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John Greenleaf Whittier in the
Critic, 1881-1892
by
Arthur Sherbo
The first volume of The Critic (January 15 to December 31, 1881), a new periodical edited by Jeannette Leonard Gilder and her brother Joseph, featured the first of a series, "How I Get Around at Sixty, and Take Notes," written by Walt Whitman. Whitman continued to write for The Critic, a number of his prose pieces appearing for the first time there. Other well-known American writers also contributed to the periodical, among them Joel Chandler Harris, Edmund C. Stedman, Julia Ward Howe, and James Lane Allen. Book reviews, many of them written by the editors but others by a growing number of regular reviewers, James Herbert Morse and W. J. Rolfe among them, were a regular and important feature of the new periodical. Occasional reviews were by such men of letters as Edward Everett Hale and Thomas R. Lounsbury. Much American and English poetry, either reprinted or making its first appearance, was published in The Critic. The periodical appealed to a fairly limited audience, being largely caviar to the general, and hence had a circulation of only about 5,000 for much of its existence.[1] What is of paramount importance for present purposes is the fact that few scholars have mined the treasures in the form of material printed for the first time in The Critic (original letters, essays, poems) or, very often, reprinted from some not easily accessible American or English periodical.[2] Prominent among the authors who have suffered from the neglect of The Critic on the part of literary critics, historians, and biographers is John Greenleaf Whittier. It is the intent of this article to repair that neglect.
Thomas Franklin Currier's Bibliography of John Greenleaf Whittier (hereafter Currier), published by the Harvard University Press in 1937, has been described by the editors of the Literary History of the United States as "one of the finest single-author American bibliographies." Whittier studies were also considerably advanced by the splendid edition of his letters, published in three volumes by the Belknap Press of Harvard University in 1975 and edited by John B. Pickard (hereafter Letters). Finally, long in the making, the definitive biography, John Greenleaf Whittier: a Biography (hereafter Life), by Mr. Roland Woodwell, was published in 1985 in Haverhill, Mass. by the Trustees of the John Greenleaf Whittier (hereafter JGW) Homestead. I want to add from The Critic some snippets and possibly some larger bits to these three works. I shall quote, wholly or in part, and sometimes cite, pieces which are not listed in Currier or treated less extensively in the Life. And I shall quote more extensively from those letters of JGW printed in The Critic but not appearing in the Letters. An autobiographical sketch, reprinted from the Boston Herald, appeared not long before JGW's death and has been overlooked by students of his life and writings. It deserves full quotation.
Professor Pickard states in the Introduction to his edition of the Letters that "Volume III selects 527 letters from the years 1861 through 1892, representing the main aspects of Whittier's personality during these later years. Letters to the editor and brief articles or notes written for insertion in newspapers are included, except when such communications were clearly intended to be longer essays or finished prose compositions" (pp. xxiii-xxiv). I have come upon some twenty letters, quoted wholly or in part, and reference to two or three more, in The Critic in the years 1881-1892, that period in which the edition of the Letters is selective rather than exhaustive. It should be noted, for what follows, that after the first three volumes (1881-1883), each covering a full year, The Critic started a New Series, each volume covering six months.
In a piece on Axel Gustafson, quoted in N.S. 2 (1884), Mr. Dole of the Philadelphia Press wrote that Axel "married Mrs. Zadel Barnes Buddington, a lady originally from Connecticut, whose 'Meg, a Pastoral,' was declared by the poet Whittier to be excelled only by Milton's 'Lycidas'." Miss Gilder, commenting in her column, "The Lounger," wrote "I wonder if Mr. Whittier did really say such a thing as that. It seems incredible. Unless I hear it directly from the poet himself, I shall give him the benefit of the doubt" (p. 174). Soon thereafter Miss Gilder wrote that JGW, in a letter to her, touched on the matter: "Mrs. Axel Gustafson, has written well in prose and verse. But her 'Meg, a Pastoral' is a simple, unpretentious poem, which could by no possibility suggest comparison with Milton by myself or any one else. Her husband's late publication, an exhaustive and able study of the 'Drink Question,' is a very valuable contribution to the literature of Temperance, and deserves a wide circulation" (p. 185). All of which brought this reply from Mrs. Gustafson and the appended statement by Miss Gilder (pp. 282-283).
