old Abolitionist who subscribed to furnish John
Brown and his companions with rifles; you, General Taylor, are
the last Confederate officer who surrendered an army, and you
surrendered it not because you were willing to do so, but, as
you yourself admit, because you couldn’t help it.’”

The publication which will perhaps be much consulted in coming years as the best periodical organ of that party in the nation which was most opposed to the Philippine war will doubtless be the work issued by Mr. Atkinson on his own responsibility and by his own editing, from June 3, 1899, to September, 1900, under the name of “The Anti-Imperialist.” It makes a solid volume of about 400 octavo pages, and was conducted wholly on Atkinson’s own responsibility, financially and otherwise, though a large part of the expense was paid him by volunteers, to the extent of $5,657.87 or more, covering an outlay of $5,870.62, this amount being largely received in sums of one dollar, obtained under what is known as the chain method. For this amount were printed more than 100,000 copies of a series of pamphlets, of which the first two were withdrawn from the mail as seditious under President McKinley’s administration. A more complete triumph of personal independence was perhaps never seen in our literature, and it is easy to recognize the triumph it achieved for a high-minded and courageous as well as constitutionally self-willed man. The periodical exerted an influence which lasts to this day, although the rapidity of political change has now thrown it into the background for all except the systematic student of history. It seemed to Mr. Atkinson, at any rate, his crowning work.

The books published by Edward Atkinson were the following: “The Distribution of Profits,” 1885; “The Industrial Progress of the Nation,” 1889; “The Margin of Profit,” 1890; “Taxation and Work,” 1892; “Facts and Figures the Basis of Economic Science,” 1894. This last was printed at the Riverside Press, the others being issued by Putnam & Co., New York. He wrote also the following papers in leading periodicals: “Is Cotton our King?” (“Continental Monthly,” March, 1862); “Revenue Reform” (“Atlantic,” October, 1871); “An American View of American Competition” (“Fortnightly,” London, March, 1879); “The Unlearned Professions” (“Atlantic,” June, 1880); “What makes the Rate of Interest” (“Forum,” 1880); “Elementary Instruction in the Mechanics Arts” (“Century,” May, 1881); “Leguminous Plants suggested for Ensilage” (“Agricultural,” 1882); “Economy in Domestic Cookery” (“American Architect,” May, 1887); “Must Humanity starve at Last?” “How can Wages be increased?” “The Struggle for Subsistence,” “The Price of Life” (all in “Forum” for 1888); “How Society reforms Itself,” and “The Problem of Poverty” (both in “Forum” for 1889); “A Single Tax on Land” (“Century,” 1890); and many others. When the amount of useful labor performed by the men of this generation comes to be reviewed a century hence, it is doubtful whether a more substantial and varied list will be found credited to the memory of any one in America than that which attaches to the memory of Edward Atkinson.

XVIII

JAMES ELLIOT CABOT

JAMES ELLIOT CABOT

Our late associate, Elliot Cabot, of whom I have been appointed to write a sketch, was to me, from my college days, an object of peculiar interest, on a variety of grounds. He was distantly related to me, in more than one way, through the endless intermarriages of the old Essex County families. Though two years and a half older, he was but one year in advance of me in Harvard College. He and his chum, Henry Bryant, who had been my schoolmate, were among the early founders of the Harvard Natural History Society, then lately established, of which I was an ardent member; and I have never had such a sensation of earthly glory as when I succeeded Bryant in the responsible function of Curator of Entomology in that august body. I used sometimes in summer to encounter Cabot in the Fresh Pond marshes, then undrained, which he afterwards described so delightfully in the “Atlantic Monthly” in his paper entitled “Sedge Birds” (xxiii, 384). On these occasions he bore his gun, and I only the humbler weapon of a butterfly net. After we had left college, I looked upon him with envy as one of the early and successful aspirants to that German post-collegiate education which was already earnestly desired, but rarely attained, by the more studious among Harvard graduates. After his return, I was brought more or less in contact with him, at the close of the “Dial” period, and in the following years of Transcendentalism; and, later still, I was actively associated with him for a time in that group of men who have always dreamed of accomplishing something through the Harvard Visiting Committee, and have retired from it with hopes unaccomplished. Apart from his labors as Emerson’s scribe and editor, he seemed to withdraw himself more and more from active life as time went on, and to accept gracefully the attitude which many men find so hard,—that of being, in a manner, superseded by the rising generation. This he could do more easily, since he left a family of sons to represent in various forms the tastes and gifts that were combined in him; and he also left a manuscript autobiography, terse, simple, and modest, like himself, to represent what was in its way a quite unique career. Of this sketch I have been allowed to avail myself through the courtesy of his sons.

