Whittier-land Part 3

"Disappointment in a thousand ways has gone over my heart, and left it dust. Yet I still look forward with high antic.i.p.ations. I have placed the goal of my ambitions high--but with the blessing of G.o.d it shall be reached. The world has at last breathed into my bosom a portion of its own bitterness, and I now feel as if I would wrestle manfully in the strife of men. If my life is spared, the world shall know me in a loftier capacity than _as a writer of rhymes_. [The italics are his own.] There--is not that boasting?--But I have said it with a strong pulse and a swelling heart, and I shall strive to realize it."

In another letter, written at about the same time to the same correspondent, he says: "As for tears, I have not shed anything of the kind since my last flogging under the birchen despotism of the Nadir Shah of our village school. I have sometimes wished I _could_ shed tears--especially when angry with myself or with the world. There is an iron fixedness about my heart on such occasions which I would gladly melt away."

From the birthplace to the Amesbury home is a distance of nine miles, traversed by electric cars in less than an hour. Midway is the thriving village of Merrimac, formerly known as West Amesbury. It was at Birchy Meadow in this vicinity that Whittier taught his first and only term of district school, in the winter of 1827-28. The road is at considerable distance from the Merrimac River, and at several points it surmounts hills which afford remarkably fine views of the wide and fertile river valley, with occasional glimpses of the river itself. At Pond Hills, near the village of Amesbury, the landscape presented to view is one of the widest and loveliest in all this region. It is a panorama of the beautifully rounded hills peculiar to this section, with a tidal river winding among them with many a graceful curve. The electric road we have taken is about two miles from the left bank of the river, across which we look to the Newbury hills, cultivated to their tops, with here and there a church spire indicating the location of the distant villages. Every part of this lovely valley has been commemorated in Whittier's writings, prose and verse.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SYCAMORES]

If, instead of the trolley, we take the carriage road from Haverhill along the bank of the river, we soon come to what are left of "the sycamores," planted in 1739 by Hugh Tallant, in front of the Saltonstall mansion. This mansion is now occupied by the Haverhill Historical Society, and most of the famous row of "Occidental plane-trees" were cut down many years ago, a sacrifice to street improvement. Three of the ancient trees still stand, and will probably round out the second century of their existence. They are about eighty feet in height, and measure nearly twenty feet around their trunks.

Under these trees Was.h.i.+ngton "drew rein," and Whittier repeats the legend that he said:--

"I have seen no prospect fairer In this goodly Eastern land."

About a mile below on the northeasterly side of Millvale, a hill picturesquely crowned with pines attracts attention. This is the Ramoth Hill immortalized in the lovely poem "My Playmate:"--

"The pines were dark on Ramoth Hill, Their song was soft and low.

"And still the pines of Ramoth wood Are moaning like the sea,-- The moaning of the sea of change Between myself and thee!"

Until recently there has been much doubt as to the location of Ramoth Hill, Whittier himself giving no definite answer when asked in regard to it. Indeed, the poem as originally written had the t.i.tle "Eleanor,"

and the hill was given the name of Menahga. But Mr. J. T. Fields, to whom the ma.n.u.script was submitted, did not like this name, and Whittier changed it to Ramoth, which suited his editor's taste. Mr. Alfred A.

Ordway, the best authority on all matters pertaining to Whittier's allusions to places in this region, has discovered that the name Menahga was given to this particular hill in Haverhill by Mrs. Mary S.

West of Elmwood, one of a family all the members of which were dear to Whittier from his boyhood to the close of his life. A letter of Whittier's to Mrs. West has come to light, written about the time this poem was composed, in which he commends the selection of the name of this hill, and intimates that he shall use it in a poem.

On the Country Bridge road, leading from the birthplace to Rocks Village, is an ancient edifice, known as the "Old Garrison House,"

which is of interest to Whittier-Land pilgrims because it was the home of Whittier's great-grandmother, Mary Peaslee, who brought Quakerism into the Whittier family. Thomas Whittier, the pioneer, did not belong to the Society of Friends, though favorably disposed toward the sect.

His youngest son, Joseph, brought the young Quakeress into the family, and their descendants for several generations, down to the time of the poet, belonged to the sect founded by her father's friend, George Fox.

Joseph Peaslee built this house with bricks brought from England before 1675. As it was one of the largest and strongest houses in the town, in the time of King Philip's war it was set apart by the town authorities as a house of refuge for the families of the neighborhood, and as a rallying point for the troops kept on the scout. There are many port-holes through its thick walls.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLD GARRISON HOUSE (PEASLEE HOUSE)]

A little farther on we come to Rocks Village, pictured so perfectly by Whittier in his poem "The Countess," that it will be at once recognized:--

"Over the wooded northern ridge, Between its houses brown, To the dark tunnel of the bridge The street comes straggling down."

The bridge across the Merrimac at this point was a covered and gloomy structure at the time this poem was written. It has since been partially remodeled, and many of the houses of the "stranded village,"

then brown and paintless, have received modern improvements. But there is enough of antiquity still clinging to the place to make it recognizable from Whittier's lines. This was the market to which the Whittiers brought much of the produce of their farm to barter for household supplies. This was the home of Dr. Elias Weld, the "wise old doctor" of "Snow-Bound," and it was to him "The Countess" was inscribed--the poem which every year brings many visitors. .h.i.ther, for the grave of the Countess is near.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROCKS VILLAGE AND BRIDGE

Home of the Countess was at further end of the bridge, in house now standing, afterward occupied by Whittier's benefactor, Dr. Weld.]