To the Editors of The Critic:
My attention has been called to a couple of paragraphs occurring under the heading of The Lounger, in The Critic for Oct. 18, from which it appears that Mr. Whittier has been reported as saying that my poem 'Meg, A Pastoral' was 'excelled only by Milton's "Lycidas.'" Soon after my book of verse entitled 'Meg, A Pastoral, and Other Poems' was published by Lee & Shepard in 1878, Mr. Whittier wrote to me as follows—I am quoting from the letter itself as it lies before me, dated 'Amesbury, 12 mo, 24, 1878:' 'I have read "Meg" with delight. It is a charming New England Pastoral, very sweet and tender, and musical as the songs of our thrushes and song sparrows.' Small wonder that The Lounger, or any one else in his senses, should fail to understand a comparison between a poem thus described, and Milton's great threnody! But concerning the second poem in my volume, a tribute to William Cullen Bryant, Mr. Whittier's very next words in the same letter, are: 'But the elegy of Bryant! I can only compare it with Milton's "Lycidas;" it is worthy of any living poet at least.' That such expressions from such a source should have been, and should continue to be, one of the precious inspirations of my life, will not astonish any one who understands how intensely the younger poet desires to deserve the recognition of the elder. I wrote to Mr. Whittier for permission to furnish to certain editors the sentences from his letter, here given, to which he most kindly consented, and the comparison of the Bryant elegy to Milton's 'Lycidas' appeared in the New York Evening Post, in Mr. George Cary Eggleston's review of my book. Other journals also included it in their notices of it. I showed Mr. Whittier's letter to Mr. H. M. Alden, the editor of Harper's Magazine, and to Mr. Edwin P. Whipple, of Boston, both of whom warmly congratulated me upon it. Mr. Whipple used these words: 'If I had received this letter, I would put it between glass and frame it in gold.' Mr. Clement, of the Boston Evening Transcript, and Mr. Whiting, of The Springfield Republican, will, I think, also remember the facts, as they were cognizant of them at the time.
Naturally enough, it was not so much to Mr. Whittier as it was to me; and it is not surprising that, some six years after having written it, he should—on being asked the bewildering question whether he had ever made a comparison between 'Lycidas' and 'Meg,' a love-story of the late American War—have quite forgotten the real connection in which he did make the comparison with 'Lycidas.'
I shall be grateful to such American journals as may have copied or alluded to the mistaken version of the matter in The Critic if they will release me from the odious position of one accepting spurious praise, by also copying this letter.
London, Nov. 13, 1884. Zadel Barnes Gustafson.
[On Oct. 11 I said that Mr. Whittier had been accused of comparing 'Meg' with 'Lycidas,' but that I should give him the benefit of the doubt until he should plead guilty to the charge. A week later I stated that I had received a letter from the poet, in which he said that no one could dream of comparing the 'simple, unpretentious poem' with anything of Milton's. I neither made nor intended any reflection upon Mrs. Gustafson's position in the matter. On the contrary, I said that she should pray to be defended from the friends who had circulated the erroneous statement. Since Mrs. Gustafson's note was received, a note has come from Mr. Whittier confirming her statement of the case.
JGW was invited to appear at a number of public functions; often, unable to attend, he wrote a letter for the occasion which was read to the other participants and guests. Given his early and lasting love for the poetry of Robert Burns, it is not surprising that on at least two occasions he was asked to attend memorials of one kind or another for him. In January 1885 a letter of JGW's was read before the Caledonian Club of Boston. He wrote,
Some three years later, on August 30, 1888, he wrote another letter in praise of Burns, this time for the unveiling of a statue of that poet in Albany. For that occasion, he wrote,
The man's the gowd for a' that,'
give them the right to stand among our noblest and worthiest.
Of him in whom we joy;
We take, with thanks, the gold of Heaven
Even with the earth's alloy!
Thanks for the music as of Spring,
The sweetness as of flowers,
The song the bard himself might sing
In holier ears than ours!'
(N.S. 10 [1888] 120)
In 1885 JGW was invited to a reception for his old friend James Russell Lowell, to take place in Boston on Saturday, June 21, but he was "unavoidably absent." As was his wont, he wrote a letter to be read there:
There are some people we would gladly always keep young. It is a personal grievance if we find them growing old. My friend James Russell Lowell has reached his three score and tenth year, but, from my standpoint, he is not too old to add to his already splendid reputation as a poet and critic, and as a representative man, whose worth and genius are acknowledged wherever our language is spoken. I have just been reading over again the inimitable description of our New England spring in his famous 'Biglow Papers.' It has never been so well told before. Indeed, the wit and wisdom of our country life have never been so admirably rendered as in the rhymes of Hosea of Jaalam. The droll quaintness of dialect and the rollicking humor and sarcasm of his verses were a power in the anti-slavery conflict. The boomerang of denunciation sometimes came back on the heads of those who hurled it, but Lowell's arrows hit their mark and stayed there. Among those who did good service in the cause of human freedom he deserves to be reckoned.