James Elliot Cabot was born in Boston June 18, 1821, his birthplace being in Quincy Place, upon the slope of Fort Hill, in a house which had belonged to his grandfather, Samuel Cabot, brother of George Cabot, the well-known leader of the Federalists in his day. These brothers belonged to a family originating in the Island of Jersey and coming early to Salem, Massachusetts. Elliot Cabot’s father was also named Samuel, while his mother was the eldest child of Thomas Handasyd Perkins and Sarah Elliot; the former being best known as Colonel Perkins, who gave his house and grounds on Pearl Street toward the foundation of the Blind Asylum bearing his name, and also gave profuse gifts to other Boston institutions; deriving meanwhile his military title from having held command of the Boston Cadets. Elliot Cabot was, therefore, born and bred in the most influential circle of the little city of that date, and he dwelt in what was then the most attractive part of Boston, though long since transformed into a business centre.

His summers were commonly spent at Nahant, then a simple and somewhat primitive seaside spot, and his childhood was also largely passed in the house in Brookline built by Colonel Perkins for his daughter. Elliot Cabot went to school in Boston under the well-known teachers of that day,—Thayer, Ingraham, and Leverett. When twelve years old, during the absence of his parents in Europe, he was sent to a boarding-school in Brookline, but spent Saturday and Sunday with numerous cousins at the house of Colonel Perkins, their common grandfather, who lived in a large and hospitable manner, maintaining an ampler establishment than is to be found in the more crowded Boston of to-day. This ancestor was a man of marked individuality, and I remember hearing from one of his grandchildren an amusing account of the scene which occurred, on one of these Sunday evenings, after the delivery of a total abstinence sermon by the Rev. Dr. Channing, of whose parish Colonel Perkins was one of the leading members. The whole theory of total abstinence was then an absolute innovation, and its proclamation, which came rather suddenly from Dr. Channing, impressed Colonel Perkins much as it might have moved one of Thackeray’s English squires; insomuch that he had a double allowance of wine served out that evening to each of his numerous grandsons in place of their accustomed wineglass of diluted beverage, and this to their visible disadvantage as the evening went on.

Elliot Cabot entered Harvard College in 1836 as Freshman, and though he passed his entrance examinations well, took no prominent rank in his class, but read all sorts of out-of-the-way books and studied natural history. He was also an early reader of Carlyle’s “Sartor Resartus,” then just published; and was, in general, quite disposed to pursue his own course in mental culture. He belonged to the Hasty Pudding Club and to the Porcellian Club, but spent much time with his classmates, Henry Bryant and William Sohier, in shooting excursions, which had then the charm of being strictly prohibited by the college. The young men were obliged to carry their guns slung for concealment in two parts, the barrels separated from the stock, under their cloaks, which were then much worn instead of overcoats. This taste was strengthened by the example of Cabot’s elder brother, afterwards Dr. Samuel Cabot, an ornithologist; and as the latter was then studying medicine in Paris, the young men used to send him quantities of specimens for purposes of exchange. Dr. Henry Bryant is well remembered in Boston for the large collection of birds given by him to the Boston Natural History Society.

Soon after his graduation, in 1840, Elliot Cabot went abroad with the object of joining his elder brother in Switzerland, visiting Italy, wintering in Paris, and returning home in the spring; but this ended in his going for the winter to Heidelberg instead, a place then made fascinating to all young Americans through the glowing accounts in Longfellow’s “Hyperion.” They were also joined by two other classmates,—Edward Holker Welch, afterwards well known in the Roman Catholic priesthood, and John Fenwick Heath, of Virginia, well remembered by the readers of Lowell’s letters. All of these four were aiming at the profession of the law, although not one of them, I believe, finally devoted himself to its practice. Migrating afterwards to Berlin, after the fashion of German students, they were admitted to the University on their Harvard degrees by Ranke, the great historian, who said, as he inspected their parchments, “Ah! the High School at Boston!” which they thought showed little respect for President Quincy’s parchment, until they found that “Hoch Schule” was the German equivalent for University. There they heard the lectures of Schelling, then famous, whom they found to be a little man of ordinary appearance, old, infirm, and taking snuff constantly, as if to keep himself awake. Later they again removed, this time to Göttingen, where Cabot busied himself with the study of Kant, and also attended courses in Rudolph Wagner’s laboratory. Here he shared more of the social life of his companions, frequented their Liederkränze, learned to fence and to dance, and spent many evenings at students’ festivals.