Whittier was still in his teens when this eccentric physician left Rocks Village and removed to Hallowell, Maine, and almost half a century had intervened before he wrote that remarkable tribute to the friend and benefactor of his youth, which is found in the prelude to "The Countess." The good old man died at Hudson, Ohio, a few months after the publication of the lines that meant so much to his fame, and it is pleasant to know that they consoled the last hours of his long life. Whittier did not know whether or not the benefactor of his boyhood was living in 1863, when he wrote the poem, as is shown in the lines:--

"I know not, Time and s.p.a.ce so intervene, Whether, still waiting with a trust serene, Thou bearest up thy fourscore years and ten, Or, called at last, art now Heaven's citizen."

[Ill.u.s.tration: RIVER VALLEY, NEAR GRAVE OF COUNTESS

"For, from us, ere the day was done The wooded hills shut out the sun.

But on the river's further side We saw the hill-tops glorified."

THE RIVER PATH]

[Ill.u.s.tration: DR. ELIAS WELD, AT THE AGE OF NINETY]

And yet they were in correspondence in the previous year, as is shown by the fact that I find in an old alb.u.m of Whittier's a photograph labeled by him "Dr. Weld," and this photograph, I am a.s.sured by Mrs.

Tracy, a grandniece of Weld, was taken when he was ninety years of age.

I think it probable that the sending of this photograph by the aged physician put Whittier in mind to write his Rocks Village poem, with the tribute of remembrance and affection contained in its prelude. As to the ancient sulky which--

"Down the village lanes Dragged, like a war-car, captive ills and pains,"

it was a chaise with white canvas top, and the doctor always dressed in gray, and drove a sober white horse. I have seen a letter of Whittier's written to Dr. Weld, then at Hallowell, in March, 1828, in which he says: "I am happy to think that I am not forgotten by those for whom I have always entertained the most sincere regard. I recollect perfectly well that (on one occasion in particular) after hearing thy animated praises of Milton and Thomson I attempted to bring a few words to rhyme and measure; but whether it was poetry run mad, or, as Burns says, 'something that was rightly neither,' I cannot now ascertain; I am certain, however, that it was in a great measure owing to thy admiration of those poets that I ventured on that path which their memory has hallowed, in pursuit of--I myself hardly know what--time alone must determine.... I am a tall, dark-complexioned, and, I am sorry to say, rather ordinary-looking fellow, bashful, yet proud as any poet should be, and believing with the honest Scotchman that 'I hae muckle reason to be thankful that I am as I am.'"[3] It is of interest further to state that Whittier's life-long friend and co-laborer in the anti-slavery field, Theodore D. Weld, was a nephew of "the wise old doctor." Also that another nephew, who was adopted as a son by the childless physician, was named "Greenleaf" for the young poet in whom he took so much interest. The grave of the Countess in the cemetery near Rocks Village is now better cared for than when the poem was written. This is not the cemetery referred to in the poem "The Old Burying-Ground," which is near the East Haverhill church.

In 1844, Whittier was the Liberty Party candidate for representative to the General Court from Amesbury, running against Whig and Democratic candidates. A majority vote being required there were five attempts to elect, in each of which Whittier steadily gained, and it was at last evident he would be elected at the next trial. Whereupon the two opposing parties united, and the town voted to have _no_ representative for 1845. This was at the time of the agitation against the annexation of Texas, and Whittier was very anxious to be elected. Towns then paid the salaries of their representatives, and could, if they chose, remain unrepresented.

At his last visit to his birthplace, in 1882, Whittier called my attention to the millstone which serves as a step at the door of the eastern porch, to which reference is made on page 18. It was soon after this that he wrote his fine poem "Birchbrook Mill," one stanza of which was evidently inspired by noticing this doorstep, and by memories of the mill of his ancestors on Fernside Brook, the site of which he had so recently visited:

"The timbers of that mill have fed Long since a farmer's fires; His doorsteps are the stones that ground The harvest of his sires."

AMESBURY

II

AMESBURY

Following down the left bank of the river, we come, near the village of Amesbury, to a sheltered nook between the steep northern hill and the broad winding river, known as "Pleasant Valley." At some points there is scant room for the river road between the high bluff and the water; at others a wedge of fertile intervale pushes back the steep bank. The comfortable houses of an ancient Quaker settlement are perched and scattered along this road in picturesque fas.h.i.+on. It was a favorite walk of Whittier and his sister, and it is commemorated in "The River Path,"--

"Sudden our pathway turned from night; The hills swung open to the light;

"Through their green gates the suns.h.i.+ne showed, A long, slant splendor downward flowed.

"Down glade and glen and bank it rolled; It bridged the shaded stream with gold;

"And, borne on piers of mist, allied The shadowy with the sunlit side!"

When Mr. Whittier returned to Amesbury from the last visit to his birthplace, referred to in the preceding chapter, it was by the road pa.s.sing the Old Garrison House, the Countess' grave, Rocks Village, and Pleasant Valley. He pointed out each feature of the scene that reminded him of earlier days. When we came to Pleasant Valley, he stopped the carriage at a picturesque wooded knoll between the road and the river, and said that here he used to come with his sister to gather harebells. It was so late in the season that every other flower by the roadside had been killed by frost; even the goldenrod was more sere than yellow. But the harebells were fresh in their delicate beauty, and he gathered a handful of them which lighted up his "garden room" for several days. I remember that on this occasion an effect referred to in "The River Path" was reproduced most beautifully. The setting sun, hidden to us, illuminated the hills of Newbury:--

"A tender glow, exceeding fair, A dream of day without its glare.

"With us the damp, the chill, the gloom: With them the sunset's rosy bloom;