Danvers, Mass., Feb. 16, 1889. John G. Whittier. (N.S. 11 [1889] 85)
In 1891 he spoke to some Englishwomen temperance advocates who had come to visit him; among the topics of conversation was the American Woman's Christian Temperance Union (Life, p. 516). In November of that same year Charles E. L. Wingate's column in The Critic, "Boston Letter," contained the following, another example of a letter written for an occasion.
A fervent letter was that which the poet Whittier sent to the World's Women's Christian Temperance Union, during its meeting this past week in Boston. Though illness confined him to his house yet it did not confine the energies of his mind. 'I am very grateful and hopeful,' he wrote, referring to the great growth of the women's temperance movement; and then he exclaimed:—
'The little one has become a thousand; the handful of corn shake like Lebanon.' * * * You are conquering Old World masculine prejudice and proving the efficiency and necessity of the work of womanhood in the world's reform and progress. You have awakened that enthusiasm of humanity which wisely directed is irresistible. If the gigantic evil is still strong and defiant, you have saved many of its victims and the blessing of thousands of afflicted families is with you. That God may continue to bless you in your great endeavor is the desire of thy friend.
A most encouraging letter was this, and one expressive of its author's steadfast sympathy with good causes. (N.S. 16 [1891] 282)
The first sentence of JGW's letter to Phebe Woodman, dated November 20, 1891, "The Women's Convention at Boston has passed off and I have escaped from them, on the whole very well" (Letters, III. 588), expresses his relief at not having attended the Convention.
Two of the letters in The Critic are to friends whose names do not appear in the Life. The first, chronologically, is to Mrs. A. O. Boyce, who sent him a copy of her book, Records of a Quaker Family.
The second letter was written on November 7, 1891, but was published on January 30, 1892 (N.S., p. 72), after JGW's death. Mr. Woodwell records that in 1890 JGW, "like Dr. Thomas [a Quaker minister], opposed the pastoral system which was making its way into Friends meetings and, along with the increasing use of music, was making them like other Protestants, especially the Methodists. Whittier wrote 'and the Quaker singing is dolefully bad. I am too old-fashioned to bear it with patience'" (Life, p. 508). Next year, in the letter which, with its headnote I now quote, JGW had kind words for Methodism.
My dear Friend:
I am glad to know that the all-important subject of peace and arbitration will come before the great world conference of Methodists at Washington. War involves the violation of every precept of the Divine Master. As John Wesley said of slavery at a time when it was tolerated and practised by all Christian nations, [it] is 'the sum of all wickedness.' I cannot but hope that the time is not far off, when the zeal, self-sacrifice, and indomitable energy which have made Methodism a power in the world, shall be directed against the dreadful evil. I am glad to see by the program of the conference that the English Peace Society will be represented by one so well qualified as thyself to speak for the good cause. Under circumstances of age and infirmity I can only bid thee God speed, and pray that the time may not be far distant when the Christian Churches of all sects will unite in efforts to make war no longer possible. I am, very faithfully, thy friend,
John G. Whittier. (N.S. 7 [1886] 217)
The Life makes no mention of the Conference or of Snape, nor does Snape's name appear anywhere in the Letters or in Currier. On November 20, 1891, JGW wrote to Phebe Woodman telling her, among other news, that he had sent two books and a letter to "a great Methodist Fair" and that they sold for a total of $400, $200 of which went to "the Methodist Mission in Alaska (I wish it had gone to the Quaker one)" (Letters, III. 588), thus putting the letter to Snape in context.
In 1830 the young JGW had become editor of the Hartford, Connecticut New England Weekly Review and, I quote the Life, "became friendly with many interesting young people, including Frederick A. P. Barnard, afterwards president of Columbia College, to whom he dedicated 'Miriam' forty years later" (p. 41). Upon Barnard's death in 1889 JGW wrote to the editors of The Critic (N.S., pp. 227-228):
I have just heard of the death of President Barnard. It ends, so far as his life is concerned, the unbroken friendship of sixty years which has existed between us. I knew him first as a tutor in Yale College, and afterwards in Hartford, Ct., when he was a teacher in the Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb, in 1830-31. I was at that time the editor of The New England Review. We became strongly attached friends. A scholar of rare acquirements, brilliant, graceful and handsome, surrounded by admirers of both sexes, he was unassuming and unpretentious, and bore himself then, as ever after, as a perfect gentleman. He wrote occasionally for my paper in prose and verse. I remember one or two imitations of Hafiz and other Persian poets, full of
AMESBURY, 30th April 1889.