Cabot sums up his whole European reminiscences as follows: “As I look back over my residence in Europe, what strikes me is the waste of time and energy from having had no settled purpose to keep my head steady. I seem to have been always well employed and happy, but I had been indulging a disposition to mental sauntering, and the picking up of scraps, very unfavorable to my education. I was, I think, naturally inclined to hover somewhat above the solid earth of practical life, and thus to miss its most useful lessons. The result, I think, was to confirm me in the vices of my mental constitution and to cut off what chance there was of my accomplishing something worth while.”

In March, 1843, he finally left Göttingen for home by way of Belgium and England, and entered the Harvard Law School in the autumn, taking his degree there two years later, in 1845. Renewing acquaintance with him during this period, I found him to be, as always, modest and reticent in manner, bearing unconsciously a certain European prestige upon him, which so commanded the respect of a circle of young men that we gave him the sobriquet of “Jarno,” after the well-known philosophic leader in Goethe’s “Wilhelm Meister.” Whatever he may say of himself, I cannot help still retaining somewhat of my old feeling about the mental training of the man who, while in the Law School, could write a paper so admirable as Cabot’s essay entitled “Immanuel Kant” (“Dial,” iv, 409), an essay which seems to me now, as it then seemed, altogether the simplest and most effective statement I have ever encountered of the essential principles of that great thinker’s philosophy. I remember that when I told Cabot that I had been trying to read Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” in an English translation, but could not understand it, he placidly replied that he had read it twice in German and had thought he comprehended it, but that Meiklejohn’s translation was beyond making out, so that I need not be discouraged.

After graduating from the Law School, he went for a year into a law office in Boston, acting as senior partner to my classmate, Francis Edward Parker, who, being a born lawyer, as Cabot was not, found it for his own profit to sever the partnership at the end of a year, while Cabot retired from the profession forever. His German training had meanwhile made him well known to the leaders of a new literary enterprise, originating with Theodore Parker and based upon a meeting at Mr. Emerson’s house in 1849, the object being the organization of a new magazine, which should be, in Theodore Parker’s phrase, “the ‘Dial’ with a beard.” Liberals and reformers were present at the meeting, including men so essentially diverse as Sumner and Thoreau. Parker was, of course, to be the leading editor, and became such. Emerson also consented, “rather weakly,” as Cabot says in his memoranda, to appear, and contributed only the introductory address, while Cabot himself agreed to act as corresponding secretary and business manager. The “Massachusetts Quarterly Review” sustained itself with difficulty for three years,—showing more of studious and systematic work than its predecessor, the “Dial,” but far less of freshness and originality,—and then went under.

A more successful enterprise in which he was meanwhile enlisted was a trip to Lake Superior with Agassiz, in 1850, when Cabot acted as secretary and wrote and illustrated the published volume of the expedition,—a book which was then full of fresh novelties, and which is still very readable. Soon after his return, he went into his brother Edward’s architect office in Boston to put his accounts in order, and ultimately became a partner in the business, erecting various buildings.

He was married on September 28, 1857, to Elizabeth Dwight, daughter of Edmund Dwight, Esq., a woman of rare qualities and great public usefulness, who singularly carried on the tradition of those Essex County women of an earlier generation, who were such strong helpmates to their husbands. Of Mrs. Cabot it might almost have been said, as was said by John Lowell in 1826 of his cousin, Elizabeth Higginson, wife of her double first cousin, George Cabot: “She had none of the advantages of early education afforded so bountifully to the young ladies of the present age; but she surpassed _all_ of them in the acuteness of her observation, in the knowledge of human nature, and in her power of expressing and defending the opinions which she had formed.”[21] Thus Elliot Cabot writes of his wife: “From the time when the care of her children ceased to occupy the most of her time, she gradually became one of the most valuable of the town officials, as well as the unofficial counselor of many who needed the unfailing succor of her inexhaustible sympathy and practical helpfulness.”

Cabot visited Europe anew after his marriage, and after his return, served for nine years as a school-committee-man in Brookline, where he resided. He afterwards did faithful duty for six years as chairman of the examining committee of Harvard Overseers. He gave for a single year a series of lectures on Kant at Harvard University, and for a time acted as instructor in Logic there, which included a supervision of the forensics or written discussions then in vogue. The Civil War aroused his sympathies strongly, especially when his brother Edward and his personal friend, Francis L. Lee, became respectively Lieutenant-Colonel and Colonel of the 44th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. Elliot Cabot himself enlisted in a drill club, and did some work for the Sanitary Commission. He also assisted greatly in organizing the Museum of Fine Arts and in the administration of the Boston Athenæum.

