XXVI
Being obliged on account of ill health to decline a visit to old friends, he wrote to them:
“I would like to see how Haverhill looks at this delightful season [October] and enjoy with old friends there the wonderful glory of the autumnal woods. But I find that I have to let a great many pleasant things drop out of my life. I thank God for such as remain, and, especially, for the love and goodwill of my friends, among whom I am glad to reckon the inmates of the F—— homestead. With love to thee and the Col. and C——, I include myself in Tiny Tim’s benediction, ‘God bless us every one!’”
“I went to the country for three or four weeks,” he said in 1885 in a letter to the writer, “and came back feeling better for it, but for the last three weeks have fallen back and the first hint of cold weather makes me dread the coming winter and feel that I have little assurance of another season of leaves and flowers. If I live a few weeks longer I shall be seventy-eight!”
It was that same year that he wrote again to his Haverhill friend in regard to the reunion of the surviving students of the Haverhill Academy in 1827-28.
“I thank thee for thy kind invitation,” he says, “but I have been so ill for the last week that I am quite unfit for going anywhere. I shall try to be at my old friend Wingate’s tomorrow, but I shall not venture to do anything more. It would give me no small pleasure to visit you, but I cannot do it. I hope there will be a very quiet meeting of the old scholars and nothing of a public nature. We don’t want to make a show of our old selves in the least. The thing is no plan of mine.”
A few years later he wrote to the same:
“My dear friend, Charles Wingate, has passed on peacefully and hopefully. His departure leaves me nearly alone in that old generation.”
Mr. Wingate was of the family of “The Countess” of Whittier’s beautiful poem.
“I attended the Haverhill reunion,” he writes shortly after that event, “but I have suffered for it since; the fatigue and excitement were too much for me.”
For this occasion he wrote the poem, “Reunion,” ending:
“Hail and farewell! We go our wayWhere shadows end, we trust, in light;The star that ushers in the nightIs herald also of the day!”
“Hail and farewell! We go our wayWhere shadows end, we trust, in light;The star that ushers in the nightIs herald also of the day!”
“Hail and farewell! We go our wayWhere shadows end, we trust, in light;The star that ushers in the nightIs herald also of the day!”
“Hail and farewell! We go our way
Where shadows end, we trust, in light;
The star that ushers in the night
Is herald also of the day!”
Two years later, in the latter part of July, 1887, the poet wrote from Centre Harbor:
“I got away from the hotel before the fire. We are stopping here at the Sturtevant Farm near Holderness. It has been hot and damp for the last week. The fields are green as June, but too wet for comfort.”
Thus, in spite of being “half sick,” as he was sometimes—and sometimes wholly so, he had many happy days among the friends who gathered about him in the quiet summer resorts which he frequented as long as he had strength for the journeys. Occasionally, he went to Appledore, one of the most beautiful of the Isles of Shoals. Here the retreat of Mrs. Thaxter’s cottage kept him from the crowd. But more often he went to the hills; and this was especially true in his later years.
“I have been ill a good deal of the past month,” wrote the poet in the December of 1881, “and in addition I suffer from lameness in my knee. I begin to suspect I am growing old in earnest.... I have not been in Boston for nearly a year and have hardly courage to attempt it. Did any of you hear Archdeacon Farrar? He and Phillips Brooks came to see me and I was much pleased with him.”
In another letter Whittier says:
“I have been reading with a great deal of satisfaction Phillips Brooks’s ‘Sermons,’ not always agreeing with him, but liking his spirit and earnest convictions. He is a rare man.”
More than a year later Whittier wrote:
“I ought long ago to have written thee, but the sickness and death of my brother and my own illness have made my winter here a hard and sad one and compelled me to neglect my correspondence.... Lucy Larcom is in the city at Concord Square. I saw her last week. Do you ever come into the city? If so will you not call on me? I have not been about the city at all, but many of my old friends have called on me. What there is to see or hear I do not know. In some respects I might as well be in Amesbury as here. But I hope I am getting somewhat over my fatigue and illness, and am very thankful for it, and for the many blessings of my allotment.”
A letter in the March of 1883 regretting missing a friend who had called at the hotel to see him, adds:
“Why didn’t thee call here? Anybody comes here who wishes to. If thee are in town again try this place.”
“This place” was the Mt. Vernon Street home of former Governor and Mrs. Claflin, where the poet was always so cordially welcomed and so tactfully entertained that he frequently visited there. Mrs. Claflin appreciated the privilege of the presence of the “old saint,” as she rightly named the poet, in her home. Her “Personal Recollections” of Whittier give a just estimate of his character and many interesting reminiscences.
“I really think this pleasant day is the beginning of the end of our long winter,” wrote the poet from Oak Knoll to the writer in the February of 1887. “I for one am glad to think so. My cousins, Mrs. W——, Miss J——, and Phebe have been for some weeks in Bermuda where they only complained of too much warmth. They expect to return the latter part of this month. I have been shut in in the cold and snow, but am freer now from pain than I was at the outset of winter. The want of exercise in the open air I feel of course very much.
“I scarcely know what is going on in the literary, political, or theological world. I feel sometimes that I have a word to say that is needed, but I have not felt strong enough to write. So, the world must get on without my shoulder to the wheel, and I guess it will.... I wish Icould look in upon you and see you all together as formerly. I am glad to think of you in health, which after all is the main thing.”
The poet with his usual thought of giving pleasure enclosed jasmine blossoms from Bermuda in his letter.
A portion of this letter Mr. Pickard quotes in his biography of the poet.