JOHN G. WHITTIER.
Barnard's biographer quotes a letter of Barnard's to a friend which reveals something of the closeness of his friendship with JGW. Barnard had loaned JGW a volume of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats and told his friend that "Whit left the vol. in a wretched condition—and if it is not demolished by this time, I hold myself lucky."[4]
Five letters remain, only three of which deal with some as aspect of JGW's poetry. In November 1890 he wrote to William Hosea Ballou to express his shock and indignation at having been "made so conspicuous as an apparent endorser of a book which seems in the interest of lottery, gambling and liquor dealers. . . . What business my name and portrait have in the book except as a lure and device, I cannot imagine." Professor Pickard notes that "Whittier's portrait had apparently appeared in a book that contained advertisements for a Louisiana lottery. Pickard [Samuel, JGW's biographer] in his notes to the letter says it was sent to Ballou, who was the publisher of the book" (Letters, III. 580 and n.). The Critic for April 14, 1891, quoted, in part, a letter of JGW's printed in America, a Journal for Americans, Devoted to honest politics and good literature, published in Chicago, in which the poet expresses himself as "shocked and indignant" that his name was in any way "connected with a publication, which, in the guise of a story, excuses and defends lottery gambling." The book was identified as to title, The Upper Ten, and author, Ballou, and was said to be dedicated to JGW. JGW was further quoted to the effect that "There seems to be no way to protect one's self from such an outrage, but I have the consolation of believing that all who know me will feel sure that I regard it with unqualified detestation" (N.S. 15, p. 189). The existence of two strongly worded letters bears testimony to JGW's extreme displeasure.
In January 1886 The Critic noted that "The date of his birth having been called in question recently, Mr. Whittier wrote 'I cannot say positively from my personal knowledge when I was born but my mother told me it was on the 17th of December, 1807, and she was a truthful woman'" (N.S. 5, p. 21), and December 17, 1807, it has remained.
JGW had written to the editor of The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine from "Amesbury, 6 Mo., 1886," his letter appearing in the September number (p. 783) and being reprinted in the The Critic that same month.
Mr. Whittier and Barbara Frietchie.
My attention has been called to an article in the June number of The Century, in which the writer, referring to the poem on Barbara Frietchie, says: 'The story will perhaps live, as Mr. Whittier has boasted, until it gets beyond the reach of correction.' Those who know me will bear witness that I am not in the habit of boasting of anything whatever, least of all, of
The remaining two letters were printed in January and March, 1892. I have not identified the R. H. Howard of Franklin to whom the following letter was written, although a likely candidate is Rowland Bailey Howard, if one suspects an error in the middle initial as printed in The Critic, secretary of the American Peace Society, to whom JGW had written on Nov. 9, 1887 (Letters, III. 539-540).
Danvers, Mass., Sept. 21, 1888. Dear Friend:
The poem referred to in thy letter was written by me. It was for some reason omitted by my publisher; I think because it was not thought valuable in a merely literary point of view. I had not seen it for a long time; but I have just hunted it up, and find it better than many things which are in my collected poems. The storm on the little lake may have been exaggerated; but, as a whole, the piece is not altogether unworthy, certainly so far as the sentiment is concerned.
I am truly thy friend,
John G. Whittier.
(N.S. 17, p. 10)
The last of the letters is to an unidentified English correspondent and is undated.
When in 1888 JGW learned that slavery had been abolished in Brazil by act of Parliament he sent the following cable to the Emperor of Brazil, then in Milan: "With thanks to God, who has blessed your generous efforts, I congratulate you on the peaceful abolition of slavery in Brazil" (N.S. 9, p. 83). The two had met (Life, p. 411), and Don Pedro had translated some of JGW's poetry into Portuguese.