Though a life-long student, he wrote little for the press,—a fact which recalls Theodore Parker’s remark about him, that he “could make a good law argument, but could not address it to the jury.” He rendered, however, a great and permanent service, far outweighing that performed by most American authors of his time, as volunteer secretary to Ralph Waldo Emerson, a task which constituted his main occupation for five or six years. After Emerson’s death, Cabot also wrote his memoirs, by the wish of the family,—a book which will always remain the primary authority on the subject with which it deals, although it was justly criticised by others for a certain restricted tone which made it seem to be, as it really was, the work of one shy and reticent man telling the story of another. In describing Emerson, the biographer often unconsciously described himself also; and the later publications of Mr. Emerson’s only son show clearly that there was room for a more ample and varied treatment in order to complete the work.

Under these circumstances, Cabot’s home life, while of even tenor, was a singularly happy one. One of his strongest and life-long traits was his love of children,—a trait which he also eminently shared with Emerson. The group formed by him with two grandchildren in his lap, to whom he was reading John Gilpin or Hans Andersen, is one which those who knew him at home would never forget. It was characteristic also that in his German copy of Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason,” already mentioned, there were found some papers covered with drawings of horses and carts which had been made to amuse some eager child. Akin to this was his strong love of flowers, united with a rare skill in making beautiful shrubs grow here and there in such places as would bring out the lines and curves of his estate at Beverly. Even during the last summer of his life, he was cutting new little vistas on the Beverly hills. His sketches of landscape in water-color were also very characteristic both of his delicate and poetic appreciation of nature and of his skill and interest in drawing. In 1885, while in Italy, he used to draw objects seen from the car window as he traveled; and often in the morning, when his family came down to breakfast at hotels, they found that he had already made an exquisite sketch in pencil of some tower or arch.

His outward life, on the whole, seemed much akin to the lives led by that considerable class of English gentlemen who adopt no profession, dwelling mainly on their paternal estates, yet are neither politicians nor fox-hunters; pursuing their own favorite studies, taking part from time to time in the pursuits of science, art, or literature, even holding minor public functions, but winning no widespread fame. He showed, on the other hand, the freedom from prejudice, the progressive tendency, and the ideal proclivities which belong more commonly to Americans. He seemed to himself to have accomplished nothing; and yet he had indirectly aided a great many men by the elevation of his tone and the breadth of his intellectual sympathy. If he did not greatly help to stimulate the thought of his time, he helped distinctly to enlarge and ennoble it. His death occurred at Brookline, Massachusetts, on January 16, 1903. He died as he had lived, a high-minded, stainless, and in some respects unique type of American citizen.

XIX

EMILY DICKINSON

EMILY DICKINSON

Few events in American literary history have been more curious than the sudden rise of Emily Dickinson many years since into a posthumous fame only more accentuated by the utterly recluse character of her life. The lines which formed a prelude to the first volume of her poems are the only ones that have yet come to light which indicate even a temporary desire to come in contact with the great world of readers; for she seems to have had no reference, in all the rest, to anything but her own thought and a few friends. But for her only sister, it is very doubtful if her poems would ever have been printed at all; and when published, they were launched quietly and without any expectation of a wide audience. Yet the outcome of it was that six editions of the volume were sold within six months, a suddenness of success almost without a parallel in American literature.

On April 16, 1862, I took from the post-office the following letter:—

MR. HIGGINSON,—Are you too deeply occupied to say if my verse
is alive?

The mind is so near itself it cannot see distinctly, and I have
none to ask.

Should you think it breathed, and had you the leisure to tell
me, I should feel quick gratitude.

If I make the mistake, that you dared to tell me would give me
sincerer honor toward you.

I inclose my name, asking you, if you please, sir, to tell me
what is true?

That you will not betray me it is needless to ask, since honor
is its own pawn.

The letter was postmarked “Amherst,” and it was in a handwriting so peculiar that it seemed as if the writer might have taken her first lessons by studying the famous fossil bird-tracks in the museum of that college town. Yet it was not in the slightest degree illiterate, but cultivated, quaint, and wholly unique. Of punctuation there was little; she used chiefly dashes, and it has been thought better, in printing these letters, as with her poems, to give them the benefit in this respect of the ordinary usages; and so with her habit as to capitalization, as the printers call it, in which she followed the Old English and present German method of thus distinguishing every noun substantive. But the most curious thing about the letter was the total absence of a signature. It proved, however, that she had written her name on a card, and put it under the shelter of a smaller envelope inclosed in the larger; and even this name was written—as if the shy writer wished to recede as far as possible from view—in pencil, not in ink. The name was Emily Dickinson. Inclosed with the letter were four poems, two of which have since been separately printed,—“Safe in their alabaster chambers” and “I’ll tell you how the sun rose,” besides the two that here follow. The first comprises in its eight lines a truth so searching that it seems a condensed summary of the whole experience of a long life:—

“We play at paste
Till qualified for pearl;
Then drop the paste
And deem ourself a fool.

“The shapes, though, were similar
And our new hands
Learned gem-tactics,
Practicing sands.”

Then came one which I have always classed among the most exquisite of her productions, with a singular felicity of phrase and an aerial lift that bears the ear upward with the bee it traces:—

“The nearest dream recedes unrealized.
The heaven we chase,
Like the June bee
Before the schoolboy,
Invites the race,
Stoops to an easy clover,
Dips—evades—teases—deploys—
Then to the royal clouds
Lifts his light pinnace,
Heedless of the boy
Staring, bewildered, at the mocking sky.

“Homesick for steadfast honey,—
Ah! the bee flies not
Which brews that rare variety.”

The impression of a wholly new and original poetic genius was as distinct on my mind at the first reading of these four poems as it is now, after half a century of further knowledge; and with it came the problem never yet solved, what place ought to be assigned in literature to what is so remarkable, yet so elusive of criticism. The bee himself did not evade the schoolboy more than she evaded me; and even at this day I still stand somewhat bewildered, like the boy.

Circumstances, however, soon brought me in contact with an uncle of Emily Dickinson, a gentleman not now living: a prominent citizen of Worcester, Massachusetts, a man of integrity and character, who shared her abruptness and impulsiveness, but certainly not her poetic temperament, from which he was indeed singularly remote. He could tell but little of her, she being evidently an enigma to him, as to me. It is hard to say what answer was made by me, under these circumstances, to this letter. It is probable that the adviser sought to gain time a little and find out with what strange creature he was dealing. I remember to have ventured on some criticism which she afterwards called “surgery,” and on some questions, part of which she evaded, as will be seen, with a naïve skill such as the most experienced and worldly coquette might envy. Her second letter (received April 26, 1862) was as follows:—

MR. HIGGINSON,—Your kindness claimed earlier gratitude, but I
was ill, and write to-day from my pillow.

Thank you for the surgery; it was not so painful as I supposed.
I bring you others, as you ask, though they might not differ.
While my thought is undressed, I can make the distinction; but
when I put them in the gown, they look alike and numb.

You asked how old I was? I made no verse, but one or two, until
this winter, sir.

I had a terror since September, I could tell to none; and so
I sing, as the boy does of the burying ground, because I am
afraid.

You inquire my books. For poets, I have Keats, and Mr. and
Mrs. Browning. For prose, Mr. Ruskin, Sir Thomas Browne, and
the Revelations. I went to school, but in your manner of the
phrase had no education. When a little girl, I had a friend
who taught me Immortality; but venturing too near, himself, he
never returned. Soon after my tutor died, and for several years
my lexicon was my only companion. Then I found one more, but he
was not contented I be his scholar, so he left the land.

You ask of my companions. Hills, sir, and the sundown, and a
dog large as myself, that my father bought me. They are better
than beings because they know, but do not tell; and the noise
in the pool at noon excels my piano.

I have a brother and sister; my mother does not care for
thought, and father, too busy with his briefs to notice what
we do. He buys me many books, but begs me not to read them,
because he fears they joggle the mind. They are religious,
except me, and address an eclipse, every morning, whom they
call their “Father.”

But I fear my story fatigues you. I would like to learn. Could
you tell me how to grow, or is it unconveyed, like melody or
witchcraft?

You speak of Mr. Whitman. I never read his book, but was told
that it was disgraceful.

I read Miss Prescott’s “Circumstance,” but it followed me in
the dark, so I avoided her.

Two editors of journals came to my father’s house this winter,
and asked me for my mind, and when I asked them “why” they said
I was penurious, and they would use it for the world.

I could not weigh myself, myself. My size felt small to me. I
read your chapters in the “Atlantic,” and experienced honor for
you. I was sure you would not reject a confiding question.

Is this, sir, what you asked me to tell you? Your friend,

E. DICKINSON.

It will be seen that she had now drawn a step nearer, signing her name, and as my “friend.” It will also be noticed that I had sounded her about certain American authors, then much read; and that she knew how to put her own criticisms in a very trenchant way. With this letter came some more verses, still in the same birdlike script, as for instance the following:—

“Your riches taught me poverty,
Myself a millionaire
In little wealths, as girls could boast,
Till, broad as Buenos Ayre,
You drifted your dominions
A different Peru,
And I esteemed all poverty
For life’s estate, with you.