While these letters in their totality are of no little importance, they are overshadowed by an autobiographical sketch reprinted from the Boston Herald, which has been overlooked by scholars. Although what the poet wrote
The following sketch, written by Mr. Whittier with his own hand a few years ago in response to inquiries made of him, gives the main points of interest in a long and useful life. It has never been given to the world generally:
'I was born on the 17th of December, 1807, in the easterly part of Haverhill, Mass., in the house built by my first American ancestor, 200 years ago. My father was a farmer, in moderate circumstances—a man of good natural ability and sound judgment. For a great many years he was one of the selectmen of the town, and was often called upon to act as arbitrator in matters at issue between neighbors. My mother was Abigail Hussey of Rollinsford, N. H. A bachelor uncle and a maiden aunt, both of whom I remember with much affection, lived in the family. The farm was not a profitable one; it was burdened with debt, and we had no spare money; but with strict economy we lived comfortably and respectably. Both my parents were members of the Society of Friends. I had a brother and two sisters. Our home was somewhat lonely, half hidden in oak woods, with no house in sight, and we had few companions of our age and few occasions of recreation. Our school was only for 12 weeks in a year—in the depth of winter and half a mile distant. At an early age I was set at work on the farm and doing errands for my mother, who in addition to her ordinary house duties, was busy in spinning and weaving the linen and woollen cloth needed in the family. On first days father and mother, and sometimes one of the children, rode down to the Friends' meeting-house in Amesbury, eight miles distant. I think I rather enjoyed staying at home and wandering in the woods, or climbing Job's Hill, which rose abruptly from the brook which rippled down at the foot of our garden. From the top of the hill I could see the blue outline of the Deerfield mountains in New Hampshire, and the solitary peak of Agamenticus on the coast of Maine. A curving line of morning mist marked the course of the Merrimac, and Great Pond, or Kenoza, stretched away from the foot of the hill toward the village of Haverhill hidden from sight by intervening hills and woods, but which sent to us the sound of its two church bells. We had only about 20 volumes of books, most of them the journals of pioneer ministers in our society. Our only annual was an almanac. I was early fond of reading, and now and then heard of a book of biography or travel, and walked miles to borrow it.
'When I was 14 years old my first schoolmaster, Joshua Collin, the able, eccentric historian of Newbury, brought with him to our house a volume of Burns' poems, from which he read, greatly to my delight. I begged him to leave the book with me, and set myself at once to the task of mastering the glossary of the Scottish dialect at its close. This was about the first poetry I had ever read—with the exception of that of the Bible, of which I had been a close student—and it had a lasting influence upon me. I began to make rhymes myself, and to imagine stories and adventures. In fact, I lived a sort of dual life, and in a world of fancy, as well as in the world of plain matter of fact about me. My father always had a weekly newspaper, and when young Garrison started his Free Press at Newburyport, he took it in the place of the Haverhill Gazette. My sister, who was two years older than myself, sent one of my poetical attempts to the editor. Some weeks afterward the newscarrier came along on horseback, and threw the paper out from his saddle-bags. My uncle and I were mending fences. I took up the sheet, and was surprised and overjoyed to see my lines in the "Poet's Corner." I stood gazing at them in wonder, and my uncle had to call me several times to my work before I could recover myself. Soon after, Garrison came to our farmhouse, and I was called in from hoeing in the cornfield to see him. He encouraged me, and urged my father to send me to school. I longed for education, but the means to procure it were wanting. Luckily, the young man who worked for us on the farm in summer, eked out his small income by making ladies' shoes and slippers in the winter; and I learned enough of him to earn a sum sufficient to carry me through a term of six months in the Haverhill Academy. The next winter I ventured
'As a member of the Society of Friends, I had been educated to regard slavery as a great and dangerous evil, and my sympathies were strongly enlisted for the oppressed slaves by my intimate acquaintance with William Lloyd Garrison. When the latter started his paper in Vermont in 1828, I wrote him a letter commending his views upon slavery, intemperance and war, and assuring him that he was destined to do great things. In 1833 I was a delegate to the first national anti-slavery convention at Philadelphia. I was one of the secretaries of the convention and signed its declaration. In 1835 I was in the Massachusetts Legislature. I was mobbed in Concord, N. H., in company with George Thompson, afterward member of the British Parliament, and narrowly escaped from great danger. I kept Thompson, whose life was hunted for, concealed in our lonely farm house for two weeks. I was in Boston during the great mob in Washington Street, soon after, and was threatened with personal violence. In 1837 I was in New York, in conjunction with Henry B. Stanton and Theodore D. Weld, in the office of the American Anti-Slavery Society. The next year I took charge of the Pennsylvania Freeman, an organ of the Anti-Slavery Society. My office was sacked and burned by a mob soon after, but I continued my paper until my health failed, when I returned to Massachusetts. The farm in Haverhill had, in the meantime, been sold, and my mother, aunt, and youngest sister, had moved to Amesbury, near the Friends' Meeting-house, and I took up my residence with them. All this time I had been actively engaged in writing for the anti-slavery cause. In 1833 I printed at my own expense an edition of my first pamphlet, "Justice and Expediency." With the exception of a few dollars from the Democratic Review and Buckingham's Magazine, I received nothing for my poems and literary articles. Indeed, my pronounced views on slavery made my name too unpopular for a publisher's uses. I edited in 1844 the Middlesex Standard, and afterward became associate editor of the National Era at Washington. I early saw the necessity of separate political action on the part of abolitionists, and was one of the founders of the Liberty party—the germ of the present Republican party.