“Of mines, I little know, myself,
But just the names of gems,
The colors of the commonest,
And scarce of diadems
So much that, did I meet the queen,
Her glory I should know;
But this must be a different wealth,
To miss it, beggars so.

“I’m sure ’tis India, all day,
To those who look on you
Without a stint, without a blame,
Might I but be the Jew!
I’m sure it is Golconda
Beyond my power to deem,
To have a smile for mine, each day,
How better than a gem!

“At least, it solaces to know
That there exists a gold
Although I prove it just in time
Its distance to behold;
Its far, far treasure to surmise
And estimate the pearl
That slipped my simple fingers through
While just a girl at school!”

Here was already manifest that defiance of form, never through carelessness, and never precisely from whim, which so marked her. The slightest change in the order of words—thus, “While yet at school, a girl”—would have given her a rhyme for this last line; but no; she was intent upon her thought, and it would not have satisfied her to make the change. The other poem further showed, what had already been visible, a rare and delicate sympathy with the life of nature:—

“A bird came down the walk;
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow raw.

“And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to a wall,
To let a beetle pass.

“He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all around;
They looked like frightened beads, I thought;
He stirred his velvet head

“Like one in danger, cautious.
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home

“Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam—
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, plashless as they swim.”

It is possible that in a second letter I gave more of distinct praise or encouragement, as her third is in a different mood. This was received June 8, 1862. There is something startling in its opening image; and in the yet stranger phrase that follows, where she apparently uses “mob” in the sense of chaos or bewilderment:

DEAR FRIEND,—Your letter gave no drunkenness, because I
tasted rum before. Domingo comes but once; yet I have had few
pleasures so deep as your opinion, and if I tried to thank you,
my tears would block my tongue.

My dying tutor told me that he would like to live till I had
been a poet, but Death was much of mob as I could master, then.
And when, far afterward, a sudden light on orchards, or a new
fashion in the wind troubled my attention, I felt a palsy,
here, the verses just relieve.

Your second letter surprised me, and for a moment, swung. I
had not supposed it. Your first gave no dishonor, because the
true are not ashamed. I thanked you for your justice, but could
not drop the bells whose jingling cooled my tramp. Perhaps the
balm seemed better, because you bled me first. I smile when you
suggest that I delay “to publish,” that being foreign to my
thought as firmament to fin.

If fame belonged to me, I could not escape her; if she did not,
the longest day would pass me on the chase, and the approbation
of my dog would forsake me then. My barefoot rank is better.

You think my gait “spasmodic.” I am in danger, sir. You think
me “uncontrolled.” I have no tribunal.

Would you have time to be the “friend” you should think I need?
I have a little shape: it would not crowd your desk, nor make
much racket as the mouse that dens your galleries.

If I might bring you what I do—not so frequent to trouble
you—and ask you if I told it clear, ’twould be control to me.
The sailor cannot see the North, but knows the needle can. The
“hand you stretch me in the dark” I put mine in, and turn away.
I have no Saxon now:—

As if I asked a common alms,
And in my wandering hand
A stranger pressed a kingdom,
And I, bewildered, stand;
As if I asked the Orient
Had it for me a morn,
And it should lift its purple dikes
And shatter me with dawn!

But, will you be my preceptor, Mr. Higginson?

With this came the poem since published in one of her volumes and entitled “Renunciation”; and also that beginning “Of all the sounds dispatched abroad,” thus fixing approximately the date of those two. I must soon have written to ask her for her picture, that I might form some impression of my enigmatical correspondent. To this came the following reply, in July, 1862:—

Could you believe me without? I had no portrait, now, but am
small, like the wren; and my hair is bold like the chestnut
bur; and my eyes, like the sherry in the glass, that the guest
leaves. Would this do just as well?

It often alarms father. He says death might occur and he has
moulds of all the rest, but has no mould of me; but I noticed
the quick wore off those things, in a few days, and forestall
the dishonor. You will think no caprice of me.

You said “Dark.” I know the butterfly, and the lizard, and the
orchis. Are not those _your_ countrymen?

I am happy to be your scholar, and will deserve the kindness I
cannot repay.

If you truly consent, I recite now. Will you tell me my fault,
frankly as to yourself, for I had rather wince than die. Men do
not call the surgeon to commend the bone, but to set it, sir,
and fracture within is more critical. And for this, preceptor,
I shall bring you obedience, the blossom from my garden, and
every gratitude I know.

Perhaps you smile at me. I could not stop for that. My business
is circumference. An ignorance, not of customs, but if caught
with the dawn, or the sunset see me, myself the only kangaroo
among the beauty, sir, if you please, it afflicts me, and I
thought that instruction would take it away.

Because you have much business, beside the growth of me, you
will appoint, yourself, how often I shall come, without your
inconvenience.

And if at any time you regret you received me, or I prove a
different fabric to that you supposed, you must banish me.

When I state myself, as the representative of the verse, it
does not mean me, but a supposed person.

You are true about the “perfection.” To-day makes Yesterday
mean.

You spoke of “Pippa Passes.” I never heard anybody speak of
“Pippa Passes” before. You see my posture is benighted.

To thank you baffles me. Are you perfectly powerful? Had I a
pleasure you had not, I could delight to bring it.

YOUR SCHOLAR.

This was accompanied by this strong poem, with its breathless conclusion. The title is of my own giving:—

THE SAINTS’ REST

Of tribulation, these are they,
Denoted by the white;
The spangled gowns, a lesser rank
Of victors designate.

All these did conquer; but the ones
Who overcame most times,
Wear nothing commoner than snow,
No ornaments but palms.

“Surrender” is a sort unknown
On this superior soil;
“Defeat” an outgrown anguish,
Remembered as the mile

Our panting ancle barely passed
When night devoured the road;
But we stood whispering in the house,
And all we said, was “Saved!”

[Note by the writer of the verses.] I spelled ankle wrong.

It would seem that at first I tried a little—a very little—to lead her in the direction of rules and traditions; but I fear it was only perfunctory, and that she interested me more in her—so to speak—unregenerate condition. Still, she recognizes the endeavor. In this case, as will be seen, I called her attention to the fact that while she took pains to correct the spelling of a word, she was utterly careless of greater irregularities. It will be seen by her answer that with her usual naïve adroitness she turns my point:—

DEAR FRIEND,—Are these more orderly? I thank you for the truth.

I had no monarch in my life, and cannot rule myself; and when
I try to organize, my little force explodes and leaves me bare
and charred.

I think you called me “wayward.” Will you help me improve?

I suppose the pride that stops the breath, in the core of
woods, is not of ourself.

You say I confess the little mistake, and omit the large.
Because I can see orthography; but the ignorance out of sight
is my preceptor’s charge.

Of “shunning men and women,” they talk of hallowed things,
aloud, and embarrass my dog. He and I don’t object to them, if
they’ll exist their side. I think Carlo would please you. He is
dumb, and brave. I think you would like the chestnut tree I met
in my walk. It hit my notice suddenly, and I thought the skies
were in blossom.

Then there’s a noiseless noise in the orchard that I let
persons hear.

You told me in one letter you could not come to see me “now,”
and I made no answer; not because I had none, but did not think
myself the price that you should come so far.

I do not ask so large a pleasure, lest you might deny me.

You say, “Beyond your knowledge.” You would not jest with me,
because I believe you; but, preceptor, you cannot mean it?

All men say “What” to me, but I thought it a fashion.

When much in the woods, as a little girl, I was told that the
snake would bite me, that I might pick a poisonous flower, or
goblins kidnap me; but I went along and met no one but angels,
who were far shyer of me than I could be of them, so I haven’t
that confidence in fraud which many exercise.

I shall observe your precept, though I don’t understand it,
always.

I marked a line in one verse, because I met it after I made it,
and never consciously touch a paint mixed by another person.

I do not let go it, because it is mine. Have you the portrait
of Mrs. Browning?

Persons sent me three. If you had none, will you have mine?

YOUR SCHOLAR.

A month or two after this I entered the volunteer army of the Civil War, and must have written to her during the winter of 1862-63 from South Carolina or Florida, for the following reached me in camp:—

AMHERST.

DEAR FRIEND,—I did not deem that planetary forces annulled, but
suffered an exchange of territory, or world.

I should have liked to see you before you became improbable.
War feels to me an oblique place. Should there be other
summers, would you perhaps come?

I found you were gone, by accident, as I find systems are,
or seasons of the year, and obtain no cause, but suppose it
a treason of progress that dissolves as it goes. Carlo still
remained, and I told him.

Best gains must have the losses’ test,
To constitute them gains.

My shaggy ally assented.

Perhaps death gave me awe for friends, striking sharp and
early, for I held them since in a brittle love, of more alarm
than peace. I trust you may pass the limit of war; and though
not reared to prayer, when service is had in church for our
arms, I include yourself.... I was thinking to-day, as I
noticed, that the “Supernatural” was only the Natural disclosed.