'In 1857 an edition of my complete poems up to that time was published by Ticknor & Fields. "In War Time" followed in 1864, and in 1865 "Snow Bound." In 1860 I was chosen a member of the Electoral College of Massachusetts, and also in 1864. I have been a member of the Board of Overseers of Harvard College and a Trustee of Brown University. But while feeling and willing to meet all the responsibilities of citizenship, and deeply interested in questions which concern the welfare and honor of the country, I have as a rule declined overtures for acceptance of public stations. I have always taken an active part in elections, but have not been willing to add my own example to the greed of office.
'I have been a member of the Society of Friends by birthright, and by a settled conviction of the truth of its principles and the importance of its testimonies, while at the same time I have a kind feeling toward all those who are seeking, in different ways from mine, to serve God and benefit their fellow-men.
'Neither of my sisters are living. My dear mother, to whom I owe much every way, died in 1858. [His brother, Matthew Franklin Whittier, died in 1883.]
'My health was never robust; I inherited from both my parents a sensitive, nervous temperament; and one of my earliest recollections is of pain in the head, from
That kindly Providence its care is showing
In the withdrawal as in the bestowing,
Scarcely I dare for more or less to pray.'
Note that "Joshua Collin" is either a compositorial error or a lapse of memory on the part of JGW, for the correct name is "Coffin." JGW has himself "hoeing in the cornfield" when Garrison came unannounced;[5] the Life has him in a pursuit of a hen under the barn (p. 12). There may be other differences.
One other area of interest, particularly to bibliographers, is the appearance of sixteen of JGW's poems reprinted in The Critic from the text of other periodical reprintings. Mr. Currier's bibliography of Whittier, Part II, Poems, lists among other facts, "separate printings of a poem" (p. [193)], but none of the sixteen is included.
A simple listing, with a minimum of comment, of these poems reprinted in The Critic should suffice. It is worth repeating that the first three volumes each cover a full year; a new series, each volume covering six months, then begins, its first volume being marked volume one.
In the rest of this article I have arbitrarily included reviews of works by Whittier, biographies of him, and one work in which he may be said to have collaborated, none of which are part of the design of the Currier bibliography. There is much biographical matter in these volumes of The Critic, and I have culled what is not in the Life or not completely covered therein. And I have a final category, a catch-all miscellaneous grouping, which includes such items as the pronunciation of "Evangeline" and an entire critical article on Whittier's poetry by James Herbert Morse. None of these is in Part V, Biography and Criticism, of the Currier bibliography.
There are very few reviews of Whittier's poems in the Life or in Currier. The Critic reprinted parts of reviews of Whittier's poems as well as of biographies of him. I list these in order of appearance, again with a minimum of
I shall take the major miscellaneous pieces about JGW in order of appearance and list the others in a footnote.[6] The first piece is worth quoting as an example of undergraduate literary criticism of JGW's poetry. The Critic, N.S. 7 (1886) 217, reprints two paragraphs of a seven-page essay in the Nassau Literary Magazine of September, 1886 (pp. 123-129), by Francis Harding White, a senior at Princeton University where the Magazine was published.
Soon thereafter, and available for comparison with White's efforts, The Critic printed an essay by James Herbert Morse, minor poet and critic, who was among those who took note of JGW's eightieth birthday (Dec. 17, 1887). The essay was simply titled "John Greenleaf Whittier. 1807—December 17-1887," and was published on the very day of that birthday (pp. 307-308). The first three paragraphs are largely taken from the biography of William Lloyd Garrison written by his sons, as Garrison was the editor of The Free Press of Newburyport, Massachusetts where Whittier's first poem was published. At the end of the third paragraph Morse compares JGW to Robert Burns: "Burns, too, was a farmer, and flashed into poetical fame early, dying only too soon; but Whittier was slow in maturing, late in developing his finest fruit, which hung long on the boughs and needed long wintering in the cellar. What nature had to give him, she gave at once, and with hands full; but poetry is an art, and art is a slow-going hand-maiden of genius." I quote parts of the rest of the essay. Morse continues
In 1838, when a first volume of verse appeared, the phrasing was harsh, the passion impetuous, the torrent voluminous; but in every element it was distinctly of New England. The skies are keenly blue above the fields of northern Massachusetts. Pines clothe the hillsides; hardhack, sumach and brakes border the roads. It is a land of stone walls and rocky pastures; but the grass about the bowlders is sweet, as the cattle know, and wild vines love the sunny faces of the broad ledge rock. Autumn comes early, and its winds keep the blood astir. The farmer works hard, the poet walks fast, and farmer and poet learn to do battle with the northeasters.