Not “Revelation” ’tis that waits,
But our unfurnished eyes.

But I fear I detain you. Should you, before this reaches you,
experience immortality, who will inform me of the exchange?
Could you, with honor, avoid death, I entreat you, sir. It
would bereave

YOUR GNOME.

I trust the “Procession of Flowers” was not a premonition.

I cannot explain this extraordinary signature, substituted for the now customary “Your Scholar,” unless she imagined her friend to be in some incredible and remote condition, imparting its strangeness to her. Swedenborg somewhere has an image akin to her “oblique place,” where he symbolizes evil as simply an oblique angle. With this letter came verses, most refreshing in that clime of jasmines and mockingbirds, on the familiar robin:—

THE ROBIN

The robin is the one
That interrupts the morn
With hurried, few, express reports
When March is scarcely on.

The robin is the one
That overflows the noon
With her cherubic quantity,
An April but begun.

The robin is the one
That, speechless from her nest,
Submits that home and certainty
And sanctity are best.

In the summer of 1863 I was wounded, and in hospital for a time, during which came this letter in pencil, written from what was practically a hospital for her, though only for weak eyes:—

DEAR FRIEND,—Are you in danger? I did not know that you were
hurt. Will you tell me more? Mr. Hawthorne died.

I was ill since September, and since April in Boston for a
physician’s care. He does not let me go, yet I work in my
prison, and make guests for myself.

Carlo did not come, because that he would die in jail; and the
mountains I could not hold now, so I brought but the Gods.

I wish to see you more than before I failed. Will you tell me
your health? I am surprised and anxious since receiving your
note.

The only news I know
Is bulletins all day
From Immortality.

Can you render my pencil? The physician has taken away my pen.

I inclose the address from a letter, lest my figures fail.

Knowledge of your recovery would excel my own.

E. DICKINSON.

Later this arrived:—

DEAR FRIEND,—I think of you so wholly that I cannot resist to
write again, to ask if you are safe? Danger is not at first,
for then we are unconscious, but in the after, slower days.

Do not try to be saved, but let redemption find you, as
it certainly will. Love is its own rescue; for we, at our
supremest, are but its trembling emblems.

YOUR SCHOLAR.

These were my earliest letters from Emily Dickinson, in their order. From this time and up to her death (May 15, 1886) we corresponded at varying intervals, she always persistently keeping up this attitude of “Scholar,” and assuming on my part a preceptorship which it is almost needless to say did not exist. Always glad to hear her “recite,” as she called it, I soon abandoned all attempt to guide in the slightest degree this extraordinary nature, and simply accepted her confidences, giving as much as I could of what might interest her in return.

Sometimes there would be a long pause, on my part, after which would come a plaintive letter, always terse, like this:—

“Did I displease you? But won’t you tell me how?”

Or perhaps the announcement of some event, vast in her small sphere, as this:—

Amherst.

Carlo died.

E. Dickinson.

Would you instruct me now?

Or sometimes there would arrive an exquisite little detached strain, every word a picture, like this:—

THE HUMMING-BIRD

A route of evanescence
With a revolving wheel;
A resonance of emerald;
A rush of cochineal.
And every blossom on the bush
Adjusts its tumbled head;—
The mail from Tunis, probably,
An easy morning’s ride.

Nothing in literature, I am sure, so condenses into a few words that gorgeous atom of life and fire of which she here attempts the description. It is, however, needless to conceal that many of her brilliant fragments were less satisfying. She almost always grasped whatever she sought, but with some fracture of grammar and dictionary on the way. Often, too, she was obscure, and sometimes inscrutable; and though obscurity is sometimes, in Coleridge’s phrase, a compliment to the reader, yet it is never safe to press this compliment too hard.

Sometimes, on the other hand, her verses found too much favor for her comfort, and she was urged to publish. In such cases I was sometimes put forward as a defense; and the following letter was the fruit of some such occasion:

DEAR FRIEND,—Thank you for the advice. I shall implicitly
follow it.

The one who asked me for the lines I had never seen.

He spoke of “a charity.” I refused, but did not inquire. He
again earnestly urged, on the ground that in that way I might
“aid unfortunate children.” The name of “child” was a snare to
me, and I hesitated, choosing my most rudimentary, and without
criterion.

I inquired of you. You can scarcely estimate the opinion to one
utterly guideless. Again thank you.

YOUR SCHOLAR.

Again came this, on a similar theme:—