It was a lucky day for American verse when Whittier made the study which led up to his Legendary Poems; for, although these early poems are probably less read to-day than his later work, an original bent of mind was cultivated, and the American flavor of all his later work was assured by this study. The Indian and colonial names and events entered into his stock as a poet, and enriched his verse long after he had ceased to use the material as subject-matter. There came a time, perhaps, when he grew tired of the Indian legend, grew broader in his poetical range.
For Tuscan valleys glad with olive and with vine;
but the best is always the native home flavor such as one perceives in 'The Maids of Attitash,' 'Rivermouth Rocks,' 'Amy Wentworth,' 'Maud Müller,' 'Telling the Bees,' 'The Witch's Daughter,' and 'My Playmate.' The graces of his verse appeared more and more persuasively when the War was coming to an end, and the young soldiers
Much of his broader verse has appeared since the War, and it is as grave, tender, and melodious as art, in long wedlock with genius, can make. There is a rich home quality that will endear verse and man to our American youth and manhood,—and there exists no man for whom we may more justly twine the garland which his brother poet Lowell bespoke for him nearly fifty years ago:—
Who, for the sake of the many, dared stand with the few.
Morse, it may be recalled, was one of the regular reviewers for The Critic.
The moralizing tendency of the following piece of criticism might be expected from its appearance in the London Literary World, a monthly supplement of the Christian World.
The Boston Journal requested that some of JGW's friends write a few words on the occasion of his eighty-fourth birthday in 1892. The event is recorded briefly in the Life (p. 520); none of the congratulatory messages is quoted; hence, without access to the Journal one would not know what various friends wrote. But The Critic quotes from Julia Ward Howe, Celia Thaxter, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Rose Terry Cooke, Edna Dean Proctor, the Reverend A. P. Peabody, Francis M. Stanwood, Sarah Orne Jewett, Lucy Larcom, the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, and cites Donald G. Mitchell (N.S. 16, pp. 335-336). And (pp. 371-372) there is a much more detailed account
Finally, in this miscellaneous category, an anecdote and another piece of laudatory criticism of JGW's poetry, both in 1892.
A long biographical account of JGW was printed in the September 17, 1892, number (N.S. 18, pp. 152-155), simply titled "His Life and Work" and with the explanation that "The following story of Mr. Whittier's life is condensed from a long and interesting sketch in The Evening Post." The writer invokes Kennedy's biography of JGW for the biographical details and follows with a section labelled "Personalia," in which there is a description of JGW by a recent visitor, quotation of four sentences from the autobiographical sketch quoted above (beginning "In 1860 I was chosen a member . . ."), and a number of other bits and pieces. JGW's letter to Oliver Wendell Holmes (Letters, III. 489) is quoted in full. The writer of the account is identified as Colonel Higginson on page 168 of The Critic. There JGW's will is reprinted in full. Of no little interest is JGW's response recorded in an account of his seventy-fifth birthday on December 18, 1882, by a reporter of the New York Herald (p. 10) who asked what work he was doing that winter. He replied: "Not much; nothing to speak of. I have done too much already, such as it is. Then I have so many letters to write that I scarcely find time to do much literary work worth the name. There is no man who ought to write much after he is seventy, unless, perhaps, it may be Dr. Holmes. He ought to write from now on until he is 100. There is such wonderful variety in his work that it seems a pity he should ever stop" (2.356). Eight years later, in 1890, The Critic printed the following short note: "Mr. Whittier writes to a correspondent:—'I have reached a time of life when literary notoriety is of little consequence, but I shall be glad to feel that I have not altogether written in vain; that my words for freedom, temperance, charity, faith in divine goodness, love of nature and home and country are welcomed and approved'" (N.S. 13, p. 111).
A few more items of somewhat more than peripheral interest should be quoted or cited. In 1892 the following notice appeared:
Although the information about JGW and his works gleaned from The Critic in the years from 1881 through 1892 does not radically change what is known about him, it reinforces that knowledge and adds to it. One has his further views on aspects of his own poetry (Barbara Frietchie and Christ in the Tempest), of that of his contemporaries (Holmes, Lowell, Mrs. Gustafson), and of Robert Burns. There are his remarks on Methodism, and the amusing accompanying remark that "Quaker singing is dolefully bad." One has further evidence about the reception and popularity of his poetry in the reviews reprinted in The Critic. And there is the occasional longer piece, notably that by James Herbert Morse. The names of Mrs. Boyce and of Thomas Snape may now be added to the list of JGW's friends. So, too, the name of E. Pauline Johnson, the little Indian girl in Brantford, Ontario, who sent this message to the poet on his eighty-fourth birthday: "Your young Mohawk friend asks for you to-day the Great Spirit's blessing" (N.S. 16, p. 336). Finally, and most obviously, The Critic deserves, and will repay, further study.
Notes
I derive my information from the account of The Critic in Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1865-1885 (1957), pp. 548-551. One of the three works examined in this article, the Letters, has an index entry for The Critic. It is referred to but not indexed in Currier's bibliography of Whitman's writings.
I have a short piece on reviews of Henry James in The Critic accepted for publication in the Henry James Review and an article, "Matters English in The Critic," accepted by the Review of English Studies. I have sent xerox of an essay on book reviewing by A. C. Benson, never reprinted, to Magdalene College, Cambridge, of which he was Master for many years.
William J. Chute, Damn Yankee! The First Career of Frederick A. P. Barnard, Educator, Scientist, Idealist (1978), p. 46.
The account in Garrison's life by his sons has JGW "at work in the field," I (1885) 69. I have not found the original in the Boston Herald, the clue of "a few years ago" being too general. The editorial interpolation giving the date of JGW's brother's death as 1883 would seem to put the article at some time before that date, else JGW would have included it.
N.S. (1885) 118, on the pronunciation of Evangeline; 260, on engravings by Elbridge Kingsley for Poems of Nature; N.S. 8 (1887) 319, notice of a poem by Rose Terry Cooke and an essay by Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps on JGW's birthday printed in The Independent; 330, quotation of a sonnet by E. C. Stedman on JGW's birthday, also from The Independent; N.S. 9 (1888) 83, JGW's portrait published by Houghton Mifflin; N.S. 12 (1889) 305 and 309, JGW's desire for quiet on his 82nd birthday; 328, curiosity seekers besiege his barber for clippings of his hair; N.S. 14 (1890) 52, great praise from The Athenaeum; 222, Charles Aldrich named as donor of the MS of The Willows to the Iowa State Library; N.S. 16 (1891) 12, JGW gives the desk on which he wrote his earliest poems to a "gentleman in Portland"; N.S. 17 (1892) 331-332, a long unsigned piece on JGW as "a typical American."
See also, as of peripheral interest, N.S. 1 (1884) 66 and 107, an engraving for a poem by JGW in Harper's Weekly for March 12; N.S. 2 (1884) 206, quotation from a letter of John Bright on the occasion of a portrait of JGW being presented to the Friends' School in Providence, R.I.; N.S. 8 (1887) 315, William E. Rideing and Dr. J. R. Nichols visit the JGW birthplace; N.S. 14 (1890) 325, on JGW's 83rd birthday and the effect of cold upon him; N.S. 16 (1891) 72, JGW ill, walks but little, his "increasing deafness" makes conversation difficult and prevents his "attending church," and 99, on the death of Charles F. Coffin, Quaker friend of JGW; N.S. 18 (1892), 137-8, detailed account of JGW's death by Charles E. L. Wingate, and 151, a detailed account of the funeral, also by Wingate; E. C. Stedman's words at the funeral service; 182-183, 194 eulogies on JGW; 196, Samuel T. Packard (read Pickard) of Portland, Maine, JGW's chosen biographer, asks for letters by the poet; 212, an account of memorial exercises in Havenhill, Mass. in October 1892; 221-222, the full text of Oliver Wendell Holmes's letter read at the memorial exercises; 234, a memorial at Hampton Falls on October 21, 1892; 253-254, poems by Holmes and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps on the death of JGW; 267, An Elegy for Whittier, by Walter Storrs Bigelow, reprinted from American Gardening, beginning "In vain for him the buds shall burst their shield"; 281-282, purchase of part of the JGW homestead by James H. Carleton at Haverhill; 362-363, memorial at Amesbury; 367, an inventory of JGW's estate, more detailed than that in the Life (p. 529); 376, another memorial in Haverhill, with formation of the Trustees of the JGW Homestead.
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